Instead of Studying

My coffee roaster should arrive on Friday. I’m excited as I have been for anything, ever, except for the next installment of the Chronicles of Fundamentarlia. I was browsing Sweet Maria’s green coffee selection and found his “Thumbs Down” product line. I was reminded of Unk’s newfound joy in Amazon.com reviews. You can probably see why. As much as I hate to admit it (again), I have fallen in love with Caribou’s Kenya AA. It is simply the best, every time. I think part of that is its freshness. Caribou has, what, a 3 month tag on all their coffees? When I buy Starbucks I look for the latest date on the shelf. I have found them to be as far away as 8 months from the day I buy it (not including the time since it was actually roasted).

Some of the good fella’s descriptions of the “Educational” coffees remind me of some cups I’ve had from Starbucks. There was the carbon-burnt popcorn cup. Their Italian Roast is like that every time. Their latest “Black Apron” special was hideous. I wonder if they bought one of these bad lots which SM is selling for $2/lb., and selling it for $24/lb.?

Kenya AA

When I opened the brown paper sack from Caribou Coffee I was not thrilled. How pale and weak! I’m not sure I’ve ever had a good experience with a light roast, especially when it is so under-roasted that the internal husk of the bean is still a light tan! Ah, well, I said I’d try it.

Lest one think I am just being nice, I had several pots of Obsidian post-post, if you follow, and they were not good, not bad, exceptionally bland.

Now, this Kenya AA is a masterpiece. I only had 1/2 pound of the stuff which equals 3 pots. Each one was as good as the previous. And each pot got better as I went on. The last drink of each cup was sweeter than the one before. It was like a day with Jesus, if you catch my drift. And not a minor refrain in all the cup, no sirree. Only joy, joy, joy…..where? Seriously, this is a great coffee. It was so red in the cup. There was so much going on in the mouth it is hard to relate. I was told it is like wine. I wouldn’t know and wonder how Ryan might now, but that is for a more serious post. It may be. It is so good. There was caramel and fruit. It was the sweetest coffee I’ve ever had.

Obsidian

I hate to be one of those “light is dark and dark is light” types, but when it comes to coffee I love darkness. To me, in that realm, darkness really is a glorious light. So I bought Obsidian.

The beans are the oiliest I’ve ever seen. That is how you can tell they are really fresh. It brews dark, smells great and goes down smooth. It has a flavor worth going back for. It is a little sharp on the tongue, but not for long. It turns into a dark chocolate in the mouth before swallowing and it leaves a good flavor which is clean. Komodo and Sulawesi from Starbucks are my favorite, and they are from the same region as Obsidian. They sometimes do not finish clean. I suspect it because of the age of the beans. I was told that the date on the caribou package is 120 days from its roasting. I wonder how it is at Starbucks?

Last night, too late, I put a bit of Obsidian through the espresso machine. I have been quite unimpressed with my espresso machine because I can usually make a better cup of espresso with my press! Not this time. This coffee was really good in there. It was very sharp but never to the point of having that awful bitterness that some coffees have when I make them in the espresso machine.

So, two thumbs up for Obsidian. Its one that’s worth going back for.

Quote of the Day

A 12 year study published in the British Medical Journal⁴ in May 1995 following over 13,000 men and women aged 30 - 70 indicated those who drank hard liquor had a 34% increase in mortality versus those who drank 3 – 5 glasses of wine having a 49% reduction in all cause mortality compared to those who never drank wine.

So, if I drink hard liquor I have a 34% higher chance of being a mortal. But, if I drink wine I have a 49% higher chance of immortality. That’s pretty cool! That’s probably why we drink a grape product during communion instead of a grain product. It totally makes sense. If you accept the literal interpretational biblicist method which I advocate, it is clear that we need to drink more wine. It is practically a command.

The BIG 30

No, no, no. I’m not that terribly old yet. This is a good 30. It is how many pounds I’ve lost.

I started atkins on July 17. Eating lots of meat and wonderful things made with Mission’s low-carb tortillas (and drinking lots of coffee, as usual, which is probably like taking a diet pill only tastier. I lost 20 pounds in the first two months. I slacked off on the diet, indulging in real mexican food and gourmet burgers and fries, and have only lost 5 pounds each of the last two months.

I got married at 158 pounds. Jessica was too good to me in our first year and I gained 20. I started the diet at 178 - the most I have ever weighted except for the 3 months during which I was bed-bound and on prednisone over Thanksgiving and Christmas (what a combination!). I’m now at 148 and my body feels pretty good. I don’t know if I would have been able to handle the 65 hours that I worked this week had I been carrying that extra 30 pounds around!

So, to celebrate, Jessica and I went to the Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery in West Des Moines and I had a Bourbonzola Burger with fries and ale battered onion rings. While were in the area we went to the only Caribou joint in central Iowa.

The resident coffee guru noticed me looking over the  selection and took the chance to make money for Amy. I declined saying I liked dark coffees, so he immediately informed of his personal preference: Sumatra. So I told him how it went with me and he apologized and suggested I buy my next bag from a store which offers a money-back guarantee, namely, his store! I told him I was told that and that is why I was in his store to begin with.

I decided on Obsidian, though the Mocha Java was tempting. My first pot is brewing as I type. We’ll see what happens!

Oh, about that…

I thought I should let folks know that I’m not taking the classes I once was. I was in two online classes and they were going well. But the payment date came and went and I missed it. They turned the classes off the day after the due date. I tried to pay, but they wouldn’t let me. They informed me that I need to set up a meeting with an Advisor on campus, get signatures, blah, blah, blah. I was working 60 hours that week and would not be able to make it in and I knew I would be working more weeks like that in the near future (such as this week - 64 hours). Waiting 2 or 3 weeks and then starting back up wasn’t an option as Online classes are about impossible to get “caught-up” in.

Ah, well. My company’s tuition reimbursement begins next semester, so all of this saved me $750 of my own money and I got a free peek at what these classes and online classes generally will be like!

Caribou: Sumatra Day 1

To appease my friend who has an undeniable economic interest in thinking the way he does, I have decided to take a tour of Caribou Coffee’s line-up. Today, I bought Sumatra. For what it is worth, I do not like Starbucks’ Sumatra and I like everyone else’s less.

Tonight, I stacked the deck in Caribou’s favor. My wife made an apple pie and my sister, Jenn, brought the ice cream. In my experience these are the absolute best companions for making just about any coffee taste really exceptional. The only other thing which might be better is that Amish Friendship bread that gets passed from wife to wife and ferments for what might be years before its all cooked up for consumption.

To start, I opened the bag of coffee with no less than three aggressive noses seeking a foretaste of what was to come. Not bad. The beans were oily and not dry, so that would make for a good crema by press. The first taste test is of the bean, raw, by itself. It was actually really good in that form. It is interesting to me that Starbucks beans have an immediate goodness to them, but quickly lose their flavor and turn sour in the mouth, while the Caribou bean had a lasting goodness that I haven’t experienced in some time.

After the pie was done and my brother in law and I had pretty well disposed of the women in a game of Sequence, we brewed the coffee. It was possibly the most nondescript cup of coffee I’ve ever had. It was neither good nor bad. It wasn’t bold, but it wasn’t exactly weak either. This wasn’t for lack of grounds in the pot, that is for sure. Jenn confirmed all of these thoughts when I asked her how she liked it.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad experience. But it wasn’t a really good one either. To pay so much for coffee, one needs something more. I bought a bag, so I plan to try my pots throughout the week with different kinds of food and different toothpastes and time intervals between brushing and drinking (this makes a world of difference! The one toothpaste which actually improves the drinking experience is Tom’s fennel toothpaste…).

We’ll see how it goes.

Jan Mickelson

I love Jan Mickelson. Here is a good article.

The host is unrepentant. “I’m not trying to trip people up,” Mickelson said. “I’m trying to get them to reveal what they really are . . . and if they give me mush, then that is an invitation to ask them a tougher question.

“And if they give me more mush,” he said with a smile, “then I have to hit them over the head with a shovel.”

Here is some video of Mit Romney meeting the shovel.

Just curious!

What would they think of Elisha?:

And Elisha said,…”But now bring me a musician.” And when the musician played, the hand of the LORD came upon him. And he said, “Thus says the LORD…” -II Kings 3:15

Is it okay to use a second book when you end up writing the first book?

Trying to Upgrade

When a website exists for the sole purpose of collecting $12,000 orders for two processors the size of a three salted (must be salted) cashews, one thinks it would be very well maintained. Hire a decent webmaster for $40k per year to keep this thing up around the clock, and you just made yourself a couple million dollars. It seems a worthwhile investment. As it is, it took a month for them to respond to my request for information as to where I even need to start. And now, their website just doesn’t work. A year ago, they lost everyone’s credit cards and personal information to a hacker.

Good times.

Thanks, cochlearamericas.com!