It’s Saturday, it’s eleven thirty, and it’s a little wet outside. I’m eating oatmeal with frozen berries and a little maple syrup and drinking a medium roast coffee prepared in my aeropress. I’m drinking the coffee black, listening to the song Waves by Bahamas.
I’m trying to decide if I want to italicize song titles when I write about them. When I did my post about Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino I remember noting that the markdunn.ca style guide requires albums to be italicized but not songs.
Actually, on review it was photos in black and white that references the style guide. Potential archivists looking for work, looks like I may need some help here.
Last month I had lunch with a friend and had a coffee. I normally don’t have coffee with lunch, or in the afternoon at all unless it’s decaf, but I felt like one. And it was amazing. I was awake all afternoon, including that three to four pm time where I’m usually fighting to stay awake.
Anyway, I remember texting my partner something like
I think lunchtime coffee might have saved my life
which is a little dramatic, don’t you think?
So I went out that day and bought myself an aeropress. I really wanted one anyway, so it wasn’t going to take much to push me over the line. I rode my bike to the Gourmet Warehouse at Hastings and Clark after work that day and picked it up. A guy complimented me on the BC Lions hoodie my partner bought me too. Out of all my hoodies, for some reason that’s the one that gets all the compliments.
Well, the aeropress is amazing. There are all these “recipes” online which are basically just different ways to make coffee with it. The way it works normally is you put in the little aeropress filter into the filter tray and screw that on to the main piece, and then put that on top of a sturdy mug, scoop in fine ground coffee with the scoop they give you, add hot water, stir with the stir stick they give you, add the plunger, and then wait a couple minutes and plunge it. Easy.
But then I learned that there’s an inverted method (haven’t tried it yet) to get better espresso-style coffee. There’s also the Hoffman method, which I quite like, that involves no stirring, but a little gentle sort of swirl instead.
What I learned from the Hoffman method was that you’ve got to control the temperature. I started sticking my partner’s meat thermometer into the kettle so I knew to stop it at around ninety degrees. And that way I get an excellent cup of coffee. Almost every time.
I can see how things like an aeropress can be a gateway to fancier coffee equipment though. I already want to get a hand grinder. We use an electric one, but apparently the burr grinders are better? And a gooseneck kettle with temperature control, plus maybe a chemex to go with the kettle.
And maybe after that I could start sourcing fresh coffee beans and roasting them on the stove. Woah.