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which_chickIn cleaning out the Caesar and Thelma apartment, there was found a coffee grinder. A hand cranked one, clearly an old thing. It looks kinda like this only, like, old. And missing the drawer that says "coffee" on it. There is no drawer.
It sounded like it... grinded? Ground? The handle to crank went round and round and it seemed like it might work, so I took it home with me. En route to my house, I bought some coffee beans and a packet of coffee filters because I wanted to SEE if it worked. I do not own a coffee maker but the internet strongly suggests that you can grind up coffee beans and then just kinda ... pour hot water over it? And that makes coffee? Somehow? The internet says that this Really Does Work, so...
Side note, I do drink coffee, just generally in a to-go cup from a national purveyor of coffee that has an app and a drive-through window. But anyway, Let's Go Experiment!
I should note that if you are a coffee snob, probably just look away now. I'm going to Do Things Wrong and if that might upset you, probably best to just stop here.
Procedure: open coffee bean bag (Pike Place ordinary from the grocery, Lala likes it and says it's good but she gets the pre-ground kind) and put two Tbsp of beans in the top part of the coffee grinder. Grind. (There is a close-able lid on the grinder but it is not necessary. Hand cranking does not make anything fly out of the top. You may ignore the close-able lid.) It makes a fun crunchy sound I ground some (but not all) of the 2 Tbsp of beans before I got bored/tired and looked at the ground amount and was "Yeah, seems legit". (No, I didn't get out my food scale and weigh it. If that's what you think should be happening here, you are going to be disappointed with the rest of my procedural. Go fuck your super-expensive Home Espresso Machine.)
I made some boiling water.
I took my mesh cocktail strainer, put a coffee filter in it, added the ground coffee, and poured the not-quite boiling water slowly over the grounds while having the cocktail strainer propped over my coffee cup. It took a while for the water to make it through the coffee and the filter, but not, like, forever. The internet suggested pouring some hot water over to start and then waiting a bit and then pouring the rest of the water on. This was for #reasons that made my eyes glaze over. I tried to do it but probably I did it wrong because I did not use a timer but ... meh? I drink coffee from a drive through window, out of a paper cup with a plastic lid. The ship for Doing Things Properly has long since sailed over here and my standards for drinkable coffee are probably not sufficiently high for shit like Using A Timer.
When I got done, the beverage in my cup did indeed look and smell like coffee though it was dark as hell and also not as much coffee as I wanted, so I added some plain hot water to make the cup the right color brown and the appropriate amount of full. (It is a fairly hefty coffee mug. I am not one of those people who thinks 8 oz is a reasonable amount of coffee.) And then I added heavy cream because that's what goes in my coffee. No, I don't want to talk about it. Not up for discussion. It's fucking delicious plus I can whip it and eat it on other things.
And then I drank it. Mmm-mmm good. Seriously, this is a legit cup of coffee that looks like coffee and smells like coffee and is, wow, a fair bit better than the coffee I get every morning at the drive through coffee place.
This coffee is not... it's not $3.00 each. Shit, it's not even close to $3.00 each. Damn it, I'm going to have to DO MATH now. Argh. I already know what direction this is going (the you're going to have to make your own fucking coffee every morning because $3 is highway robbery for bad coffee and you can do better yourself direction) but sure, let's do the math. Ugh.
Okay, so the coffee beans were $10.00 for the bag. There are A LOT of coffees in the bag. You want the math? Fine. I will go do the stupid math. 10 grams per coffee (2 Tbsp says the bag), 12 oz bag, 340 grams in 12 oz, 34 coffees per bag. BUT assume I'm a dipshit and messy and there is waste and so forth. Let's pretend I get 25 coffees per bag. At a $10.00 bag, that's still only $0.40 per coffee.
The filters were 3.59 for the packet of two hundred. Filter cost $0.02 per coffee.
The cream is $5.77 for the container, which definitely lasts more than 10 coffees (I have not actually counted how many coffees it lasts.) Call it $0.30 per coffee, though, because I am not going to count. I am not.
So, make-at-home coffee that is fucking delicious and takes maybe ten minutes of relatively unskilled labor costs under a buck per coffee. Quite generously priced out, it is $0.72 per coffee (not counting time, water, energy to heat the water, etc.).
Savings per week (I get one drive-through coffee per day) would be almost sixteen dollars if I did my own coffees at home with a travel mug. And they'd be more delicious. And a reusable travel mug is probably better for the planet than a plastic disposable lid every day.
Fuck. Sorry, drive-through coffee place. I do love you, but also...
I didn't know that it was possible to make coffee at home without a coffee maker. Turns out, it 100% is. You grind beans. Put ground beans in a filter with a cocktail strainer (that you already have and is stainless steel and wonderful at all manner of straining) to give support to the filter. Pour hot water over the ground beans, which is (no matter what the internet tells you) a fairly unskilled task. Et voila, coffee. Thin out with hot water to desired color/volume. Add cream if desired. Drink. It really is that damn simple.
I didn't realize that this whole grinding beans and pouring water over them bullshit produced results that were BETTER THAN bought coffee, even for people who definitely don't take it that seriously.
I didn't realize that I could have easy, better, CHEAPER coffee at home.
Fuck, I'm dumb. #todayIlearned
It sounded like it... grinded? Ground? The handle to crank went round and round and it seemed like it might work, so I took it home with me. En route to my house, I bought some coffee beans and a packet of coffee filters because I wanted to SEE if it worked. I do not own a coffee maker but the internet strongly suggests that you can grind up coffee beans and then just kinda ... pour hot water over it? And that makes coffee? Somehow? The internet says that this Really Does Work, so...
Side note, I do drink coffee, just generally in a to-go cup from a national purveyor of coffee that has an app and a drive-through window. But anyway, Let's Go Experiment!
I should note that if you are a coffee snob, probably just look away now. I'm going to Do Things Wrong and if that might upset you, probably best to just stop here.
Procedure: open coffee bean bag (Pike Place ordinary from the grocery, Lala likes it and says it's good but she gets the pre-ground kind) and put two Tbsp of beans in the top part of the coffee grinder. Grind. (There is a close-able lid on the grinder but it is not necessary. Hand cranking does not make anything fly out of the top. You may ignore the close-able lid.) It makes a fun crunchy sound I ground some (but not all) of the 2 Tbsp of beans before I got bored/tired and looked at the ground amount and was "Yeah, seems legit". (No, I didn't get out my food scale and weigh it. If that's what you think should be happening here, you are going to be disappointed with the rest of my procedural. Go fuck your super-expensive Home Espresso Machine.)
I made some boiling water.
I took my mesh cocktail strainer, put a coffee filter in it, added the ground coffee, and poured the not-quite boiling water slowly over the grounds while having the cocktail strainer propped over my coffee cup. It took a while for the water to make it through the coffee and the filter, but not, like, forever. The internet suggested pouring some hot water over to start and then waiting a bit and then pouring the rest of the water on. This was for #reasons that made my eyes glaze over. I tried to do it but probably I did it wrong because I did not use a timer but ... meh? I drink coffee from a drive through window, out of a paper cup with a plastic lid. The ship for Doing Things Properly has long since sailed over here and my standards for drinkable coffee are probably not sufficiently high for shit like Using A Timer.
When I got done, the beverage in my cup did indeed look and smell like coffee though it was dark as hell and also not as much coffee as I wanted, so I added some plain hot water to make the cup the right color brown and the appropriate amount of full. (It is a fairly hefty coffee mug. I am not one of those people who thinks 8 oz is a reasonable amount of coffee.) And then I added heavy cream because that's what goes in my coffee. No, I don't want to talk about it. Not up for discussion. It's fucking delicious plus I can whip it and eat it on other things.
And then I drank it. Mmm-mmm good. Seriously, this is a legit cup of coffee that looks like coffee and smells like coffee and is, wow, a fair bit better than the coffee I get every morning at the drive through coffee place.
This coffee is not... it's not $3.00 each. Shit, it's not even close to $3.00 each. Damn it, I'm going to have to DO MATH now. Argh. I already know what direction this is going (the you're going to have to make your own fucking coffee every morning because $3 is highway robbery for bad coffee and you can do better yourself direction) but sure, let's do the math. Ugh.
Okay, so the coffee beans were $10.00 for the bag. There are A LOT of coffees in the bag. You want the math? Fine. I will go do the stupid math. 10 grams per coffee (2 Tbsp says the bag), 12 oz bag, 340 grams in 12 oz, 34 coffees per bag. BUT assume I'm a dipshit and messy and there is waste and so forth. Let's pretend I get 25 coffees per bag. At a $10.00 bag, that's still only $0.40 per coffee.
The filters were 3.59 for the packet of two hundred. Filter cost $0.02 per coffee.
The cream is $5.77 for the container, which definitely lasts more than 10 coffees (I have not actually counted how many coffees it lasts.) Call it $0.30 per coffee, though, because I am not going to count. I am not.
So, make-at-home coffee that is fucking delicious and takes maybe ten minutes of relatively unskilled labor costs under a buck per coffee. Quite generously priced out, it is $0.72 per coffee (not counting time, water, energy to heat the water, etc.).
Savings per week (I get one drive-through coffee per day) would be almost sixteen dollars if I did my own coffees at home with a travel mug. And they'd be more delicious. And a reusable travel mug is probably better for the planet than a plastic disposable lid every day.
Fuck. Sorry, drive-through coffee place. I do love you, but also...
I didn't know that it was possible to make coffee at home without a coffee maker. Turns out, it 100% is. You grind beans. Put ground beans in a filter with a cocktail strainer (that you already have and is stainless steel and wonderful at all manner of straining) to give support to the filter. Pour hot water over the ground beans, which is (no matter what the internet tells you) a fairly unskilled task. Et voila, coffee. Thin out with hot water to desired color/volume. Add cream if desired. Drink. It really is that damn simple.
I didn't realize that this whole grinding beans and pouring water over them bullshit produced results that were BETTER THAN bought coffee, even for people who definitely don't take it that seriously.
I didn't realize that I could have easy, better, CHEAPER coffee at home.
Fuck, I'm dumb. #todayIlearned
