{"id":226832,"date":"2010-01-25T11:17:13","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T16:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=3880"},"modified":"2010-01-25T11:17:13","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T16:17:13","slug":"coffee-rituals-cosmic-variance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/226832","title":{"rendered":"Coffee Rituals | Cosmic Variance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re long overdule for an open-type thread around here, so let me provide the excuse by asking one of the world&#8217;s great questions: what&#8217;s the best way to make coffee? <\/p>\n<p> I&#8217;m an eclectic coffee drinker; I like espresso but also enjoy a really good cup of American coffee, and I prefer coffee black but am willing to adulterate it with milk if I suspect the quality is not going to be that high. (Sugar under no circumstances.) For the past few years I&#8217;ve relied on the lowest-effort method I know of that is guaranteed to produce a good cup: freshly-ground dark roast beans, placed in a simple cone filter and hot water poured right in. Practically instant coffee, but a result that can be as good as the beans allow.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/2010\/01\/S1CO.jpg\" alt=\"S1CO\" title=\"S1CO\" width=\"241\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-3881\"\/> But I&#8217;d like to start mixing more espresso into my home coffee experience, so I&#8217;m in the market for a new espresso machine. If I were a physicist of means, I might go for a work of art like the Elektra Micro Casa Lever on right. Or would I? This is a spring-action lever machine, which is to be contrasted with the manual levers, not to mention the automatics and super-automatics, and then there&#8217;s the matter of boilers, switches, heat exchangers &#8230; a complete mess. The pumps are certainly elegant, but I&#8217;d also like something that is functional and doesn&#8217;t require constant pampering. So I am in the unusual position of being frozen with indecision about what kind of espresso machine to get. Any opinions out there?<\/p>\n<p>The ground rules here are:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>There&#8217;s no such thing as right or wrong; different people have different tastes, for which different approaches are appropriate.<\/li>\n<li>Answers with specific comparisons of advantages and disadvantages are more useful than simple insistence on truth.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I do understand that this is the internet and rules are unlikely to be followed, but I feel I should try.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously not all advice on such a topic is too be trusted. The <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/01\/22\/engineers-guide-to-drinks\/\">Engineer&#8217;s Guide to Drinks<\/a> thread featured a sobering (as it were) number of people who think a &#8220;martini&#8221; should just be chilled gin rather than a <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2005\/11\/21\/three-and-im-under-the-table\/\">proper cocktail<\/a>, and were proud to admit it in public! So caveat lector. And if you want to talk about something other than coffee, be our guest.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/SHkgNIJYsac-IC1yK6AzEaSKtEs\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/SHkgNIJYsac-IC1yK6AzEaSKtEs\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/SHkgNIJYsac-IC1yK6AzEaSKtEs\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/SHkgNIJYsac-IC1yK6AzEaSKtEs\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/CosmicVarianceBlog\/~4\/Ppn4L9ecfNs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/DiscoverMag\/~4\/i0nHxzeP9Zo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re long overdule for an open-type thread around here, so let me provide the excuse by asking one of the world&#8217;s great questions: what&#8217;s the best way to make coffee? I&#8217;m an eclectic coffee drinker; I like espresso but also enjoy a really good cup of American coffee, and I prefer coffee black but am [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}