Brewing Coffee Manually

Better coffee. One cup at a time.

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What Coffee Should I Buy at the Grocery Store?

“What coffee should I buy at Jewel?” (or “The Jewels” would be more accurate for my locale, it really doesn’t matter {Insert Local Grocery Store for “Jewel”})

It is hands down the most common question I get whenever someone finds out I know a little bit about the blissful beverage. It’s an entry level coffee buying question but it’s also a loaded question. Nonetheless, it is a question the deserves an answer.

What is the best grocery store option for the curious person who wants to peer into the rabbit hole of a better cup of coffee?

A short explanation- Why is this such a loaded question?

I can already hear the third wave coffee pitchforks being raised. “Good coffee from a grocery store!?”

I get it, the average grocery store holds no treasures for the coffee aficionado. Bear with me.

On the other side of the coin, I’m about meeting people where they are at. An earnest question in the search of a better cup of coffee that is rebuffed with a curt “You’ll never find good coffee at the supermarket” does no good at all.

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3 Things I Learned From a Year of Writing About Coffee

Tomorrow is November 11, 2015, which marks the one year anniversary of my very first blog post “Getting Started- Drip Brewing 101.” In honor of this milestone, I thought it would be an appropriate time to write a bit about what a year of writing about coffee has brought about.

A summary of the year by the numbers:

3 Things I Learned from a Year of Writing about Coffee

The Best Way to Learn Something Is to Teach it

I have heard the old adage, “The best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else” countless times in my life. However, I have never been as acutely aware of it’s impact until I tried to explain a few coffee concepts on the blog.

For me, the most obvious example of this would have to be three articles I wrote in succession at the beginning of the year (Green Coffee Explained, Coffee Origins- How Geography Relates to Taste and Understanding and Selecting a Great Roasted Coffee). My goal was to write a brief article about each subject as a resource I could point people towards as well as a building block for future discussions.

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Taking a Second Look at Keeping a Manual Coffee Brewing Journal

Next week the blog will be turning one. While I was perusing old blog posts for ideas for an anniversary post, I came across this gem: Journaling and Challenging Yourself with Deliberate Practice.

Along with a few typos and formatting errors, I found it to be a pretty intense post. It has high aspirations, bold plans and even a mathematical concept or two. It is also one that I have had almost zero percent follow through on. My habit of journaling my brewing and improving my technique is still virtually nonexistent. (I’d be embarrassed but I think it is also one of my least read posts.)

After the I posted that article, I made a page layout template, cut out a cover (out of a Three Floyds six pack) and attempted to make an elaborate coptic stitch brew journal (it would have been pretty cool).

I smile at my blind ambition and the memory of my wife incredulously dismissing my original goal of recording two brewing sessions a day and encouraging me to start with one and see how it goes. Let’s do a postmortem on this journaling ambition. Where did I go wrong and why didn’t it work out the way I planned?

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