The Reading Room

This morning I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to make coffee. Which these days has become one of my morning habits. So later in the day while running around town I stopped in at Panera Bread and...

I have been using the vietnamese phin coffee maker since forever for making authentic vietnamese coffee drink. Yet it has not occur to me that I can also make drip coffee from it. So I search around in my cupboard...

You’re driving the highway and don’t want to stop, but your eyes just aren’t cooperating. Drowsiness is a constant challenge, and you know it’s getting harder to stay in your lane. You’re not alone, as a AAA study reports that...

Controlling temperature on an HX is the subject of much fear.   How do you control temperature on a heat exchanger machine?  You cannot just set the temperature with a PID like you can on a double boiler, or even on...

Okay so an HX machine is not a dual boiler and it is not a single boiler.  What is it a triple boiler?  A zero boiler?  Some fractional boiler?  No it is in some sense just a very smart single...

Be wary (and weary) of dogma passed as learned knowledge - a Ford family car and a race car can both have a gas engine, but comparison between the two is more fruitful after lifting the hood to see what...

Hi-Rise 1663 Mass, Cambridge   Go to Hi-Rise Bread...for the coffee! Hi-Rise has a few locations in the area and just opened a very nice space north of Harvard Law. It's my little oasis post-class. When I say "just opened,"...

Simon's Coffee. 1736 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge.   Simon's is a Cambridge institution at this point. Walk in and you'll see the same old regulars lingering over the paper, plus a bunch of students doodling in notebooks. It's not a welcoming...

Mostly, not entirely. I gave up coffee and felt great; then, I gave in and didn't feel so great. I still pick up a few espressos each week; I've got some great baristas in the neighborhood and it's hard to...

You just can’t trust them - by them I mean those who recommend coffee shops to you when you are not sure if they care about coffee or not.  I was travelling to Asheville for the day meeting a friend...

I live in a small apartment with a small kitchen so I recently moved my coffee making equipment to a small kitchen cart. I've been using the Bygel utility cart by Ikea for about one month now, so I thought that I'd write...

Ok, so I posted late last night about the results of the 2011 World Aeropress Championships and commented on Jeff Verellen’s method. But last night it was way too late to have a cup of coffee (I was up too...

I blogged the other day about my WBE espresso and I have gotten both great and not so great shots.  The not so great ones fall at my own feet for blame, not the blend. The first great shot was...

If you decide that a single boiler is not for you the next obvious thing to think up is a double boiler.  You have two boilers.  The first is dedicated to espresso and the second to steaming.  How can this...

Today they announced Jeff Verellen as the winner of the Aeropress World Champion 2011. The technique that I use I adapted from the winners of the 2010 competition and so I thought it might be interesting to discuss Jeff Verellen’s...

I covered heating the water in  my previous entry, now I'll go over what I do with the hot water. Espresso is my favorite coffee preparation method, but pour over is a close second, so that is what I go...

My ode to consistency.  I posted earlier about how ideally a barista and even those of us who do this as a hobby and not professionally should be able to be fairly consistent in our espresso pulls.  We should know...

Serious eats recently posted a guide to the Hario Woodneck, an item sold here on ROASTe: http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2011/10/how-to-brew-coffee-in-a-woodneck-dripper-nel-pot.html#.TqoJYy1GPKA.twitter It's a great guide but leaves out a lot of information. The first is that the cloth, when brand-new, has a clothy taste. It...

I thought that I'd put together a little summary of the coffee making equipment that I take camping and backpacking. I'll start with the stove and the kettle. In the next post I'll cover the coffee specific equipment and describe...

I have been grinding my coffee pretty extensively with the Hario Mini Mill. Currently I'm using a pretty fine grind for the aeropress, that is used for very fast brewing time, total brew time is about one minute including pressing...

From the silly studies sector, here’s the latest in news you can’t miss – the study which answers the question that’s keeping you up nights: what deep dark secret is revealed by those who order big coffee drinks? Now you...