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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 24th, 2023

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  • I feel ya, the number of times I’ve opened up my gear to get just a few more months out of it til the next thing breaks…

    If you want to maximize versatility and quality for a good price, I’d consider getting a nice enough espresso-focused grinder and a really high quality hand grinder that can do coarse grinds well. Grinding coarse is fast and easy by hand, and you can get grounds as or more consistent than am electric grinder 3 times the price with something like a 1zpresso. But grinding for espresso can be harder, so that’s one that’s more worth a machine doing the work for you.



  • I do/have used a Kruve an I’ve been very surprised with by my findings with it. In my experience, even very nice grinders I’ve tried still produce like 4% fines, and some midrange ones are maybe only 6%. By percent, that’s significant enough, but in the end it’s less than a gram difference, and therefore sorta hard to use as the comparison between 2 grinders. Sifting is also essentially worthless for that purpose if you didn’t take the same measurement when the grinder was new, since you have nothing to compare the present to.

    I honestly think your best bet is going by taste. If you feel the quality of your cup has declined, that’s probably the best way to be sure. Everything else is just a proxy for trying to determine how the cup will taste.



  • Like almost any concept, the argument over free will really becomes semantic (and pedantic) when pushed to academic extremes. At a certain point it shifts to “is there a difference between free will and the apparent ability to choose what we do in any given moment?”

    This scientist claims that the inability to tease any choice from the infinite variables that affect that decision means that the decision isn’t ours. It is an equally valid conclusion that you don’t need to know every single thing that influences you in order to have agency among those influences.

    Moore’s take on the Cartesian question of “how do we know we exist?” is similar. It points out that the debate actually has nothing to do with existence, but what it means to “know” something, and that “knowing,” like anything, can of course be made impossible with philosophical and academic contortions (e.g., arguments like “but what if this is a simulation and there is a “great deception” that only convinces you that you exist?”). It is not that some form of knowing cannot exist, it is that people are capable of imagining fantasies in which knowing cannot exist, and Moore denies that we should let the ability to conceptualize something beyond the intended context of our language (i.e., perceived reality) pervert our ability to see and accept something concrete.

    Is Moore right? Who knows, but he gets at the point that the answers to questions of free will, existence, ontology, etc. have more to do with how the questions are framed academically and philosophically than with how the same concepts actually operate in real life. It will always be possibly to frame a question (or to define the words within a question) in a way that denies the possibility of knowing or agency. But the ability to do so doesn’t mean that other methods of asking or knowing are impossible.









  • I like it because it lets you control the temperature you drink at. I drink pour over mostly, so the carafe is heated by the water I use to heat the cone, and with the insulation I get a good 4 hours where it’s still too hot to drink straight out of the carafe. So pouring small cups and waiting a minute has been the perfect way to have every sip at the right temperature. And I’ve come to really like the pace of multiple almost espresso-sized mugs rather than working on the same cup all morning.



  • Not a great idea, but not for the caffeine quantity that others mention (though perhaps for that, too). Espresso is meant to be drunk quickly and hot. Even the glasses are designed to keep the surface area minimal and give the drinker control over how (minimally) cool they allow the espresso to get.

    Keeping a large amount in a mug for a while will allow bitter notes to develop and will mute the creamy and sweet notes/feel that make espresso worthwhile. You can minimize that a bit by diluting the coffee (a 3-hour old latte or americano changes less than a straight shot would in the same span), but it’ll still change.

    Pour over is really the only method that is intended to be drunk at varying levels of heat, and you can make it super strong if that’s what you’re looking for.