Archive for May, 2010

My Miserable Grass – Follow Up

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

coffee fuelled grassBack in February I wrote a post about the poor state of my garden and how I decided to put my spent coffee grounds to good use and try to improve the way my grass looked.

Well three months have past since the original post so I thought it was about time for an update. Has the coffee started working, or is it time to invest in some grass coloured paint?

Results so far…

The grass is definitely greener. But you would expect that this time of year. We had a cold winter and I’m sure a lot of snow and hard frosts aren’t particularly good conditions for grass. Much better is sun and rain – although this spring has been mostly dry and dull!

One positive sign is that there seems to be more birds in the garden this year than last. I’m hoping that it’s because all the coffee in the soil has marinaded the grubs and worms, making them an even tastier treat for birds. More likely though is that the soil structure has improved making it a more attractive home for grubs and worms; and extra grubs and worms equals extra birds.
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What’s the use of a Thermal Cafetiere?

Friday, May 21st, 2010

We’ve just started stocking a range of thermal cafetieres and it got me wondering what’s the actual point of them? Yes, I know they keep your coffee hot for longer. This new cafetiere claims to keep it hot for 3 times as long. But if you leave your coffee in the cafetiere doesn’t it keep extracting?

thermal cafetiereThis is something I’ve read and heard many times but never got around to testing for myself. Does coffee really keep extracting even when the plunger is down? So I conducted a test using a TDS meter, measuring some coffee immediately after I’d finished brewing and then again 5 minutes later. The results showed that the coffee which had been left in the cafetiere was indeed stronger, by 6%.

This might not seem a lot, but the aim of brewing is to extract all the desirable flavours from the coffee whilst leaving the undesirable ones behind. So if all the desirable flavours have already been extracted by the time the brew has finished, than this extra 6% of strength will be from the undesirable flavours.

Therefore, keeping your coffee hot for longer isn’t a good selling point for a cafetiere. If you leave your coffee inside it, it’s going to keep on brewing, and when you come back to it, it will taste darker, bitterer and will contain more caffeine.

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Cameron and Clegg Need Coffee!!!

Monday, May 10th, 2010

In this unprecedented time in British politics, what do David Cameron and Nick Clegg need to ensure their talks over forming the next government are fruitful? Obviously, they need plenty of open-mindedness, support from their respective parties and from the civil service. But most importantly they need coffee!

It’s long been debated whether coffee actually makes you smarter. Scientific studies have shown that a cup of coffee can temporarily improve: focus, alertness and short-term memory. But perhaps more importantly, history has shown that coffee houses are a breeding grown for innovation. Many geniuses frequented coffee houses and many coffee houses evolved into national institutions.

Top 5 Famous Coffee Houses

      1. Lloyds Coffee House – where Lloyds of London (world’s leading insurance specialists) began.
      2. Jonathan’s Coffee House – where the London Stock Exchange began.
      3. Café Foy – where the French Revolution started.
      4. The Green Dragon – where the Boston Tea Party was planned.
      5. Tontine Coffee House – an early incarnation of the New York Stock Exchange.

Maybe if Cameron and Clegg held meetings in a coffee house it might inspire them to start a revolution on the voting system and give them enough fiscal insight to decipher a budget for economic growth. Does anyone know whether you can get good coffee in the House of Commons?

Staying Awake

Clearly, the deal between the two parties may take a while to thrash out. So Cameron and Clegg can expect a few weeks of sleepless nights. Maggie Thatcher famously only slept for 4 hours a night when she was PM. If they want to go one better than her, they could take a leaf out of Honoré de Balzac (a prolific French writer) book (excuse the pun), who allegedly drank over 60 cups of coffee a day and only slept 2 hours a night. How he found time to write anything, in between making coffee and emptying his bladder is a mystery!

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Communicating Grind Size

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

One of the biggest problems when describing a brewing method is getting across what size of ground coffee to use. The trouble is that each grind setting on a coffee grinder will produce a range of sizes rather than one exact size.

How coffee grinders work

The reason we get a range of sizes from a grinder, is that grinders use a crushing action to break the bean into smaller pieces. On a conical burr grinder, there are two discs: a female cylindrical disc and a male dome shaped disc. Each disc has ridges (know as teeth) running across its surface, and it’s these ridges which crush the bean. Obviously crushing isn’t an exact science. Irregular sized pieces break off from the bean each time it’s crushed between the grinder’s teeth.

If you look at the cross section below of a burr grinder: the bean enters at the top and as it progresses down, the gap narrows between the two discs, breaking the bean into smaller and smaller pieces. The ground coffee cannot escape from between the grinding discs until it’s small enough to fit through the gap at the bottom (indicated by the two red arrows).
Burr grinder cross section
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