{"id":3880,"date":"2010-01-25T08:17:13","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T16:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=3880"},"modified":"2010-01-25T08:17:13","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T16:17:13","slug":"coffee-rituals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/25\/coffee-rituals\/","title":{"rendered":"Coffee Rituals"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’re long overdule for an open-type thread around here, so let me provide the excuse by asking one of the world’s great questions: what’s the best way to make coffee?<\/p>\n

I’m an eclectic coffee drinker; I like espresso but also enjoy a really good cup of American coffee, and I prefer coffee black but am willing to adulterate it with milk if I suspect the quality is not going to be that high. (Sugar under no circumstances.) For the past few years I’ve relied on the lowest-effort method I know of that is guaranteed to produce a good cup: freshly-ground dark roast beans, placed in a simple cone filter and hot water poured right in. Practically instant coffee, but a result that can be as good as the beans allow.<\/p>\n

\"S1CO\" But I’d like to start mixing more espresso into my home coffee experience, so I’m in the market for a new espresso machine. If I were a physicist of means, I might go for a work of art like the Elektra Micro Casa Lever on right. Or would I? This is a spring-action lever machine, which is to be contrasted with the manual levers, not to mention the automatics and super-automatics, and then there’s the matter of boilers, switches, heat exchangers … a complete mess. The pumps are certainly elegant, but I’d also like something that is functional and doesn’t require constant pampering. So I am in the unusual position of being frozen with indecision about what kind of espresso machine to get. Any opinions out there?<\/p>\n

The ground rules here are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. There’s no such thing as right or wrong; different people have different tastes, for which different approaches are appropriate.<\/li>\n
  2. Answers with specific comparisons of advantages and disadvantages are more useful than simple insistence on truth.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I do understand that this is the internet and rules are unlikely to be followed, but I feel I should try.<\/p>\n

    Obviously not all advice on such a topic is too be trusted. The Engineer’s Guide to Drinks<\/a> thread featured a sobering (as it were) number of people who think a “martini” should just be chilled gin rather than a proper cocktail<\/a>, and were proud to admit it in public! So caveat lector. And if you want to talk about something other than coffee, be our guest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    We’re long overdule for an open-type thread around here, so let me provide the excuse by asking one of the world’s great questions: what’s the best way to make coffee? I’m an eclectic coffee drinker; I like espresso but also enjoy a really good cup of American coffee, and I prefer coffee black but am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-and-drink"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}