and things went downhill from there

I don't often pour a fresh cup of coffee down the drain, but I made an exception this morning.

I'd had some earlier from the same batch of beans and it was fine, but when I ground my latest cup, the grounds had a weird funk to them. They had that slightly sour, stale smell that you can get from a bag of coffee that you opened six months ago and forgot about in the back of the cupboard.

I assumed that it was just early-onset COVID or the like, and I brewed a cup as usual, but the smell did not improve. And it tasted pretty bad as well. That is, the underlying flavour was fine, but it was intertwined with a slightly sour, rancid funk.

After a couple of sips, I just dumped it and ground some more beans. These ones smell much better. I guess one or two rancid beans mush have worked their way into this particular batch.

I think I'm going to clean the grinder's burrs before I make any coffee tomorrow.

Interesting.

When they first announced vaccine passports here for dine-in, one of the local coffee shops put up a fuss. They posted a screed on their Facebook page about how it was a violation of fundamental human rights to require somebody to show proof of vaccination in order to dine in.

They announced that they would be switching to take-out only until the passport requirements were lifted.

That's fine. It's their business - though I think they were more than a bit misguided with the idea of what constitutes a fundamental human right; i.e., having to get your coffee "to go" rather than "to stay" does not violate any fundamental rights, IMO. So while I did not entirely respect their reasoning, I respected their decision.

This afternoon, I was searching Google for an alternate place to buy coffee since my usual roaster is keeping sketchy hours during the Olympics, and this other coffee shop showed up in my search.

I opened their site to see how they were doing, and I noticed that they are open for dine-in, and advised that all provincial mandates applied, specifically mentioning the requirement for a vaccine passport for dine-in. Huh. I checked their Facebook, and I see that their human rights screed seems to have disappeared.

Interesting.

Maybe it's a generational thing, or maybe it's just me.

I'm ... not a fan of Janice Joplin.

I think part of it is that I got thoroughly sick of hearing Me and Bobby McGee, Mercedes Benz, and Piece Of My Heart on endless repeat during the 60s segments of the radio stations I listened to back in the 80s and 90s. It's nothing to do with her talent as a writer of music and lyrics, nor to do with the importance of her work. I know that people find her voice "distinctive", but I find it about as appealing as nails on a chalkboard. I partly blame getting tired of hearing it so frequently. Familiarity breeds contempt.

Enough about that. I came here to talk about cake and coffee and interesting frost on the windows of our garage. Last week as the weather was transitioning from very cold to slightly warmer, it hit the right combination of gradients to form some very artistic ice crystals on our garage window.


I had some leftover carrots and parsnips from roasted vegetables I'd made earlier in the week, at atara's suggestion, I use them to make carrot cake. It called for three cups of carrots, so I added two cups of shredded carrots and one cup of shredded parsnip to see how it would turn out. It turned out really good. I don't know if any of the parsnip flavour came through at all, but there is nothing wrong with this cake.

As an interesting aside, I made fake cream cheese icing to go on top. The recipe I found called for almond milk (which we don't have), so I substituted some instant coconut milk for that. I could have used real milk, but I thought that experimental cake deserved experimental icing. Apple cider vinegar and lemon juice gave it the tang of cream cheese.

It was good the first day, but the next day we both agreed that if we hadn't been told that this wasn't cream cheese icing, we'd never have guessed otherwise. I am making a note here for both experiments: huge success!

When I discovered that a coffee roaster was within walking distance of our house, I started getting my coffee exclusively from them. Depending on supplies, they have a fairly broad range of beans that flow through their ovens. I kept notes as I went, writing down the various varieties on our whiteboard and making comments about which ones I liked and disliked. The Tanzania Peaberry (pictured below) received my lowest rating. It was an unpleasant coffee that I couldn't wait to finish so that I could move on to the next bag.


As you might guess from my daily picture, I bought it again. I picked it up because I wanted to give it another try. I know that grind settings, water temperature and dose can all affect the flavour of a coffee, and I have changed all of those since I last tried this coffee. I was curious to see if the changes I'd made could morph this repugnant coffee passably drinkable. 

They didn't.

They made it delicious.

I have always known that a few minor tweaks in preparation can make a difference in the final product, but I am stunned at how radically different this coffee is. For the record, I decreased the grind size (a bit larger than espresso grind), upped the grind time by 1½ seconds to compensate, and use boiling water instead of water closer to 90°.

Also, it paired well with the cake.

Not anything life-changing, rather I did something a bit different this morning when making my coffee, and I'm not quite sure how to feel about it.

I am pretty happy with my current method of brewing coffee. So far it is giving me consistently good results, regardless of the blend or roast I try. I made a couple of cups this morning using that method, then when I went back to make my final cup, I decided to shake things up a bit by using different water.

Our tap water is fairly soft here, but as I was grinding more beans, I noticed that we had some bottles of water on the fridge that were left over from our last road trip. Curious to know how much difference it would make, I used one of them for my coffee. I had not been expecting to taste much of a difference, but the change in my coffee was quite pronounced.

It was quite noticeably better.

I don't drink bottled water that often (I only grab it when I don't have ready access to tap water - like on a road trip, long hike, etc), so I don't want to get into a trap of making my coffee from it.

... but it was so good.

I may try the filtered water again the next time I make coffee and see if that is a more sustainable alternative. The last time I tried it, I was slightly unimpressed with the results, but I've got some ideas for the next try. What I am not going to do is start burning through bottled water for my coffee - we produce enough plastic waste for my liking.

I did up a quick critique on a stranger's story yesterday. I am normally reluctant to do that because some authors can be very defensive about their writing, but after I pointed out a minor error near the start, he let me know he'd welcome any more feedback I wanted to give him. I warned him that much of it would be in the realm of negatively constructive and he was okay with that.

I hadn't intended to read the whole story at first because it had a painful Gary Stu in it (a Saiyan whose only flaws were that he preferred to win easily - not that he ever lost - and he could occasionally get angry). He was aware of the Gary Stu, and assured me that it was intentional. I pointed out that there was a reason why they are considered a bad story trope, and then concentrated on four other key areas where I thought he could work to improve. He pushed back a bit, but ultimately agreed that he had room to improve, and said he would take my comments to heart and work on those aspects.

And that made the critique worthwhile. I think the two most powerful tools an author can possess are a dissatisfaction with their own writing, and a drive to improve it.

I don't really have much to say on the coffee side of this post. I have started using the inverted brew method with my Aeropress.

In theory, this change should not affect the taste of the coffee because everything else remains the same (grind, amount, water temperature, timing, etc).

In practise, I have no idea what's going on. I chose a terrible time to change up brew techniques because I have not entirely regained my sense of taste from this recent encounter with Rhinovirus, and because I am also trying a different coffee blend in the grinder.

Ultimately, I think that I will keep using this method because it is a bit less fussy than the other method, and it should produce the same reults.

I've settled into a routine with my Aeorpress of late. I've found a grind size, grind amount and brew time that consistently produce a good result with the coffee I usually buy. I was watching one of James Hoffman's videos this morning where he was reviewing a new travel Aeropress, and one of the things he mentioned in his video reminded me again of why the Aeropress is such a popular device.

It's ridiculously flexible.

It struck me that it's pointless to have bought a coffee maker that was designed for experimentation, and then settling into a routine.

Every time I buy coffee from the roaster, I always buy a large bag of their house blend (which is a fairly dark roast) and a smaller bag of something I have not yet tried. I've been keeping notes on our kitchen whiteboard for each new coffee I buy, using little emoticons (😼) to represent my thoughts on each one. As I was thinking on some of those ratings, I considered the possibility that the reason I hadn't liked some of them had less to do with the coffees, and more to do with how I had been brewing them. The brew I've been doing works great for my usual dark roast, but might not work as well with some of the lighter ones.

When I made my second cup of coffee this morning, the grinder was almost empty, so I topped it up with the medium-roast Mexican coffee I bought last week as my test bag. I went out to the kitchen a few minutes ago to make a third cup (three is usually my limit for a day, but I might make another cup after lunch in the name of science), I realized that it would be mostly medium-roast that came through, so I decided to shake things up a bit.

As a baseline, my usual brew is as follows:

1. I set the grind level to 43 on my grinder (toward the coarse end of the percolator range) and grind it for 14.6 seconds. That gives me the right coffee/water ratio for the size of mug I am using.


2. I fill a measuring cup with enough water for one mug of coffee and microwave it on high for 2:15.


3. I pour enough water into the Aeropress to wet the grounds, stir them to ensure they are all wetted, and allow them to degas for about 24 seconds.


4. I top up the Aeropress, affix the plunger to the top (angling it in and then lifting it slightly to create negative pressure) and let it "steep" for 4 minutes


5. Finally, I do a 30-second plunge and then top up the mug with the remainder of the hot water.

For this last cup, I just pulled some values out of thin air to see how it would go:

I set the grind to 15 (about the middle of the espresso range) and ground it for 17 seconds (I upped the grind time to 17 seconds in order to compensate for the finer grind). Since it is a much finer grind, I halved the steep time to 2 minutes. I did everything else the same to act as a control for the experiment.

The result was a very good cup of coffee. I am sure this cup had some of the dark roast mixed in with the Mexican coffee, so I am going to have a rare fourth cup of coffee today in the interests of experimentation. I am going to weigh the coffee and water again under this new grind to validate the ratios, and I might even reduce the brew time to 90 seconds because it is such a fine grind.

Based on the results of the cup I just finished though, I don't think I need to change very much.

I picked up a new coffee grinder recently. While it's not a professional-grade grinder, neither is is one of the cheap ones that you might find for sale at Wal Mart or Target. I stopped in a fancy, local kitchen store and snagged a conical Breville grinder to replace the old BRAUN grinder that I have been using for the past 30ish years.

On the one hand, I feel a little guilty replacing a grinder that, other than being held together with painter's tape, has been working reliably for over a quarter of a century. On the other hand, using this new grinder has really illustrated to me how poorly my old one has been working for the past few years. It's not that it wasn't grinding coffee when asked, it's that it was essentially giving me chunks and powder instead of a consistent grind.

I'd decided that it was time to replace it when I was cleaning it one day and discovered that the burs had worn themselves almost smooth over years of use in the old grinder.

It took a few tries before I settled on the grind size and amount that works for me with the new grinder, but now I have it set up so that I just press a button and it gives me a perfect grind every time.

The best part is that I can really taste the difference in the final product. I am getting much better, and more consistent coffee than I ever could with the old grinder.

I guess everything has its time to retire.

I saw an article today a recent poll of Canada's most admired brands, and somebody noted that Tim Hortons had fallen from 4th last year to 50th this year.

Given the steady decline of quality in their produces over time, I am surprised that they were that high as recently as last year. It took them crapping all over their employees in Ontario after the province raised the minimum wage for people to finally start waking up to the fact that it's just not a good brand any more.

I know that some claim it's trendy to hate on Tim's these days, but for me it's been a "frog in the blender" kind of thing ... or wait, maybe I'm thinking of a frog in a pot of water on the stove, or some other kind of frog abuse. Anyway, their product has been in slow decline as they've steadily shaved quality and increased prices over the years. My dislike for Tim's - aside from their cheap, leaky cups, sub-par edibles and crappy coffee - is the fact that I can still remember them when they were pretty good. Not great, but pretty good.

atara and I stopped there a couple of weeks back while were out shopping, and I decided to treat myself to one of their iced cinnamon rolls. When I was working downtown, we stopped at Tim's every morning when we commuted in together, and those were one of the things to which I would treat myself about once a week. While they were not up to the level of decadence you get from an iced, sticky bun you might find in a boutique outlet at a public market, they were nonetheless pretty good. My only complaint with them was that the icing often stuck to the paper sleeve in which they packed them for takeaway.

I tried to manage my expectations based on the substandard quality of the rest of their baked goods (they have all-but de-appled their apple fritters, removed all pretence of actual fruit from their "fruit explosion" muffins, etc). My reasoning was that it is pretty hard to screw up a cinnamon roll. But they did. As I was chewing on the disappointing little spiral of pointless calories, I said to atara, "I used to really like these things, but if the first one I'd ordered had been like this, I don't think I'd have bought it again." And I shan't. Sadly, this rings true for most of their products these days.

It has been a little while since I updated here, so I am trying to remember where I left off.

I think I mentioned the email I got that wanted me to show up for 3 1/2 months of intensive training on very short notice. The news on that is currently a holding pattern. The foot that I injured last year had been troubling me, and after pestering my doctor about it for months, he finally sent me off for x-rays. When I booked a follow-up appointment with him (to renew my prescriptions in case I got sent out of town, and to find out the results of the X-ray), he admitted that he is not an expert on feet, but that there was no obvious breaks or bone spurs. On the other hand, there were clear signs of swelling. He instructed his front end staff to refer me to a specialist.

The hemmed and hawed over it before finally recommending that I go to the Pan Am Clinic. It's a walk-in, first-come-first served clinic, though they prioritize by severity. They took down my details and gave me a number. Forty-five minutes later I saw a triage specialist who took down more detailed information, including the name of my family doctor. Then they told me to return in about four hours.

I had another two hour wait before I finally got in to see an actual doctor, though when I saw the condition of people who they were taking ahead of me, I did not begrudge the wait. He poked and prodded my foot and ankle, asked me a few questions, then called up the x-ray. When I described what had happened last year, he said that the x-ray confirmed it, and he then exactly described the symptoms that I would be having now because of it.

In a nutshell, when I pushed off with my left foot to straighten a draw-bar, the strain caused one of the small bones in my foot to dislodge and cross over one of the other bones. When I was flexing the foot a couple of days later, the pop I felt was the bone snapping back into place. In the process, it tore the tendon. I probably should have gone to see a foot specialist at the time, but it happened over the long weekend, and by the Tuesday, it was feeling much better and seemed to be on the mend.

The problem now is that when the tendon has suffered scarring, and it healed too short. As a result, I experience pain from walking, and shooting pains when walking on uneven terrain, navigating stairs/ladders, or otherwise pushing off from that foot. You don't want unexpected, shooting pains in your foot and ankle when you are working around large, industrial equipment.

Now that I have the formal diagnosis, I need to set up an appointment for physiotherapy where they will use ultrasound and lasers to essentially damage the tendon again and stretch it out properly as it heals. Does not sound pleasant. I also need to get some paperwork filled out for work to indicate that I am under a doctor's care until further notice, and will not be available for training in a safety-sensitive position.

ON ANOTHER FRONT

Over the winter I started buying instant decaf coffee to drink in the evenings. I used to buy ground decaf, but it always took me so long to go through a bag of it that it was invariably stale before I got to the end. With the instant decaf, the coffee is bad from the get go, so I can drink it at my leisure.

I have been trying a variety of brands in a quest to find the least awful of them. A couple of them were actually surprisingly drinkable, but the most recent one I bought was a German import that is vile. I had this misguided idea that Europeans know good coffee, so if it was from Germany, it must be good. I conveniently forgot that there are probably still old Soviet factories operating in some of the more remote parts of eastern Germany, and that this horrid product probably came from one of those. It tastes like coffee that was infused with despair and then had all the joy distilled out of it.

When I was out shopping last week, I found a coffee substitute in the organic food section of the store. It was a brand that I had never heard of, made from ingredients that sounded only vaguely familiar. I was both intrigued and repelled at the same time, so naturally I bought it. I made a cup of it the day that I brought it home and it's ... a thing. I tried it again the next day, making it slightly stronger, and adding sugar. It was a ... slightly stronger, moderately sweet .... thing. I can't really come up with adequate words to describe it. It's not what I would call good, but it's not really that bad either. I cannot claim that I enjoyed drinking it, but neither did I dread each sip.

I had a bit of a rough day today (had to spend a few hours dealing with work-related support issues), so this evening I decided to round out the awful with some decaf. I had the German crystals in my hand and briefly considered throwing them in the garbage, but on a whim I brewed up a cup with 60% of the German decaf, and 40% of the coffee substitute.

Oddly enough, the result was actually pretty good. I don't know what weird alchemy happened in my coffee cup, but apparently two wrongs can make a right if mixed properly.

Today is a lovely January morning - if it was January, and I was waking up to this in Victoria. Yesterday's rain turned to snow late in the day and we awoke to fresh accumulations this morning. Snow is not unheard of this late in the season - heck, it snowed on us up at Riding Mountain park on Canada Day a few years ago. It's just ... fuck.

I am getting rotated onto Primary support this week, starting tonight. I chatted briefly with the guy who is coming off his stint on primary (though we are going to meet for longer this morning so that he can fill me in on more detail) but so far he says it is much better than it was. For the most part it just involves getting up at 4:45 to babysit a couple of systems, and then handle emails and phone calls from clueless idiots.

The last time I was on primary support we had all kinds of system meltdowns, and people screaming at me for things I was not qualified to handle. It was fun in a way that is absolutely not fun at all. It was the kind of experience that I will look back on later, laugh nervously and change the subject.

Speaking of work, somebody left a bunch of these in the cafeteria on Tuesday.


I am not normally a fan of flavoured coffees, but I am a sucker for free stuff. I grabbed one of them and made it later in the afternoon. It was ok - as flavoured coffees go. I appreciate them a lot more when the coffee is meant to be flavoured, and I am not just inheriting some left over flavour oils from whoever made a coffee before me.

Many years back, when I was still working in our yard office, I used to take my coffee maker and grinder in to work on the night shift so that we could have good coffee. This worked well for weeks, until I wandered into the break room just in time to catch some yutz running a batch of Almond Shitbark - or whatever his flavoured coffee was called - through the grinder. I was so pissed at him I came darned near close to breaking all of his fingers. I didn't break any of them, but breaking fingers is like eating potato chips; hard to stop once you get started.

I took apart the grinder and cleaned all of the parts that I could, but the oils from his coffee coated everything, and it was weeks before we finally couldn't taste hints of shitbark in our coffee. He couldn't understand why everyone on night shift was pissed at him, even when I explained it. "Have you never wondered why coffee shops always have a separate grinder for their flavoured coffees?"

It was an honest mistake, and it showed just how little of those raunchy flavoured oils it takes to ruin a pot of otherwise good brew.

This was the same guy who would use a single scoop of coffee to make a pot that usually needed three scoops. He would make it stronger if it was flavoured, but if it was regular coffee then he would complain if it was any darker than burnt umber when you held it up to the light. His typical modus operandi was to pour half a cup, complain about how strong it was, and then top up the rest of the way with hot water. It occurred me much later that he probably didn't like coffee, and he preferred the flavours because they masked the taste. I wish I could project my brain back to my past self, so that I could stand there sipping my coffee while he complained about how strong it was, and added enough water to make it, well, water. "Tell us the truth, D. You don't really like coffee, do you?"