The Catch-22 of Coffee

For the second time I forgot to put water in my espresso pot this morning. If it survived the first time, with just a burnt rubber seal that I could replace, this time the plastic handle fell off.

You need coffee to wake up, but you’re not fully awake when you make it. Now I have to get a new pot.

Later edit: Searching on the net for a photo of the pot, I saw that Amazon sells it. Doooh! Sometimes I forget I’m in the 21st century. I just ordered it and it can’t come too soon.

The Coffee Club

The most amazing perk where I work comes from a coffee aficionado colleague. We have a small coffee club for which we chip in three bucks a week and said colleague buys Nicaraguan and Guatemalan fair-trade green beans, roasts them at home, lets them sit for two days, and brings them to work. Not only that, but he grinds just what we need for a pot. All this very early in the morning, so that when I get there there’s freshly brewed coffee to start my day.

You can’t get more spoiled that that. But on top of it, I’m getting a coffee education. He tells me what the different characteristics of that day’s coffee are and, in time, I’ve come to recognize them. I think I’ve guessed the two countries several times. I get my cup and then tell him what I taste. It’s more or less like wine tasting. I know it’s hard to imagine that, but there really are different nuances depending on where the coffee grows and you can figure them out. I can taste the tobacco and chocolate, for instance, which I never though I’d be able to do.

I’m telling you, it would be hard for me to work somewhere else.

Too Much Coffee