The purist vs. the realist

Cof­fee. I enjoy grind­ing the beans at the super­mar­ket — or sim­ply buy­ing ground beans. Rea­son? The dif­fer­ence in taste is very small com­pared to the has­sle of grind­ing your own beans each morn­ing for every cof­fee pot.

Many areas of life are like this — if you spend twice the effort, you might get a 10% improve­ment. I would chal­lenge you to exam­ine your life — small things you do each day — and look at what is not worth the extra expense of time and money.

Hav­ing said that, some­times it’s worth it to go the “long” way. Last week­end, Heather and I spent a nice evening lis­ten­ing to vinyl records. It took sev­eral extra min­utes to grab each new song from a dif­fer­ent album, but that warm sound of clicks and pops, as well as the fact that I don’t have those songs in dig­i­tal form, gave us a pleas­ant change of pace.

ps Mill­stone Cof­fee pro­vided a free half-pound of cof­fee with last Sunday’s paper!

Don’t go there

Yes, it’s true — I think Star­bucks just made a mistake.

I get their weekly emails, and last week’s fea­tured their new fla­vored cof­fees: “Nat­ural Fusions”.

I’m show­ing my bias here — I don’t like fla­vored cof­fees to start with. (Those Frap­puc­ci­nos and such — well, that’s a dif­fer­ent mat­ter. I like those. But they aren’t really cof­fee.) But my take is that those who like fla­vored cof­fee (or flavoured, if you are in the English-speaking part of the world) should add syrup to their freshly-brewed cup. Just like your neigh­bor­hood cof­fee bar would.

Hindi pop and coffee

bollywood-dancerWhy is it that all female Bol­ly­wood singers sound the same?

Bear with me — I’m not sure if you’ve heard any East Indian female pop stars sing, but they all seem to have a sim­i­lar high, thin voice.

Some­one who does not drink cof­fee might think that all cof­fee tastes the same. As a real cof­fee drinker, I can tell them that they are wrong. And a real Bol­ly­wood fan might tell me that I am wrong.

It’s all a mat­ter of per­spec­tive, per­cep­tion and level of experience.

The photo is from Flikr. Thanks tony4carr!

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grate­ful if you con­sid­ered shar­ing it with your friends in what­ever way you like to do your inter­net shar­ing (or you can use one of the options on the but­ton below). Thank you!

Caffeine tips

january-coffeeAccord­ing to Cari­bou Cof­fee, an 8-ounce cup of cof­fee has 135 mil­ligrams of caf­feine. An 8-ounce cup of decaf can have as much as 7 mil­ligrams. A 12-ounce Coke has 45 milligrams.

Our friends at Wikipedia call Jon Swan­son’s stim­u­lant of choice “a psy­choac­tive stim­u­lant drug”.

Enjoy some today! (I will.)

Coffee in Kenya, fact 23

decaf-v-regularAs many faith­ful read­ers know, some of the finest cof­fee in the world comes from Kenya.

If you buy cof­fee there, you will always pay more for a cup of decaf. Why? The beans actu­ally have to be shipped to Europe for the caf­feine to be taken out.

Not so here. Wolfgang’s finest Estate-Grown cup costs the same with or with­out the buzz.

Starbucks Via — here, finally

starbux-via-launch

Star­bucks finally launched their Via instant cof­fee in my neigh­bor­hood. It’s the best instant you can buy, by far.

If you can afford the time, brew your own from ground beans. It’s much cheaper, in the price-per-ounce sweepstakes.

My full review is here.

An espresso machine for everyone?

stbx-email

I had to take issue with my friends over at Starbucks.

You see, I have some friends in Africa who don’t have elec­tric­ity. And the near­est cof­fee beans are a day away. (Not a good sit­u­a­tion in which they should start drink­ing espresso.)

Yes, I know — there are espresso pots that can be cooked over an open fire. But when was the last time you saw that done?

Small change

cup-insulator

Here’s a way you can help the envi­ron­ment in a small way... say no to a cup insu­la­tor sleeve the next time you get coffee-to-go.

You will:
– save that much addi­tion to the land­fill
– save the cof­fee shop the cost of the insu­la­tor
– save the trans­port costs for that insu­la­tor sleeve to the shop and to the land­fill
– pre­vent trees from hav­ing to be chopped down

You say, “I don’t want to burn my hands!” Well, take a moment at the shop to let the cof­fee cool. You can’t drink it that hot, any­how! Use the extra time to pray, to enjoy look­ing at the peo­ple in the line or to read the newspaper.

If every­one would do this, thing of the cumu­la­tive dif­fer­ence it would make!

Iron­i­cally, this sleeve says, “Do as lit­tle as pos­si­ble.” I would add, “...to the environment.”

Starbucks instant coffee?!

starbucks-via

msi_sb_14msi_sb_15

Yes, it’s called “Via”.

Of course I ordered the free sam­ple, and Star­bucks will get some free adver­tis­ing when I blog about what it tastes like.

I think Star­bucks is brave for try­ing such a thing (mak­ing an instant). It’s a bit like Fer­rari com­ing out with an econ­omy car.