Did you ever have a really good cup of coffee? I’m not talking about a cup of Folgers or Maxwell House, or some of the abysmal stuff made from dried powder “crystals” in little jars. I’m not even talking about a cup of Community Coffee from Baton Rouge. I’m talking about a cup of coffee [...]

I just realized that I was out of my favorite blend of green coffee beans that I roast for espresso. Sweet Maria’s, the small proprietorship whose site is close to heaven for home coffee roasters, has a bunch of new coffee beans. I started looking at the new bean arrivals and decided i needed a [...]

I had a special treat this afternoon. Some friends brought me some Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee beans to try. It had probably been 10 years since I had tried JBM and I haven’t bought any already-roasted coffee beans in almost five years. I had been bragging about a fantastic lot of Harrar Horse (Lot 30) [...]

I learned something about my Cuisinart DCC-1200 “Brew Central” coffee pot this morning. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but a necessary one. First I ground some freshly roasted Yemen Mocha Mattari, which I roasted in my gas grill / RK Drum roaster earlier this week. I put the freshly ground coffee into the Brew Central. [...]

I finally broke down and ordered some more green coffee beans last week. I’ve been working seriously on reducing my bean inventory — which hit a high of 88 pounds! Since I was now under 20 pounds, and had been out of my favorite blend for espresso for several weeks, I finally ordered. Of course, [...]

If you’ve poked around on my main web site, you know that I’m a coffee fanatic. Well, maybe not a fanatic, but I like my espresso, my Americano’s (espresso + hot water for an American-style cup of coffee), my drip coffee and my vacuum pot coffee. Oh, yeah, I roast my own coffee, too. I [...]

Last year, I started brewing coffee via a Bodum vacuum pot. This became one of my regular brewing methods, along with my drip coffee maker, my espresso maker and my French press. The vacuum pot is a step back to the past. Steam pressure from boiling water in a lower bowl pushes hot water into [...]