The Reading Room

This is a short series of blog entries on how living in Italy many years ago converted me from a coffee snob to an espresso snob. I had always enjoyed my coffee at home black (well not always – when...

reflections on my debut with roasting I was lucky enough that when I was just getting into espresso my wife gave me an iroast 2 as a gift.  I googled user advice and found some on Coffee Geek and plugged...

Today as I found a little time to descale my espresso machine and auto drip, I was thinking about all the coffee machines and two cheap espresso machines that my parents tossed because they broke. The reality is my parents...

This Hario Mini Mill Slim coffee grinder has the potential to produce consistent grinds at most settings but it requires modification to produce acceptable results. The problem lies in two places: play between the metal shaft and the plastic housing, and...

The Robur – is it what every home enthusiast should aspire to? Coffee enthusiasts often figure out that as they move their budgets up their espresso gets better and better, so they wonder if going to the “top” of the...

With recent posts about where people got their start in their interest in coffee, (including my post about a moment when I changed the way I thought about espresso) I thought I'd recollect a bit about how my first interest...

For those of you who are following the coffee forum, you probably have heard about OE Pharos hand grinder that was released this year's April (on the April fool itself!) This is one of the huge breakthrough in coffee thus...

There is a lot of excitement in the world of espresso machines and there are a slew of machines that are coming out this year with new and exciting features. A machine that received a lot of buzz among the...

What Do Cranberry-Mustard Turkey and Deep Cello Coffee Have in Common? Great Taste!Thanksgiving will soon be here and things will be getting more hectic everywhere, especially in the stores. Plan early and start thinking about that holiday coffee. And, as...

Last weekend, I found myself on business in Boston and staying with friends not far from Washington Square. It was a perfect opportunity to visit Café Fixe, which I’d heard good things about (here, for example). There was no time...

This post summarizes my second exchange with Velton Ross of Velton's Roasters.  The first exchange was before I tried the coffee and blogged about it, this exchange came after I finished my batch and had already blogged about it.  I...

Only Reg has ridges!    Reg Barber out of Canada makes some great tampers.  I think they are unquestionably one of the two most prestigious tamper makers in the world – up there with Torr Tampers and perhaps they are...

http://www.coffeeshop.us/blade-grinder-560.jpg" width="560" height="560" align="middle" /> My hobby with coffee got started when I walked into Starbuck and look at the bags of whole bean coffee that they had. Before that, I was not aware of the many different "origins" of...

It is not secret that I really enjoyed Velton’s Bonsai Blend when I picked it up a few weeks ago. At the time I contacted Velton’s to see if they had any advice on how to pull it and unlike...

Avelino Coffee in Bellingham Washington.http://www.espressoavellino.com/coffee.html This is almost more a review of a concept than an actual coffee shop.  On a trip to the pacific northwest many years ago, I was staying with relatives who made fine coffee, but not...

That is the question: Whether tis preferable in the cup to suffer the lackluster and shallow taste of stale beans, or to take arms against the sea of time and by freezing end them? I’ll spare you the rest of...

I have been wanting to write a little bit about the Ponte Vechio Lusso but did not get a chance until now. After all it is definely one of my most favorite espressos machine. The picture above is almost exactly...

This is my first blog entry and I have always been meaning to have a blog of my own but am just too lazy to write it. Thanks to Ebean and ROASTe for being my motivation to do this.  I...

We have just gone through Halloween, so that means we are fast approaching the season when people are coming into our homes on a regular basis that we don't normally see. It also means for those of use in the...

In another blog post someone asked what my favorite coffee shop was.  In different contexts I have slightly different favorites, but it inspired me to write about a few of my favorites.  This is about one of my favorites in...