The Reading Room

When do you stop drinking coffee?
The obvious answer to that question is, never.However, what I really mean by that is when do you stop drinking coffee during the day. This is all pretty much up to yourself and how you body handles caffeine. It seems...
Grinder maintenance: burr removal in the Baratza Vario
As part of making excellent coffee at home, the grinder is one of the most important a coffee geek can and must own. What ever the brewing method we chose to use to make coffee,The grinder is responsible for grinding...
Has hell frozen over?
I posted week or two ago that my wife had been experimenting with doing manual pour over with the Hario V60, and that she liked it. This was a huge step for someone that before this while really enjoying the...
Preparing to do the [Kalita] Wave
Can we talk about pour-over for a minute? I haven’t really embraced it despite the fact that I have a Hario V60 cone and a Beehouse at my disposal as well as the Bonavita electric kettle. Frankly, I love full-immersion...
Coffee Tidbits Around the Web Today
This morning's mailbox coffee grab bag included a fair amount of coffee news that was actually interesting, a switch from the past few weeks when my Google "coffee" alert was focused on news that was about weight loss, the stock...
Nice to have some good coffee! (AJ Coffee)
Over this past weekend due to a little logistical issues with ordering a coffee that was no longer available I did find myself without any coffee. And in the gap I ended up buying a nice espresso blend from Scarlet...
Espresso in Italy.
While looking through the forums this morning I found an interesting article that someone had linked about a coffee geeks travels through Italy and the espresso bars that she encounter along her journey. It was written by Erin Meister, who...
Odds and Ends
There have been a few things that I have noticed going on sale or close to going on sale that I have wanted to post about, but don't really deserve a full on post by themselves. So now that I...
Scarlet City Coffee Roasting
Like sometimes happens when ordering coffee through the internet you end up in a spot where an order doesn't make it to you when you thought it would for one reason or another. In this case I had placed an...
Happy Mother's Day, Mother Earth
It's Mother's Day. How are you treating your mother? I don't mean the woman who gave birth to you or the one who raised you. I'm talking about our Mother, Mother Earth, without whom none of us would be here....
Ogling roasters from afar
A tweet about Fratello showed up in my feed this afternoon. This is a high-quality roaster based out of Calgary whose green buyer, Russ Prefontaine, goes out of his way to source great coffee by establishing “direct trade” relationships with...
Happy Mother's Day Coffee from Dean's Beans
My Mother's Day present from my daughter and son-in-law just arrived and I couldn't be more tickled, especially since I'm down to just my own roast in the house right now. I should have guessed that I'd be getting a...
Another Pretty Coffee Maker - The Cafino
I'm a total sucker for pretty coffee gadgets, so when I spotted the Cafino coffee maker on -- of all places, a website that sells home lighting products, it stopped me in my tracks. It's described as sort of a...
Getting into Manual Drip Coffee: Hario V60 #2 ordered!
I have heard so much thing about different manual drip brewers such as the Hario, the Beehouse and the Chemex and have been itching to try this brewing method. However, I have not been able to have enough incentive to...
Ditting for the Vario!
The net have been buzzing about this lately: a completely new burr set for the Baratza Vario that suposedly can grind as good as the big boys! This had been drawn to my attention a little while ago by EricBNC...
Dwell-time Coffee Bar
Dwell-time recently opened up in Mid-Cambridge, MA, near Inman Square. 364 Broadway to be exact. The name delightfully captures the intent of the bar's founders: in keeping with the bar's preparatory precision, dwell-time is a technical coffee term that refers...
Dwell-time Coffee Bar
Dwell-time recently opened up in Mid-Cambridge, MA, near Inman Square. 364 Broadway to be exact. The name delightfully captures the intent of the bar's founders: in keeping with the bar's preparatory precision, dwell-time is a technical coffee term that refers...
A Great Coffee Day or the Self-Repairing Espresso Machine
Y'all probably remember how ecstatic I was when this espresso machine arrived in my house back in January. We had real espresso -- yay! Even the roommate, who is a coffee Philistine, asked to learn how to use the espresso...
Coffee does have a right temperture.
While reading the recent study that I shared about the sloshing of coffee there was an interesting article linked within it to, "Why Does Room Temperature Coffee Tast So Bad?" over at Lifeslittlemysteries.com. I was not shocked that they talked...
“Best Aeropress in the U.S.” Part 2: first attempt at home
Remember that award-winning recipe (repeated below) with the monster dose that Jay Caragay (of Spro) used to win the U.S. Aeropress Championship? I tried it today. Here’s what happened in quasi-real time.1. 36 grams of coffee, ground to a “10”...
Hamilton Beach BrewStation Summit Ultra Coffee Maker
My kitchen coffee bar is sporting a new accessory this morning -- a Hamilton Beach BrewStation Summit Ultra automatic drip coffee machine. Doesn't it look cozy next to the Espressione coffee grinder? I ordered this baby on ROASTe last week...