The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
Coffee Haters Club
I reduced my intake to 16-24 grams of beans per day (one full strength cup or two slightly weaker cups). I did this mainly to improve my sleep after getting a bit carried away with using coffee as fuel, but also to keep some of the joy in this hobby instead of building too much tolerance towards it all. One should be a bit careful with raising standards. YOLO, but also being mindful of how regular consumption of good things makes them less special.
I've tried out decaffeinated whole beans that were treated with the Swiss Water Method. I'm not very impressed. There's a 'hole' in this coffee. Something is clearly missing, not just caffine but aroma/taste wise too. I bought a whole kg of the thing. It will have to serve as a vehicle for a cup of decaf with plenty of cream and sugar in the late afternoons.
The Gesha (also spelled Geisha) bean from Honduras which I mentioned to @Muninn I had ordered is very good. Apparently the bean type came into use in the town of Gesha in Ethiopia in 1930 or something? It was rumored to smell of jasmine, and it actually does. It's pretty cool. The drinking experience isn't all that different from any other decent bean though. It's too expensive to make a habit of, at 3x the cost vs most beans. I'll gladly try other Gesha beans if offered, but I can't justify regular purchases.
Other purchases lately:
Sierra Mazateca beans from Mexico. This one is great. It actually smelled vaguely of honey, but also berries at times. Recommended!
A mixed bag of Sumatra (Indonesia) and Ethiopian beans: Surprisingly good. It smells of a lovely spicy herb garden upon grinding. I didn't know anything about the practice of mixing different beans together, I only vaguely remember seeing that in the coffee shop in the game Persona 5. :P
Thanks for the report! I'm planning on roasting my first batch of Gesha soon, and I'm highly interested in smelling it and tasting it for the first time. That said, when comparing old-school coffee scoring, I've tasted coffees, particularly Ethiopians, that have scored higher than the Gesha that I have, so I expect that I'll feel like you do WRT paying the premium for what is essentially equivalent to an exemplary Ethiopian coffee. Speaking of which, Sweet Maria's has a ridiculous wealth of good-looking Ethiopians right now, I told myself that I was going to roast through my existing green coffee stores before buying more but now the itch is upon me and I don't know if I'll resist.
Also, +1 for Indonesian coffees! Generally speaking, I find that they have spicy and earthy notes that I don't get from African or Central/South American coffees, and to me, they are exemplary of their region!
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