I Had a B-Day

For those of you that didn't know.. my birthday was three days ago. So why not blog about it when it was more relevant? As it turns out.. the older you get the less significant your birthdays become. I sort of forgot to mention it.. also I was super-busy at the time. But yeah, I have now had my 21st birthday for the sixth time. I mostly spent it with my family, eating tortillas and just generally chilling whilst my awesome wife gave me the gift of time.. time to do nothing. When you have a three-year old, that is actually something you value. I also went for a beer with the Godfather and his non-married romantically linked non-cohabitant. All in all, very nice and relaxed.. just the way I like it.

So.. about my birthday.. I wonder if it's noticeable that I have been kind of obsessed with coffee lately ?

The missus gave me a random wooden box (amongst other things, pictured below..) that is clearly meant to house ground coffee or whole beans, but as anyone more knowledgeable with coffee knows, I won't be storing anything like that in there. Because it's a non-airtight wooden box. But I will think of something to have in it.

My mother-in-law got me a KRUPS F203 Grinder and some yet to be verified point of origin whole beans. I received both of these yesterday. Both also pictured below.. if anyone happens to know the origin and/or blend of the beans let me know. I already sent a inquiry to the company in Netherlands (ICS) and I am curious to see what they have to say.

Obviously I have already tried out the grinder, and well..

PROS: Small yet stylish. Fits 75g of beans (Brasilia only does 30g). 10 or so seconds of electric grind time as opposed to the rough 1 or so minute of workout I get with my manual grinder. Makes about the same amount of noise as the manual grinder albeit at a higher frequency. About the same amount of sludge as the Brasilia at my preferred setting.

CONS: Static makes the ground cling to the machine, which reduces the amount of usable coffee. Sure it's only by .5 grams or so but still. Coffee ground has more chunky bits in it (more uneven) because of the F203 being a blade grinder, instead of a burr. A female dog to clean.

STALEMATE: Significant amount of aroma, texture and origin specific sub-flavours got lost with the F203 ground compared to Brasilia ground. In any other case I would put that as a CON, but I happen to have some beans from Mexico that has a very unique origin flavour (one that I haven't noticed anywhere before). I don't like this flavour at all and luckily for me the F203 dampened that a lot. Hence the stalemate, but in any other case I would put that as a CON.