Coffee, Coffee, Buzz, Buzz Buzz

Got a cup of coffee in your hand? No? Get one. I'll wait.

You back? Ok, lets talk coffee.

I confess, I've got a little coffee obsession going on. Being from Rhode Island (State Drink: Coffee Milk) its kind of hard to avoid. They were slipping coffee syrup into my formula bottle while I was still in the cradle.

I'm hooked. Cappuchino, iced coffee, coffee oreo or mocha chip ice cream, espresso martinis--sign me up.

When we re-did the kitchen last summer, one corner was created as a little shrine to coffee. There's the espresso machine, the burr grinder, the knock box, and the drip coffee machine, all surrounding a corner sink. It's a little caffeinated nirvana.

Now at work I've got a funky seventies era Chemex brewer that looks like it is from a science experiment, but makes awesome drip coffee. Back at home, on weekends, we often break out the french press.

There's a few good coffee roasters popping up around us now where you can get some excellent fresh roasted beans. All in all, things were good on the coffee front.

Then somewhere around mid-winter, I came across a new coffee shop in Newport that ruined me. They made the best cup of drip coffee that I had ever had. They were using George Howell's Terroir beans and brewing them up beautifully. Suddenly, the old Braun drip coffee maker wasn't cutting it. (Sorry George, I'm not ready to pay $30+ a pound for beans!)

Luckily, the folks at CoffeeGeek.com are even more obsessive than I am. I mean seriously over the top. Nothing like a bunch of caffeine fueled maniacs hyper-analyzing things to the nth degree. It turns out that brewing temperature is critical for getting the most out of your beans. Water just off the boil (around 200-203 degrees) is perfect. And you want the water to have contact with the grounds for around four minutes. That's part of why the french press was making such great joe and my Braun was making bland dish water.

So the search was on for a drip machine that could actually make java at a decent temperature. There was a lot of arguing amongst the coffee geeks, but one maker kept getting rave reviews. Coming out of the Netherlands was a chrome and stainless steel art deco-ish beauty that made killer coffee. After a series of incredibly un-subtle hints, surprise -- I got one for my birthday.

This thing makes awesome coffee. The thermal carafe is perfect for me, because I like making a pot and hitting on it throughout the morning. Left on a burner, coffee seems to turn to crud in under an hour. It also has a switch to control the flow of water through the grounds--off, half, or full on. Basically, you can tweak your morning brew and dial it in to the way you like it.

Oops, my mug is empty...catch you later.