Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
Burnt out, over the hill autistic IT nerd and longtime SSC lurker
User ID: 3219
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
I'm going to see if it's possible to train my nose to become more sensitive and receptive again. Sort of like how exercising the body influences the brain etc. If I demand more performance from my palate, maybe something will respond. I'm something of a food/drink enjoyer, it's one of my joys in life, so having a weak receptivity won't do.
I'm not surprised that you enjoy food and drink and I strongly believe that it's possible to gain or regain sensitivity to taste and smell. Simply paying attention to the sensory inputs while imbibing is, IMO, a large part of the battle. Not-so-coincidentally, I also believe that this is why explicit tastings are a Thing; for me, it's far easier to pay attention to the sensory input when that's the explicit point of the exercise. Anyway, sounds like you've got your eye on some nice new beans to try. Indonesian coffee in particular will likely give you a good idea of how different coffee can taste by region, assuming the roast isn't too dark.
My dude, I appreciate the report! I'll just comment on a few things here:
I enjoyed a pleasant buzz from the caffeine in the first few days - a better buzz than ever before in my life from coffee, it seemed.
I also feel perkier when I'm drinking pour-over coffee when compared to a cup from a Keurig or an automatic drip coffeemaker.
The grinder (Krups Silent Vortex; blades) is not that great. It does its job, but the coffee ends up ground to different sized bits. There's some light brown bits that are clearly much bigger and are thus perhaps not infused to the same degree into the liquid, compared to the tinier bits...?
This is exactly why the grinder is the second most important component. Equal grind size equals equal infusion, which yields a more consistent flavor from the beans.
The taste was not all that special. I was whelmed. The Yirgacheffe clearly tastes better than pre-ground Arabica, but not that much different. There's a few subtle notes of perhaps fruit or a spicy flower or something, but it's all a bit too subtle for my untrained, somewhat aged palate. Pleasant to drink though. I don't need cream or sugar when brewing this one.
This tells me that you've got enough of a sense of taste and smell that you'd probably get to the point where you could get definite flavors from your brew if you decide to keep going down this path, especially when combined with your sharp observation that different sized grounds will yield uneven results in the taste department. When I first started down the road of fresh roasted coffee it seemed like drinking tea to me, which is to say that I definitely noticed differences with different varieties of black tea and so did freshly roasted beans seem to have some distinct flavor to them. I still don't know that I'd be good enough to actually go cup individual coffees and buy for a specialty house or operation but I'm definitely in wine snob territory when it comes to getting a lot of flavor notes out of a good fresh roasted pour over. I suspect that there's similar potential for you there if you choose to pursue it.
The Rugori was even less impressive though. It was far too close to a totally average cup of coffee.
Sorry to hear that one wasn't so special for you, though it's entirely possible that it might come into its own if you keep trying it over the next several days.
Regardless, I'm glad you shared your experience and it sure sounds to me like you've started your journey. If you decide to continue trying fresh coffee, please continue to write more here and feel free to continue asking questions, I'd appreciate it and from your last I know we have a few other coffee buffs around here that might chime in as well. Enjoy!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
I’ve been reading Ars Technica for years — I loved John Siracusa’s old macOS deep dives — but the tone of their reporting has shifted. A lot of it feels like “heckin science!” coverage
(snip)
Funny, it seems like a decade ago that I myself was Noticing that Ars was following the path of Slashdot and no longer worth a read. Shame, too, they were one of the good ones BITD; I learned a lot from Jon Stokes' articles there.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
Yes, essentially. I'll have to check out more of his work and I've been impressed with the translation, too. I've particularly noticed the abbreviated speech of some of the characters and I can't help but think that the translator is mimicking the Japanese tendency towards the same in their speech.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
Cool, look forward to hearing your thoughts on it once you've finished, if you're so inclined. I read it once earlier back around the time it came out, and I remember it vaguely but I think I'm definitely enjoying it more the second time around.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
Up next is C J Cherryh’s Merchanter’s Luck for a change of pace. This feels incredibly “genre” in a good way. Pretty impressed with the economy of prose so far, too. Looking forward to it.
I'd be interested to hear how you liked that, I've got Downbelow Station somewhere in my, "one of these days," stack of books to read.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. It's the kind of book that makes me wish I was fluent in Japanese so that I could read it in its original form.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
Sounds exhausting, but considering the amount of polarisation in Western political discourse, its not that surprising.
It is, and it's not. My wife regularly tries to initiate struggle sessions with me because I took the black pill over a decade ago and started pointing and laughing at politics instead of taking it seriously. "I know you're a good raven, Muninn and I'm trying to understand how a good corvid like you wouldn't be alarmed at $Latest_Thing," is typically how these things go, and I just feed her the, "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's," line that I feed just about everybody these days because a single specimen of bacteria residing on the flesh of a random state legislator has more influence over national politics than I do and long experience has taught me that if I actually engage and start talking about the landmarks that the US passed on the way to arriving at $Latest_Thing, I'm likely to be seen, at best, as an argumentative and pedantic asshole, and at worst as a misguided rube with inordinate sympathy for the obvious Fascists. Sticking to my guns will eventually lead to grudging acknowledgment that paying so much attention to that shit is making her miserable too, and for bonus points maybe we can even have a productive conversation about some of her more heretical thoughts.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
Out of all of those, I'm only familiar with the Kenyan. I'm pretty sure that I've had coffee from Kirinyaga and Kiangoi is a good farm, so that one should be exemplary Kenyan coffee. More generally, if you're going with some Yirgacheffe, I'd steer you away from the Magarissa Sede just because you're already looking at an Ethiopian, and maybe even tell you to pick up the Indonesian if you're looking to try a second set of beans that will provide a nice contrast taste-wise to the general similarities that many African coffees share. If not, I'll just add that my understanding of Rwandan coffee is that it used to be pretty hit or miss, but the Rwandan coffee industry has been hard at work for a long time now and I've always liked what I've picked up from there whenever it's been offered for I think at least a decade now so like Kenyan coffee, I'd expect that you'd get a good batch of beans there.
Regardless of what you choose, I hope you enjoy it and come back here to post the results of your experiments!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
Dinner At Deviant's Palace, by Tim Powers. Haven't read this one since I was a kid, and it's interesting to revisit it with adult eyes and understanding.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
Funny, of the three that you've listed I've only ever tasted Kona, though I have a Colombian Gesha and another one that I don't remember off the top of my head (don't think it was Panamanian), both waiting for me to clean my roaster and run a couple more batches through it so that I'm sure that my beans are tasting right again. Anyway, I generally steer folks away from the more expensive and rare pedigree coffees and usually recommend starting with trying some Central and South American coffees and some African coffees, but Kona and Gesha are both pedigree coffees for a reason, so if you want to start with one of those, go nuts. A good Nariño should give you an idea of what Colombian coffees can bring to the table: a nice silky body, a complex taste with hints of raw sugar sweetness. See, this is the wine talk stuff here, but I don't think you'll go wrong if you find some that's freshly roasted.
But yeah, if I'm going to name other regional coffees to try, Ethiopian is always high on my list, so if you see an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, Sidama, or Guji for sale, they'd be good coffees to try. Sadly, I can't put Harar coffee on that list anymore but it's an old favorite of mine and my first, "yeah, this fresh roasted coffee thing is legit," coffee and was/is infamous for its tangible blueberry note. I've had lots of good Burundi coffees in the last several years, and have liked the coffees that I've gotten from Kenya and Tanzania as well.
Moving to Central/South America, Colombian is nice stuff as I said above, and Guatemalan coffee is another favorite of mine, Huehuetenango in particular has been a coffee region that I keep coming back to, and Antigua has been growing good coffee for hundreds of years. I could go on forever, but will say that more generally, as long as the beans and the roast are good, you're going to get a good coffee. I've also had tasty Costa Rican and Nicaraguan coffees that have worked for me, and I've had a couple of interesting Brazilian coffees as well. I think the only reason I haven't tried more Brazilian coffee is that there just haven't been many Brazilian coffees for sale when I'm buying, which is probably a me thing as much as anything else--there's a particular Christmas espresso blend that I absolutely adore and I invariably buy way too many other coffees to try when buying it so I don't tend to do any buying in the early parts of the year.
Okay, I've already geeked out for way too long on coffee. My suspicion is that you're going to find that there's something to this craft/specialty coffee business and that if you decide to keep at it you'll find plenty of different coffees that you like in your own right. Subjectivity aside, there's a definite superiority to this side of coffee that may well keep you coming back.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
Then you're on your way! I do want to say that I totally understand and respect your skepticism WRT coffee tasting, but I strongly suspect that even with a mediocre palate, if you get into it in any depth you're going to find that there's enough flavor there to draw you in more deeply. The growing caffeine addiction is just bonus points! More seriously, though, regional coffee characteristics are often pretty distinct at the lower levels of roasts and are the gateway for lots of us that have taken the plunge. You'll notice the brightness of African coffees and the earthiness of Southeast Asian coffees, for example, even if you don't get every hint of lemongrass or honeyed almonds promised by a particular bean.
The other thing that I came back to say was that I'd strongly recommend that you stick with buying whole beans and let your Krups grinder do the work. As @srf0638 has said above, the Krups will be fine for pour-overs (and +1,000 for Sweet Maria's, yay!), and getting your beans pre-ground will effectively kill the advantage that you'll get from using fresh beans to begin with. Ideally, you want to grind your beans right before you begin your pour-over.
True! I thought that I was pretty explicit about the money part, especially with the upfront stereo equipment reference, but I had to think about your comment for a minute before I really unpacked the time part, mostly because my brain was stuck in the past and thinking about how unreliable specialty roasters could be and how a good one is worth their weight in gold when these days, any decent-sized town will probably have a coffee shop or two that sells good fresh roasted beans. Hell, I've bought them myself more than a few times to try and calibrate my own equipment against a fresh shot from the shop's machine, definitely good practice.
ETA: Not surprised to see that you're also referencing Sweet Maria's! They've taught me most of what I know about coffee and I've been buying my beans from them for decades.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
Okay, I'm late to the party, so I'm going to jump in here with my reply instead of the top.
Getting into craft coffee is like getting into high end stereo equipment. Nothing is going to be optimal, but the higher-priced tiers of equipment will get you closer to your goal. Likewise, there's a wide variety in taste with various regions and beans for you to experience, especially at the lighter roasts where the individual flavor of the bean can shine. Practically speaking, unless you become a taster yourself you'll never run out of variety to try between the origin of the coffee, the process used to separate the bean from the fruit, the degree of roast in the coffee itself, etc. I tend to roast mostly African coffees and Central American coffees, but every region that can grow coffee has good things about it and good farms that produce coffee worth its premium price. Unless the roaster is an artiste, the flavors that the bean is supposed to evoke will be probably present more as suggestions than solid tastes at first, though the good ones are so damn good that you'll wonder if they added flavoring to the coffee. Regardless, the more you drink your craft coffee black, the more your palate will develop, and when you find yourself unironically talking about things like notes of stone fruit and hints of this or that spice or the type of citrus that the coffee evokes for you, you'll find that you've become a coffee connoisseur in your own right.
A Chemex is, by all accounts, a good pour-over, and your electric kettle, while not ideal, should be good enough to get you started.
However.
The freshness of the beans themselves is the most critical part of your craft coffee journey, ideally roasted within the last several days levels of fresh. I'm assuming you've already got a local craft coffee place that sells the beans that it roasts and this won't be an issue for you, but they're an absolute must if you want to travel this path. Given the assumption, you've got some good recommendations for burr grinders here already and they're the next most important piece of your potential coffee journey. With price being an issue, the good manual grinder might be the way to go for now but if you think you're going to seriously be into craft coffee, it might be a good idea to save up for a good grinder. FWIW. I've always liked Baratza grinders, and I personally use a Baratza Sette 270. That seems to be a bit of overkill to me for someone who just wants to be able to have a nice pour-over, but regardless you might be able to find refurbs on their website for cheaper. I did when I bought mine. Also, you'll want something with a one-way valve to store your fresh coffee in so that it can outgas while keeping outside air outside. A good canister or container shouldn't be too much money and will be worth the purchase.
One more thing to talk about. Inevitably, this rabbit hole includes taking the plunge and roasting green coffee beans for your own consumption. I've seen folks that have spent thousands on their roasters and espresso makers while other folks have gone with old-school methods like a popcorn popper or even just baking sheets in the oven. I started with a Fresh Roast two decades ago and have spent way too much money on better and better equipment as my earning power increased. Just something to keep in mind when planning for your next glorious level of stereo coffee equipment. Enjoy!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
The Oldest Starfighter by Jamie McFarlane. I've read this book before, just with different characters and a different angle to the whole, "humans are technologically inferior but," style of Sci Fi.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
My father was a workhorse. I have some very good memories of spending time with him as a young boy in his workshop or getting picked up from school but he was often absent, working weekends or double shifts for the extra money and also, I suspect, as a coping mechanism for my mother's infidelity. When we moved to a small town, he was much more physically present but still preoccupied with work. In adulthood, however, he opened up and started talking, and he and I had what I considered to be an excellent relationship before he passed away. My mother, as you may have guessed, not so much. Like problem_redditor*, I also experienced my mother as being controlling, self-centered, manipulative, frequently dismissive, and derogatory towards my father in particular. She and I saw things quite differently, and as a teenager I wasn't concerned with school, college, or career. My only goal was to become independent ASAP. That earned me a measure of respect from her, and once out of the family household I drank the Kool-Aid and spent decades playing the relatively happy and successful child. A little over a decade ago, Dad started developing Alzheimer's, and my wife and I tried to help. As is common in these sorts of situations, all of my family's unhealthiness came out to play during this time period, primarily, my mother's unhealthiness. That almost undid my marriage and I've kept her at arm's distance ever since. She has also developed Alzheimer's and between that and the damage that was done to my life and my marriage, I don't really speak to her anymore.
In navigating life, I've pretty much learned by doing and did not receive much guidance from either of my parents, which is in part a generational thing. That said, I think in a lot of ways my father set a wonderful example for me to follow and I try to do that. He was the kind of guy that spent several years building his own garage/workshop and I'd like to think I have some of that focus and persistence in myself when it comes to the important things in my life, and that his example helps me to believe that I can do just about anything I set my mind to. He also had a pure and loving heart, and I try to live up to the love and acceptance that he was able to show people as well.
*In linking that Wikipedia page, please note that I am referring only to my own mother.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
If you're into soul at all, check out the Isaac Hayes versions of Joy and The Look of Love.
Would you make the same decision? Should anyone be allowed to make that kind of trade-off with the assistance of medical staff?
Fuck no and yes, respectively. If you want to attempt to preserve your life through cryonics, that's your business. Me? I'm more than old enough not to be concerned with extending my life by any means necessary and also more than old enough that I just can't even with some shit these days. My brain just flat out BSODs at many modern trends, quite a few of which seem to be to be excesses to me. It doesn't need to be today, and I hope my death is not one that happens after a prolonged period of illness and lingering, but any sadness would mostly be because I'm leaving behind people that I love and that love me and that my absence in their lives will be painful and/or traumatic.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
GUH, looks like you're absolutely right. I just did my own $Internets_Search and I'm seeing several sources that back you up on the FHA having no closet requirement. At the time, I had been impressed by my realtor and so I just assumed she knew what she was talking about but it just goes to show you how pervasive those sorts of common misconceptions can be. With as much crap and downright weird stuff I've dealt with when it comes to mortgage companies over the years, the whole closet thing seemed pretty tame in comparison!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4mo ago
Pretty sure it's a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac thing, though. My first house was actually closet free so not only did I consider it, I did live that way, though doing so taught me that I really took closets and closet space for granted. Movable storage worked, but took up what was otherwise (seemingly) valuable storage space and although I got furniture to compensate, closets were a much more natural and better fit for me. And when the time came to sell the house, the Realtor straight up told me to pay someone for closets as otherwise the bedrooms could not be counted as such.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
5mo ago
Silver Stars: Guardian of Aster Fall Book 8 by David North.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
5mo ago
I was under the impression that the presence of mountain lions in the Eastern US was indeed rare but also pretty much an open secret these days. Two people that I've known from that neck of the woods have separately shared with me that they saw mountain lions in various parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and they were trustworthy folks. When I did a little digging I ran straight into the whole, "they just have a large range," cope, which, while true, doesn't exactly satisfy when the sightings are still too numerous and much too far away from their known habitats.
Walter, Walter, what's the point, man?
Book of the Dead I: Awakening by Rinoz. I was a little leery of the story at the start but it's been handled well enough to grow on me, and now I'm hooked.
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