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My final word on coffee: I used to be a coffee only guy. Emptied pots of it at work. Buzzed like an alarm while driving home. But for the last quarter century I've been doing much more tea. I have a cup of coffee in the early morning, then a few hours later, a cup of decaf Folgers (better than most decafs but not nearly as good the regular), so I do use a little "CoffeeMate-Chocolate" so-called "creamer" to give it some flavor. (Ah-ha, the hot watery milkshake syndrome
). But for the rest of the day I stick to tea, Earl Gray and/or Oolong, as caffeinated during the afternoon. Toward late afternoon and early evening I change to various non-caffeinated herbal teas, orange, lemon, mint, etc. The mint usually at about 8 or 9:00, a couple hours before going to bed. Heart condition, probably shouldn't be having caffeine at all, but I'm nearing the end of my tunnel, use it before I lose it.
At least I'm not buzzing like an alarm anymore.
I'm in Southeastern Massachusetts. No hogs. I didn't mention the other wildlife, because they're not neccesarily just pond life. Thoug I did neglet to mention the frogs...at least two kinds. Those little ones that sort of chirp, and bullfrogs. I saw a woodchuck (groundhog?) once at the pond the first summer we were here. Haven't seen that again since. Also saw fireflies the first year or two...haven't seen them again, either, sadly. We do get deer, racoons, skunk, bats, used to see barn swallows and Yellow Warblers and other fly catcher type birds. Many birds. I love the variety of birds and wildlife around here. Moved from the city, where I lived all my life until 2001 when we bought this house. Was amazed at the variety of birds here.
The die is cast: I've been putting it off, but I finally started the ball rolling to have a root canal ($$$$).
But it will be a new experience.
Tooth has been announcing its presence more and more frequently, so it's time to get something done before I'm rolling in agony at an inopportune time. Called dentist this morning and have an appointment, unfortunately it's at their other office on the far side of the city.
That usually spells $$ for me because I have always taken an Uber back from that area. However, this time I arranged on-demand bus service from house to dentist, and from dentist back toward the hole-in-the-wall beanery in the decrepit mini-mall in time for lunch, and a takeout from the Chinese place. Wheee.
No need for the long Uber from the far side of the city. Then after lunch, it's time for grocery shopping again so a short Uber to the grocery, then my usual Uber back to home (no on-demand bus back to the boonies until 3:00.
Dentist appointment is only for a detailed X-Ray to locate the exact area. Actual surgery will be later. Hopefully not the day before my 60th High School reunion dinner.
Non-complaint: Wheee... I just noticed that the dentist's office on the far side of the city is across the street from a Wegmans grocery (a better quality store). It is up a block long hill but if my dentist is done with me in time (I gave myself two hours at the dentist), I'll slog up the hill and do my shopping up there before the bus comes, down at the dentist's office. That also avoids the short Uber from the decrepit mini-mall to the grocery. Saved on Ubers twice. New experience indeed!
I've been drinking coffee for less than ten years. Before that, I only drank canned beverages and tried unsweetened, creamer-free instant coffee powder, which I found extremely bitter and unpalatable. I also went to Starbucks for coffee, which was truly the worst experience. Until one day, I had an iced drip coffee at a restaurant, and it had no bitterness at all, and even had a sweet aftertaste like tea. That's when I started to understand coffee more deeply.
After that, I visited a coffee exhibition. At that time, specialty coffee and pour-over coffee were just starting to become popular. I tasted many coffees from various countries, including some expensive ones. I realized that the flavor of coffee could be so diverse. Then I bought my first pour-over coffee set and studied various brewing methods and the flavors of different coffee beans. At that time, my favorite coffee beans were from the Aurora Estate in Mexico and the Las Lajas Estate in Costa Rica. Coffee beans from Rwanda, Kenya, and Bolivia were also excellent.
Unfortunately, coffee beans are an agricultural product, and their taste varies from year to year. In recent years, the taste of coffee beans has deteriorated while their price has increased. To save on my budget, I only have one or two cups of hand-drip coffee on weekends, and drink instant coffee powder to get caffeine on weekdays. Nescafé or some Japanese brands of coffee powder are not very good. Currently, only Moccona is decent. I use a French press to make milk foam to create a fake latte because the machine is too expensive. I have tried cheap coffee beans from Costco, which was a nightmare. I have also tried some well-known brands of coffee beans, but the taste is far inferior to the coffee beans roasted in small shops. There is a shop that I really like, which is where I started. Even though it is the same coffee beans, the owner there can brew coffee that tastes better than mine. Now the owner is getting old, and I hope that this kind of life can last a little longer.
@DanaTA:
Nice, yes the feral hogs are usually in the nearby mountains but when food gets scarce they come and eat whatever they can find, same with black bears but thankfully there aren't that many of them.
We did on occasion get too close to a skunk, and our dog got the worst if it. Time and daily bathing got rid of the smell. Mostly.
A beautiful sheltie named Shep that was my Dad's dog (it had such singular focus of dedication to my Dad and sweetly tolerated everyone else), was bitten by a copperhead on the chest, and because of Shep's beautiful coat, we didn't know until an abscess burst. One scary trip to the Vet later, the Vet cleaned things up and gave Shep some antibiotics both topical and pills and thankfully Shep was resilient (he was after all, a registered purebred
) and was back to his old self in no time.
Bad Gateway! Bad boy! Stop it!
When I was a pre-teen our dog (a brindle colored pit-bull), roamed free in the town, as did most of the dogs here back in the '50s & '60s, they had their own clique, but she would go off hunting in the woods, alone. She always came back after doing the fun things that dogs do, like rolling in cow manure. But twice she came back after losing a battle with a porcupine, mouth & face full of quills.
Trip to the vet, swollen face for days. Yet she did it twice. Stupid dog.
She was a wonderful dog. A good family dog. Protective when she had to be, but tolerant of young children's antics.
Image generated by GoogleAI to match the story. Not as shocking as I remember it, but close enough.
Ow. Poor doggy.
I wasn't even aware of what a 'Cafetiere' was until today, although I've seen them now and then. It does make sense that the Coffee Percolator my mother has uses ground beans. I knew it wasn't coffee from a jar, cause she always used to buy it in a packet. Looks like loose tea you put in a teapot but a bit more coarse.
The SONA coffee percolator doesn't use throw-away filters of any variety. There are tiny holes perforated in the metal holder which is much better. Seems kinda dumb to be filtering coffee to be honest, I mean why anyone want to do that when they just paid a premium for actual coffee beans?
I should point out that unlike a lot of the Coffee Percolators I saw on eBay today, my mothers is electric and has an adjustable strength slider. I have a suspicion people might be hanging on to them as well, since the only SONA percolators I can find on eBay are the gas-heated ones.
I'm surprised Richard uses a Cafetiere, though! I watched a few videos about them and they seem a lot of messing around and trial and error whereas the Coffee Percolator my mother has is just a matter of putting the coffee and water in the correct compartment, and switching it on!
The only thing I've not figured out is why ground coffee beans are any less of a coffee experience than something that uses unground beans. I thought I sensed a Hyacinth Bucket style coffee snobbery joke in there, but it's still pure coffee beans, and I would have thought that ground coffee beans would release more taste than unground beans anyway.
All of that said, I was forgetting that Richard is a cat, so he probably just likes playing with the plunger on top of his Cafetiere!
I am not sure anything uses unground beans, although how ground varies - Turkish coffee has pretty coarse grinding, I think, and no doube cowboy coffee is limited by how much time the cowboy is prepared to spend rubbing two rocks together with a handful of beans between. Cafetieres take a fairly coarse grind, while espresso machines want it finer.
Ah right. I thought you were cracking a joke about the beans being ground. I don't know much about coffee, not as much as I feel I should, anyway. It's an expensive addiction as well from the looks of it. Some of the coffee equipment I saw on a coffee bean website today, was in the thousands of pounds!
Regards grind size, though, I reckon you would be able to put any size in the SONA percolator. I think it would work well regardless, but I suppose there's a sweet spot where the coffee is strongest depending on the amount it has been ground, in relation to the amount of time it percolates.
The aroma of coffee begins to release once the beans are ground, so it's best to grind and brew immediately, just like some people use freshly ground peppercorns.
While the coffee industry certainly has its fancy and hyped aspects, it is an agricultural product and food. As long as the chef isn't too bad and the ingredients are fresh, ultimately 80% of the flavor of coffee depends on the ingredients, not the processing.
Well that makes sense, perfect sense, though it's amazing how much I've learnt about coffee over the last two days. The only curiosity remaining now is regards froth, since I suppose the froth is just to make it look pretty but doesn't effect the taste. Tony doesn't seem too keen on it in this clip, so I do have my doubts about it :-D
The finer the grind the more surface area is exposed to the water, allowing the flavour to be extracted. However, too fine and the coffee will end up with an admixture of silt that manages to get through whatever if filtering it, which is not nice to drink. There is a trade-off which will be different for each type of device.
Sorry, Richard, crossposted. Understood, in fact I've found that silt in the bottom of my cup when the SONA was used. Will definitely have to pick up the same one as my mother has though, exactly the same, since it's a great machine and even looks kind of elegant!
I reckon if I got one of those and ground my own beans to maximize the aroma, I'd be well sorted in terms of coffee (and coffee aroma).
Begs the question, though, what are the best coffee beans on a budget?
Buying coffee beans is mainly a matter of personal taste. Freshness is always the most important factor. I once bought very expensive Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee beans. Because they are roasted in limited quantities and few people buy them, each batch takes several months to sell out. When I bought them, they were no longer fresh, and the taste was really just average...
Coffee lovers in my area are used to ordering from small shops online, where the coffee is roasted only after the order is placed. This is affordable and ensures very fresh coffee.
I'm glad he's feeling so much better! (Though I'm sorry that creates its own set of problems...)