Monday, September 8, 2008
Saturday, September 6, 2008
The Fun Begins...
Coffee Fun
Originally uploaded by TreeBed
I have been meaning to get the ball rolling here... and now that I am stuck in an airport... it seems as good a time as any. Rather than try to explain Garage Sale Coffee, or define it... I am just going to jump right in:
A few weeks ago while day-dreaming during my "non-coffee" job... I had an idea spark my interest. Could you take the pieces of a crappy old drip brewer, and make something that could deliver more acceptable brewing parameters (water temp, saturation, etc)"? To have these types of questions rolling around in my head are not out of the ordinary. However, having someone around to act on them... is a bit out of the norm. When I mentioned the idea to Josh, his eyes lit up... and I knew the experiment was on! The home coffee maker that I had earlier examined (but quickly gave up on), was pulled back out of the cupboard... torn apart, and off we went.
For me this captures a wonderful trait of the coffee industry at the moment (well, the part of the industry that I most frequent anyway)... why rip apart a coffee machine that gives you a perfectly, mediocre-to-bad cup of coffee... when you have plenty of brewing systems at your disposal that you know give you a beautiful cup? Why not? Why not dive in and see if you can turn the "ordinary" into something more... who knows what might be learned, and what fun might be had in the process. In the midst of this new wave of coffee folks, I often feel I am in good company to learn, push limits and question why we do what we do.
I am happy to report that our brewer is still a work in progress... it is not likely to be the "next big thing" purchased by Starbucks (unless starting fires becomes a crucial part of coffee making)... probably not going add a new dimension to the brewing scene... nor will it inspire millions of people to destroy their trusty "mr. coffee". However, it HAS added to our own experience, knowledge and enjoyment of our relationship with making coffee... and we had some good laughs as an added bonus.
