Maths Zeroes in on Perfect Cup of Coffee (bbc.com) 162
One coffee drinker's perfect brew may be another drinker's battery acid. For this reason, and presumably others, mathematicians are zeroing in on the equations behind the taste of drip coffee. From a report on BBC:Composed of over 1,800 chemical components, coffee is one of the most widely consumed drinks in the world. The work by Kevin Moroney at the University of Limerick, William Lee at the University of Portsmouth and others offers a better understanding of the parameters that influence the final product. It had previously been known that grinding beans too finely could result in coffee that is over-extracted and very bitter. On the other hand not grinding them enough can make the end result too watery. "What our work has done is take that [observation] and made it quantitative," said Dr Lee. "So now, rather than just saying: 'I need to make [the grains] a bit bigger,' I can say: 'I want this much coffee coming out of the beans, this is exactly the size [of grain] I should aim for." Dr Lee says he sets his grinder to the largest setting. By doing so, he says: "The grains are a bit larger than you get in the standard grind, which makes the coffee less bitter. Partly because it's adjusting that trade-off between the stuff coming out of the surface and stuff coming out of the interior. When things are larger, you're decreasing the overall surface area of the system. "Also, the water flows more quickly through a coffee bed of large grains, because the water's spending less time in contact with the coffee, helping reduce the amount of extraction too. "If it's bitter, it's because you're increasing the amount of surface area in the grains. Also, when the grains are very small, it's hard for the water to slide between them, so the water is spending a lot more time moving through the grains -- giving it more time for the coffee to go out of solution."
So just what's "Perfect", then? (Score:1)
Can their "perfect" cup of coffee do this [girlgeniusonline.com]?
I thought not.
Dan Aris
Drip Coffee? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You can get percolated taste from a drip coffee maker. Just run it through twice or three times (same grounds) until you get your desired level of nasty. Helps to use a non-paper filter.
Yes I knew someone who did this. Called it 'atomic coffee', didn't even realize it was basically percolator coffee.
That coffee maker was never right again.
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That coffee maker was never right again.
You can say that again! My brother-in-law ruined a pretty good coffee maker of mine that way. Thankfully, I was able to stop him before he tried to do the same thing with the espresso machine. My wife revoked his coffee-making privileges after that.
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We're reaching audiophile levels of absurdity when it comes to coffee preparation methods. I shouldn't have to do chemistry in order to drink coffee.
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We're reaching audiophile levels of absurdity when it comes to coffee preparation methods. I shouldn't have to do chemistry in order to drink coffee.
I don't know that anyone is suggesting that you have to "do chemistry" to drink coffee. If anything, at first glance, the approach from TFA sounds like a much more rational idea than advocated by many coffee aficionados (whom, I agree, can take this stuff to crazy levels).
I don't know the details, but it sounds like a really basic model that should be able to generate a basic table or something -- i.e., grind size X will have effect Y on coffee output, extraction time, perhaps component balance, etc.
Th
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Well, I found the original article here [siam.org]. After skimming the PDF, it looks like they spent a whole bunch of time playing around with complex diffusion equations to model a very basic drip coffee setup. As they note in their conclusion, actually applying this model to actual drip coffee machines (which have various input methods for water), not to mention the varying geometry of drip coffee brewing apparatuses, would require a lot more complexity.
So, I still don't quite get what the big deal is, since thi
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So this is the "spherical cows" of coffee, then?
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But you see, the marketing departments of the wine and audio companies were already full up with marketers who turned fermented grape juice into something special and mere cables into active hifi components. All the new marketing grads had to go somewhere.
What's next? Socks? Forks and spoons? Bath soap? Dish soap?
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Re:Drip Coffee? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a French press, an automatic drip, and an espresso machine. I like all of them, and the fancy strikes me for different styles at different times. The automatic drip is my usual choice when I want to drink a whole bunch of coffee over the duration of a morning. Your user ID is lower than mine - surely you are too old for these hipster pissing contests? Just drink what you like.
Re:Drip Coffee? (Score:5, Funny)
Your user ID is lower than mine - surely you are too old for these hipster pissing contests? Just drink what you like.
He was having hipster pissing contests before it was cool.
Perfection in an imperfect world (Score:5, Funny)
I mostly work from home and I brew a 6 cup pot of coffee almost every day, I put in two scoops (which are roughly equivalent to 1 heaping tablespoon) and it got me thinking about a month ago what the actual coffee to water ratio was supposed to be.
I found this chart (or one like it) https://blackbearcoffee.com/re... [blackbearcoffee.com]
Tried it out and my god, if that's the actual ratio I'm surprised most people can't see through time. I'll stick with my weak brew... if anything to ensure my particles don't vibrate through the fabric of reality
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I did try a dark roast that I like in my french press and it was way too oily and bitter for my tastes. So don't forget which beans you are using
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I don't know about seeing through time. But if you can see the sun's glow through a pot of coffee, it's just barely colored water and should be poured out. Translucent coffee is for children.
You're not making it strong unless the plunger of the French press won't go all the way down.
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First of all, how dare you sir! I am Canadian and we have vastly inferior coffee chains that make Starbucks appear to be some form of caffeinated nirvana. I mean if you want to wait in an unfathomably long line for a cup of Hot Brown liquid you can go to Tim Hortons (also you can get a freshly thawed donut that was made over 3,000 km away.) I don't dare mention rolling up the rim or Tim Bits
Secondly don't you Aussies intentionally eat Vegemite?
I'm not even gonna talk about Burger Rings or Pie Floaters - I'v
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This is only true since they eff-d themselves over.
Tim's used to be a nice place to stop on a road trip for a cheap sandwich and a passable cup of coffee. The coffee wasn't that much worse than Starbucks (unless Starbucks had succeeded in programming your taste buds to expect a severe over-roast).
I live in Victoria, B.C. and we've had a pretty darn good microbrew and microroast scenes for a long time, for anyone who cared to seek them
'Drip coffee' != 'perfect' no matter how you do it (Score:5, Insightful)
You're welcome. :-)
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Drip coffee is WAY better.
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Tastes like plastic to me.
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You're not supposed to put the cup into your grinder.
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K-cups
In an age where we're trying to promote reusability and recycling and reduce waste, Your K-cups are a throwback, they're a waste of money, and you have little control over how your coffee is made.
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Drip coffee lacks the grit that you get in an espresso. The texture of drip is as boring as tea, it comes out as brown hot water.
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depends on how you filter the loose leaf tea. I definitely get almost zero sediment with a high quality whole leaf such as white silver needle tea (Bai Hao Yinzhen White Tea). Tea that is cut or broken would leave more sediment in there, and a pot with a traditional filter would allow some smaller pieces through. I typically brew in a pot with a stainless steel wire filter, and I would not normally pour the sediment into a person's cup.
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depends on how you filter the loose leaf tea.
Depends more on the tea. If you're using fannings or broken leaves, then sure, you'll get sediment. If you're using whole-leaf, not as much, though the tendency for breakage depends on processing and drying.
I definitely get almost zero sediment with a high quality whole leaf such as white silver needle tea (Bai Hao Yinzhen White Tea).
Yeah, when you're using a style of tea that's minimally processed and dried directly (white tea) and specifically hand-plucked for large whole leaves (silver needle), then yeah, you won't get sediment. If you have a more heavily processed whole-leaf tea (e.g., most black teas) that go through a lot mo
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But it's usually just brown water with sediment, not a thick sludge like coffee.
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Use a metal filter in the drip maker.
It's still not great, but most of the oils you are missing are trapped by the paper filter more than just 'floating on top'.
There are people who hate the bitter and add paper to press like methods. You can also get wimpy coffee out of a press by cutting the steep time. A 90 second steep and the coffee might as well be decaf.
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You can also get wimpy coffee out of a press by cutting the steep time.
No kidding, that's why I said 8 minutes steep time. Any more than that does you no good, any less than that and you're not getting the most out of the grounds.
There are people who hate the bitter and add paper to press like methods.
Those are people who probably don't really like coffee that much in the first place. They should stick to light roast, or just make tea. Keep in mind the average person doesn't know really good coffee from a hole in the ground, they only notice when it's really, really bad; the average person also drinks a 'coffee-like beverage' that is little more th
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Have you ever just eaten a mouth full of salt? Taking a flavour in isolation to determine if it is a good component of a final product is just utterly stupid.
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try an Aeropress... great coffee
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I was at a clients a couple of years ago and they had an espresso machine. I was so impressed with the ease of use/quality I ordered one. I threw out my drip machine a week or so later as I could not go back. The prices on the machines have come down so while I still view it as a luxury, its not that much of a luxury. I think 500 buys the non-fancy version of the one I got. There are a plethora of models.
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Press plungers leave far too much fine sediment in your cup.
Funny, I've never had that problem, but then again I grind the beans correctly -- that being, as coarse as possible. Hence the 8 minute steep time when brewing it, to allow proper extraction.
Also, I don't have hundreds of dollars for an espresso machine. A press is the best of all possible worlds, requires no electricity, I can make coffee anywhere, so long as I can get hot water to make it.
What about Cold Coffee? (Score:1)
I like my coffee (Score:2)
I like my coffee like I like my women, freshly ground and hard pressed.
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http://www.tshirthell.com/funn... [tshirthell.com]
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I was waiting for this thread. I like it hot, strong, and bitter, and available on most NYC street corners for under five dollars.
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I like it just a little bitter, loaded with Irish whiskey and covered in whipped cream.
Coffee taste is Subjective. End of story. (Score:5, Insightful)
Arguing how to make the "perfect" cup of coffee is like trying to convince the world what makes up the "perfect" soulmate.
If there's anything to be extracted from Starbucks here, it's that "perfect" coffee is as subjective as the justification behind their insane menu options.
Pointless bullshit surveys are pointless. You probably won't even be able to convince a large enough test group to validate the results anyway, and bringing math into the equation is as useless as bringing math into the bedroom.
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Pointless bullshit surveys are pointless.
Are you talking about TFA at all? There was no "survey" here. And, as usual, the media headline exaggerates the research and distorts it. The original paper makes no claim about the "perfect" coffee, only modeling some of the extraction rates and coffee concentration (which they claim is related to "quality" but they don't describe that any further or specify which is "better").
You probably won't even be able to convince a large enough test group to validate the results anyway, and bringing math into the equation is as useless as bringing math into the bedroom.
I already linked the original article above and discussed it a bit. Frankly, this "study" sounds like what would happen if you
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Frankly, this "study" sounds like what would happen if you took a couple beginning grad students in chemical engineering and put them in a room where they were so tired and caffeine deprived they started applying their diffusion models and mass transfer to coffee... and then a math grad student walked in and said, "Hey -- let's not use the numerical approximations... I can do some fancier symbolic stuff and get some cooler equations."
Frankly, this sounds like a couple of bean suckers got higher than giraffe pussy one afternoon, and came up with this brain-baked nonsense to waste a few hours.
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Except that most people will have certain things they want and others that they don't want. For example you may have a high tolerance for astringency as long as the coffee is strong; or you may not mind burnt notes as long as it has caramelized sweetness. But if you don't handle the coffee carefully you'll get a mish-mash of flavor notes that's bound to have something you don't like: burnt AND watery for example. Those don't normally go together, but it's certainly possible to produce a cup of coffee that
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Right, but the summary says they are doing the math to figure out how each person should cut their beans.
That is, I like my coffee at strength X, so I should grind the beans to Y granularity.
Gee, that's nice. How quaint. They're going to tell me how I should cut my beans. Should we initiate the flame war on what kind of coffee bean should be used, or are we still chopping heads off over the different methods of brewing?
Coffee taste, strength, brewing style, temperature, bean preference, how many other variables should we add here when it is ALL subjective? Pointless tests are pointless.
Great job mathematicians (Score:2)
Petroleum Engineering FTW! (Score:2, Informative)
Interesting. This is a classic example of Darcy's law (fluid flow in porous media). Coffee is a classic dual-porosity system. First, you have to model the flow through the intra-granular pores in the coffee grounds and the removal of water soluble and hydrophobic compounds (i.e. "oils") from the grain surfaces. Then you also need to model the water imbibition into the grains and the transport of the same compounds to the surface of the grains. What a fun twist on petroleum reservoir simulation. Yeah, I've w
A dash will do you (maybe a pinch) (Score:2)
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Ancient Egypt? Really? Professor Wikipedia had this to say: "The earliest substantiated evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree is from the 15th century, in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen."
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Math will let us.... (Score:4, Funny)
brew a cup that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee
percolator is best (Score:2)
Either a percolator or a moka pot is my preference over drip. I would be interested in finding the ideal parameters for that. Temperature (boiling at my altitude is about the only option), time, grind, etc.
Math singular. WTF (Score:2)
Aeropress FTW (Score:2)
15g coffee per cup, 190F water, stir, press. Enjoy. Repeat as desired.
Exterior vs Interior (Score:2)
Why are they making the distinction between the exterior of the grain and interior? The exterior was interior just prior to meeting the grinder... That is silly Math Profs or not.
You are try to find the golden zone
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files... [shopify.com]
FTFY... (Score:3)
Composed of over 1,800 chemical components, coffee is one of the most widely consumed psychoactive drugs in the world
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Coffee is not a psychoactive drug, but one of those 1800 chemical components is.
If you're going to fix something it may help to actually get it right.
Well duh. (Score:2)
Who doesn't know that you need to have the right grind size for your brewing method? The physics and chemistry of brewing of course is complex, but from a user standpoint for any given variety of coffee you only have two to four parameters to vary: the size of the grounds, the amount of coffee grounds per cup, (sometimes) the temperature of the water, and (sometimes) the brewing time. Since you judge the results subjectively, you just have to experiment a bit and find what you like.
Now here's something you
Fellow humans (Score:2)
Equivalence theorem? (Score:4, Funny)
Given: A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
We have now demonstrated: A mathematician is a machine for converting theorems into coffee.
How to brew coffee .. it's the water (Score:2)
The TL;DR of coffee:
Brewing: Use a water with a minimum mineral content of 150-200 ppm (250-300 ppm is my preference).
Espresso: Use R.O. water or distilled water.
As always the bean and roast is part of the interaction as well so your mineral content and roast level are not completely independant.
http://www.thecoffeebrewers.co... [thecoffeebrewers.com]
FYI: Starbucks uses purified water for both espresso and drip in order to control for flavor. So when at Starbucks, avoid the drip and get an Americano
Um, no. (Score:2)
Quality beans that are properly roasted should never result in bitter coffee, regardless of the grain size. If your coffee is bitter it's because it's poor quality or burnt.
All beans and consumers equal? (Score:2)
I got sick. Now I don't like coffee (Score:2)
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starbucks french roast, ground fine, filtered water, slow brewing. yammv.
I've never liked Starbucks...as others have mentioned it often tastes kinda burnt and/or bitter to me. Tullys is okay but nothing special.
I find I get the best results for my taste by blending and grinding my own. Sumatran, Guatemalan, and Peaberry, ground large, one cup at a time. It makes Starbucks taste like reconstituted monkey piss.
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Matter of taste. "burnt" is just a darker roast that is preferred in most of the world. Starbucks isn't great coffee but it's not terrible either. All those that call it burnt just like a lighter roast. To me lighter roasts taste sour and disgusting. To each their own.
Re:perfect coffee... (Score:4, Interesting)
I heard once that Starbucks over-roasted their beans so the flavor would survive transport and storage for longer periods. And then the flavor caught on even without the extra transport and storage time. Kind of like India Pale Ale originally being brewed extra-hoppy so that it would survive the boat trip from the UK to India.
Can anyone confirm this?
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Confirm an opinion? Yes I can, Charbucks is over roasted, mediocre bean (at best) and insanely priced.
I can also point to facts, Charbucks was caught buying _Robusta_. They thought they were being discrete, buying Robusta from India. But India thought it meant they had 'arrived' as a coffee growing region and crowed to the world about it.
You might as well drink 'Folger's'.
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Robusta doesn't necessarily mean bad coffee though. Italians love it.
For you average cup of joe it makes an inferior drink, however if you're making an espresso it adds to the crema. Depends on what type of coffee you're making and what you're expecting.
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No, Italians combine it in small amounts with Arabica to create espresso blend. They use it judiciously, which is not the same as "love it".
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You could say Americans love bacon- but it doesn't make up the majority of our diet.
A true Espresso is not espresso to an Italian without a certain amount of Robusta. It's not just Espresso either, numerous dark roasts in that country (and other countries) contain some Robusta, it adds an earthy flavor that some find appealing. Certain countries have an aversion to robusta that others don't... and it's because most robusta out there IS nasty, but not all of it.
Even the nasty bitter taste associated with R
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You might as well drink 'Folger's'.
This is in fact what I do because I'm cheap and it's good enough in my opinion.
I used to buy coffee beans from Starbuck's clones (there are plenty of smaller regional ones) but why pay that much when I just want to make a strong caffeine drink at home?
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Coffee in India might be getting better.
But I've never seen Indian beans anywhere labeled as such.
I did once buy a bottle of Indian wine. Really opened up the sluice gates at both ends, worse than Mad Dog 20/20 (yes I tasted MD 30 years ago).
As to charbucks, spit.
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You should be able to post a link to someone, somewhere selling Indian coffee. Do it.
If I ran a coffee shop and had limited shelf space, there is no way in hell I'd bump any reputable coffee for Indian.
Re:perfect coffee... (Score:4, Interesting)
I heard once that Starbucks over-roasted their beans so the flavor would survive transport and storage for longer periods.
Dark roast coffees maintain a more consistent flavor between batches and different bean types. Lighter roast coffee can be very inconsistent. If you're trying to maintain a consistent "brand" it's much easier to do with a darker roast.
And again... "over-roasted" is subjective. Many people around the world (and even in parts of the US) prefer a darker roast to your typical new-England single-crack roasts.
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Mojo Coffee is great coffee.
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Oswald McWeany opined:
Matter of taste. "burnt" is just a darker roast that is preferred in most of the world.
Sorry, but you're wrong.
Back in the 1990's, on vacation in the Big Island of Hawaii, my wife and I got caught in a genuinely torrential downpour while driving on a narrow, two-lane road on the Kona coast. Rain so intense that I literally couldn't see more than five feet beyond the hood of our rental car. Scary, actual, given the winding road. So I pulled off into the first space we saw (at about 5 MPH) - which turned out to be the Kona Coffee Growers Co-op's storefront/roasting facilit
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None of that says I am wrong. "Burnt" is subjective. Just like with toast, some would say that toast is burnt the moment it gets dark brown crust on the outside of it (carbonization), others say it is when it turns black and it's best when it is dark brown and crunchy. Just because some Hawaiian barista likes medium roast doesn't make dark roast "wrong" or "bad". In much of the world a medium-dark to dark roast is the preferred amount of roasting.
If you want truly "burnt" that would be a Spanish roast w
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Oswald McWeany insisted:
None of that says I am wrong. "Burnt" is subjective. Just like with toast, some would say that toast is burnt the moment it gets dark brown crust on the outside of it (carbonization), others say it is when it turns black and it's best when it is dark brown and crunchy. Just because some Hawaiian barista likes medium roast doesn't make dark roast "wrong" or "bad". In much of the world a medium-dark to dark roast is the preferred amount of roasting.
If you want truly "burnt" that would be a Spanish roast when the beans are literally blackened.
Either you're being purposely obtuse, or you're functionally illiterate.
The expert with whom I talked was the Kona Coffee Growers Co-op roastmaster. His job is to supervise the roasting of TONS of Kona coffee per day, prior to it being bagged and shipped to customers of the growers' co-op. There was a barista in the shop - but he wasn't it. He was a technical supervisor of a factory operation. And, when HE said that dark roast coffee burns the skin off the bean (and French roast burn
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Let me guess, you voted for Trump.
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Oswald McWeany sneered:
Let me guess, you voted for Trump.
No, genius. I did not.
I'm not insane, I base my beliefs on scientific facts - and, absent specific technical expertise of my own, I place considerably greater confidence in the opinions and analysis of actual experts in a given field than I do on those of Internet trolls with no such credentials.
Re:perfect coffee... (Score:5, Funny)
A couple years ago (2012 or 13), I was gifted a bag of Starbucks "Christmas Roast". I came home, ground some and made a drip. It was very bitter, but I just laced it with cream and sugar until it was ok. Then my GF came home, came straight to my study and asked, "have you lost your fucking mind? why were you smoking in the kitchen?" She thought I'd been smoking cigarettes in the there.
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Starbucks....ewwwww. There are lots of better alternatives. My wife and I sample a lot of different coffees and sometimes make our own blends. One prepackaged that we do buy again and again is "Jack's Jammin' Java Juice", available on eBay. It comes and goes but if it's available it's well worth the cost.
Also, I have to say that the Costco Guatemalan coffee is pretty good, especially if you kick it up by adding a little French Roast to it. Yum.
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Usually turkish coffee is made with the sugar heated while in the pot. It's not usually bitter because most people seem to take it with sugar. (medium sugar being the most common)
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Try this http://www.dictionary.com/brow... [dictionary.com]
Click the little speaker icon next to the word "maths"
It will, as if my magic, pronounce the word for you.
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