My Father’s Day gift this year (I was asked what I wanted) was an on-line home espresso class, offered by Breville in conjunction with Onyx Coffee Lab. My session was yesterday.
I’ve taken classes before at Counter Culture and Vigilante, but it had been a while and this offer was too good to be true.
Continue readingHey kids. Sorry ol’ Matty hasn’t been very active lately, but a combination of being busy with work, not being able to get out for coffee, and getting ready to move has kept me pretty busy lately.
We got through the move this week, and other than the garage door opener track ripping apart a poorly installed ethernet cable and a heavy thunderstorm flooding the basement, it’s all gone smoothly. Surrounded by boxes but managed to set up the coffee infrastructure and make my first cup in the new house. Funny how minor changes in the setup, like a different counter height, feel awkward at first. I do think this will soon feel like a much better layout.
Blue Bottle Coffee is in the news this week (h/t once again to my friend Karen), as it announced that it is undertaking a series of operational changes with the goal to be zero waste by end of 2020.
The drive starts with pilots in two San Francisco Bay area shops to eliminate single use cups, which they hope to roll out throughout their entire chain.
A company blog post from their CEO announcing the changes contains some frank comments, including an admission that current efforts just aren’t cutting it:
Continue readingWe recently woke up to the fact that our beautiful bioplastic cups and straws were not being composted even though they were 100 percent compostable. Too many ended up in landfills, where they couldn’t break down at all. So we switched to paper straws and sugarcane-paper cups. But that’s still not enough. We still go through on average 15,000 disposable single-use cups per cafe per month in the US alone, which adds up to 12 million cups per year.
-Bryan Meehan, CEO, Blue Bottle Coffee
Ah, that time of year has come yet again. Kindly consider this an update to my holiday gift guide from 2018; all the items there are still recommended. I’ll try to add a few more suggestions, including add-ons to last year, to help you delight the coffee nerd in your life. Just a disclaimer, I’m not getting any kind of click-through payments or other compensation from anyone on these; just my own opinions, for whatever they are or are not worth.
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I’m at an industry conference in the convention center of a large hotel/resort in central Florida. Long days of programming that I’m enjoying, but no access to coffee other than an on-site outlet of the evil empire and urns of questionable industrial drip coffee. Not ideal for an espresso addicted coffee snob.
Here’s how I’m making it through:
Continue readingI don’t know if it makes an espresso any better or worse, but I really love the look of Modbar undercounter espresso machines.
Gleaming metal, substantial wooden handles, retro and modern at the same time. Innards are from La Marzocco.
Apparently an enterprising young Brit has solved a problem that doesn’t really exist, and combined a high end coffee maker with a bedside alarm clock. Behold, the Barisieur:
My KeepCup must have been resting at the wrong angle as it dried on the dish rack this afternoon, for I later opened the refrigerator door only to hear a most sickening sound of destruction.
I hope that second and a half of free flight was exhilarating.
Continue readingthis is the original 2018 version; also see my 2019 holiday gift guide
You can do better than a Starbucks gift card.
Here are a few suggestions for showing a little holiday love to the coffee drinker in your life. Prices are as of this date and, like much in life, subject to change. Shop around for best deals.
Continue readingThis morning I returned to the Counter Culture training center in DC. It was time to learn how to make a better espresso, and (hopefully) how to make some latte art. Not to mention the attraction of getting on a La Marzocco machine I could never hope to own.
