I knew this guy was going to be a winner. The dark and oily beans called out to me. I think this will be my go to coffee whenever I stop by gw.

Surprisingly, the person that turned me onto lattes is TL who doesn’t even drink coffee. I think we were walking through the mall one day and she offered to buy me coffee because I was getting antsy and slowing down her shopping. She bought me a latte + coffee cake, left me on a bench and bid me good riddance. Now I go shopping with just to get a free latte.

Anyways, a latte is basically espresso and frothy milk. I hate going out to buy coffee if I can make it at home, but I have neither an espresso maker nor a milk frothing thing. Eventually I’ll pony up the money to buy an espresso maker. For now, I’m making lattes with coffee instead of espresso. I’m making about 2 cups of coffee. For the foam, I warm up about 2/3 cup of milk for 45 seconds in the microwave and then blend it with the bullet blender. The bullet blender does a poor job of creating enough foam for a wide coffee cup, but since I use a tall mug, the amount of foam suffices my needs.

The result is, well, you read my title. I like it, but it would taste a lot better if I use real espresso shots.

Right now I’m using Kenyan coffee beans that I bought from Intelligentsia, a hip coffee/tea place on Abbott Kinney. The beans are way pricey. I think it was nearly $20 a lb. The coffee is pretty good though, but it’s unlikely that this is a repeat purchase.

I forgot to mention that I bought some Venice Blend beans from groundwork the other week. The beans were OK, though I realized that I wasn’t using enough per cup. I’m going to buy some more when I’m done with the Kenyan beans and redo. I’ll probably do half Venice Blend and half decaf something to help wean down my caffeine intake. I’m getting the heart jitters when I drink coffee and withdrawal headaches when I don’t get my joe in the morning.

While I’m talking about whiskey, I was chatting with a coworker from Tennessee while out at Yuma and he was saying how he couldn’t wait to go home and smoke a cigar on his porch and sip on some Jack Daniels straight from the distillery. The fact that JD is bottled in Tennessee didn’t click with me right away, but when it did, I peppered my coworker with questions like where the distillery is located, how to get there from Nashville, when is it open, etc. Needless to say, if I have free time when I’m out visiting Vandy in December, I’ll be heading to Lynchburg to visit the distillery.

Stay tuned on how my home brewed BIC turns out and a report from JD.

I took a morning bike ride yesterday in search of Groundworks coffee but somehow ended up on Abbot Kinney in Venice. AK is adorned with several chic retail stores, cafes, and “organic herb” shops that one can spend an afternoon or two exploring. I landed in Equator Cafe, which is inside a book store called, wait for it…… Equator Books. EC serves organic coffee from Bay Area based Bluebottle Coffee Company. I got the Bella Donavan, the “wool sweater” or go-to Bluebottle blend.

EC has a very manual brewing process that I think really bring out the characters of the coffee. Instead of the standard drip or a french press, EC uses a drip-cup-thing. Yes, that’s the official term for this brewing process. Basically the contraption uses a cup with a hole on the bottom. You place a filter in the cup, add the grinds, add a bit of water to soak the grinds, wait, add more water and let the coffee drip like a standard drip coffee maker. Whew. I should have taken a picture of this contraption.

I almost feel like it’s sacrilege to say that Bella tastes like SBUX’s daily brew, but it does. Bella however is so much cleaner tasting and the flavors are more distinct. I bought a bag of the Yirg, a medium roast Ethiopian bean. The beans look smaller than the Kona beans so I used fuller teaspoons to get enough grinds. The coffee is pretty good. It is light and smooth… although it seems like everything my coffee maker makes turns out fairly light.

??? I think the beans are Allegro too.

BBall (NBA) – I can’t take it anymore. I can’t remember a season that has given me more grief than this one. Someone on the radio said it best when he described that Lakers as being contagious to prosperity. Against a good team, no lead is safe. Against a team without its superstars (aka the Rockets), a lead is supposed to be safe.  With the Lakers, no lead is EVER safe. I’m on the edge of my seat the entire game. I guess that’s supposed to make it “exciting and fun”, but one can only ride Goliath so many times before puking.

Van Gundy’s face said it all after LBJ knocked down the game winning 3. What do you do? It was nothing but Epic.

Work – My current task has me localizing our applications. This is by far the most tedious and painful task I’ve worked on since joining this group, although it’s a lot better than writing user stories. But still, there’s little joy to be found when your SPR fails because the word “Login” can’t be translated on Google Translate. Would it make any sense to translate it as “Log in”? The users going to be like, “WTF is this ‘inside the tree’ button?!?!”. As it is with most of my SPRs, FAILED, lol.

Coffee – I stopped drinking coffee this week because I’ve been having PVC. Diagnosing myself by doing a google search isn’t the most ideal thing, but this has happened before and the treatment was to cut back on the caffeine. I’m also pretty sure that it’s the excess caffeine that caused the PVC because when I was drinking coffee, I had been drinking two cups of coffee + tea + diet coke which is a wee bit more than the recommened allowed daily intake. Suprisingly, I wasn’t anymore amped than normal and I was sleeping well. The PVC has gone away and I’ll probably jump back into brewing some joe next week. Mmmm, coffee!

GMAT – absolutely disheartening when there are no tangible signs of improvement. I feel like my foundation knowledge is a lot stronger, yet I’m not able to convert on the MGMAT CAT tests. I’ve got about 5 weeks to go so it’s getting close to show time. I’ll start taking the GMAC tests soon as those are supposed to be a more realistic gauge of the real thing.

I was looking to try out Lamill Coffee that GS recommended but it was out of my way so I yelped for some places in the ‘hood and found groundwork. It’s a hole in the wall looking place on Rose in Venice, kind of grungy and organiky. They’ve got a bunch of their own roasts, with Gold Coast being their most popular. I bought a half pound plus a cup of Bitches Brew. The Bitches Brew isn’t anything to write home about, but then again, it could have been the soy milk that I added. Note: soy milk sucks.

So into the Grind and Brew the Gold Coast beans went  Monday morning and now I’m hooked (wow, this sentence is so passive-voice and horribly constructed) . The Gold Coast is way richer than the French Roast that I bought from Whole Foods, rich enough that I had it black this morning. I was tempted to make another cup tonight but I had to clear out some of the beer that is hogging all the space in the fridge. Talk about a good problem to have…..

I’m using the same amount of beans (3.5 scoops), but I’ve upped the amount of water to roughly 15 oz (or a bottle of the Kirkland water) to account for the missing 2oz that seems to disappear. I’m also leaving the carafe out so the water builds up in the “well”, or whatever it is called, so the grinds and water can soak a little longer.

Man, I can’t wait for tomorrow morning so I can get my coffee fix on.

Water: 12oz @ room temp
Beans: Whole Foods’ French Roast Dark
Scoops: 3.5 cuisniart spoons
Result: The press pot will only be brought out for camping trips. Although the B&G can’t make coffee like the pricey “grind and pound” machine, it’s still by far a better coffee making machine than the PP. The advantage of the B&G is that the beans are freshly ground inside the machine which makes for a stronger taste. I guess I could have purchased a grinder to complement the PP, but there’s nothing like pushing a button on the B&G and having it all done for me. The only thing I don’t like about the machine is that although I put in 12oz of water, it seems like I only get 10 oz of water. What gives? Oh well.

Beans: Dunkin Donuts – Original Medium Roast – 3 HEAPING tbsp

Steep Time: 4 minutes

Result: Much better than the first two times. I’d say that the taste is better than the coffee served up in the San Pedro kitchen, but that’s like saying saw dust taste better than mud, meaning this coffee still has a way to go before I can quit the venerable MCD coffee.

Next Attempt: Change nothing till the creamer or grind is done. The coffee is tolerable for now.