I like coffee,
I like tea,
I like you
and I like me.
I just made that up on the spot! Ok, a few word were borrowed from things I've heard. Self-acceptance (I can't manage to accept "self LOVE" - seems a bit too strong) and strong affection for others both matter. They both enrich life and all that but please, first things first: COFFEE!
I am a material substance and an animal at that. So, air, liquid and calories matter to me. I start with coffee. I can get poetic and romantic about pure coffee, well-made coffee, quisite coffee and ex-quisite coffee. I could see that getting the whole beans, grinding them just the right amount, using them in the right proportion to make coffee soon after the grinding, all that took effort. Effort is often good. So, that must be the path of virtue. I don't mind virtue once in a while.
Then, while visiting a friend and appreciating her really great coffee, I saw that she kept a large amount of ground beans in a container. Not frozen, not recently ground, just sitting in a tight container. I started grinding larger batches and suffering coffee dust everywhere less often. Finally, I decided to do a taste test. Yes, the ground coffee sold in an airtight bag was indeed just as good as my recently ground beans.
Now, I only want the ground bags, not the bean ones. I have learned that air itself is probably the biggest ager and cause of coffee deterioration. I think that light and heat are also causes. Buying only ground coffee makes for less noise, less mess and less dust. We sometimes run into a need for a grinder. We recently got a bag of Costa Rican coffee that says "ground" on it but contained whole beans. Makes good coffee but it needs to be stronger than our usual French Roast/Columbian Starbucks. Grinding a batch is a bit of pain but a local coffee bar ground the whole bag for me and I have an easy-to-get-into/easy-to-seal container for it. Much less trouble and faster.
-- I like tea,
I like you
and I like me.
I just made that up on the spot! Ok, a few word were borrowed from things I've heard. Self-acceptance (I can't manage to accept "self LOVE" - seems a bit too strong) and strong affection for others both matter. They both enrich life and all that but please, first things first: COFFEE!
I am a material substance and an animal at that. So, air, liquid and calories matter to me. I start with coffee. I can get poetic and romantic about pure coffee, well-made coffee, quisite coffee and ex-quisite coffee. I could see that getting the whole beans, grinding them just the right amount, using them in the right proportion to make coffee soon after the grinding, all that took effort. Effort is often good. So, that must be the path of virtue. I don't mind virtue once in a while.
Then, while visiting a friend and appreciating her really great coffee, I saw that she kept a large amount of ground beans in a container. Not frozen, not recently ground, just sitting in a tight container. I started grinding larger batches and suffering coffee dust everywhere less often. Finally, I decided to do a taste test. Yes, the ground coffee sold in an airtight bag was indeed just as good as my recently ground beans.
Now, I only want the ground bags, not the bean ones. I have learned that air itself is probably the biggest ager and cause of coffee deterioration. I think that light and heat are also causes. Buying only ground coffee makes for less noise, less mess and less dust. We sometimes run into a need for a grinder. We recently got a bag of Costa Rican coffee that says "ground" on it but contained whole beans. Makes good coffee but it needs to be stronger than our usual French Roast/Columbian Starbucks. Grinding a batch is a bit of pain but a local coffee bar ground the whole bag for me and I have an easy-to-get-into/easy-to-seal container for it. Much less trouble and faster.
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
