Category Archives: Saturday Supplement

A Saturday Supplement is any post that’s not a Coffee Spot

My Daily Coffee Routine

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My daily espresso, being pulled into the Coffee Spot cup on my Sage Barista Express, while my Bonavita scales weigh and time the shot.Today’s Saturday Supplement is inspired by Mike Stanbridge, who suggested in a tweet that I should write about my coffee making methods and routine. Initially I dismissed it, feeling it would be boring, but I’ve had a rethink and, now that I’ve written it, you can decide for yourself. Who’s right: Mike or me?

The change of mind came about because of what else but COVID-19. I was thinking about people’s routines, particularly those new to working from home/working remotely, something I’ve been doing for over 10 years. So, I thought, I could write about my daily routine in the hope that it would help some people. What stopped me was the initial thought that it had nothing to do with coffee. The Coffee Spot is, after all, a blog about coffee (and travel, if you count the Travel Spot). However, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that my daily routine is my coffee routine. Hence the change of heart.

Of course, this post comes with the usual caveat. What works for me won’t necessarily work for you. Take what inspires you in this post, make it your own and feel free to ignore the rest!

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Making Coffee at Home: Scales

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My travelling coffee scales.Welcome to another instalment of my Coffee at Home series which has, to date, focused mostly on brewing methods, with simples guides to the cafetiere, Clever Dripper and AeroPress. However, I’ve also written about grinding coffee at home, while today I want to turn my attention to another important piece of equipment: scales.

Let’s start by answering a simple question: do you need scales in order to make good coffee? Emphatically, no, you don’t. As I’ve shown in my first three guides, you can make good coffee without scales. However, that doesn’t mean that scales should be overlooked, particularly as you get drawn further into the world of speciality coffee (warning: in case you haven’t guessed, that’s what this series is all about, drawing you slowly down the rabbit hole of speciality coffee, one article at a time, until it’s too late and you can’t back out).

Back to scales. Scales can be very useful: for example, I use them whenever I make coffee. In particular, as you approach the more specialised end of coffee making, such as pour-over and espresso, I’d argue that scales start to become essential. So, with that in mind, what should you be looking for?

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Brian’s Travel Spot: Heading Home – Boston to London

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My British Airways Boeing 777, waiting on the stand at Terminal 5 in Boston, ready to take me back to London. I wonder when I'll fly again?Welcome to the fifth and final instalment of this, the second (and possibly last) Travel Spot of 2020. It covers my recent trip to America, which began when I flew to Boston at the end of February. At that point I’d expected to spend five weeks in the US, culminating with two weeks in Chicago for work. However, as I explained in the previous instalment, the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic saw me abruptly cut short my trip the day after I arrived in Chicago, when I decided to head home.

I flew from Chicago to Boston on Monday, 16th March, staying overnight in an airport hotel so that I could catch my hastily rearranged flight back to the UK the following morning. It was a surreal experience, arriving at a near-deserted Chicago O’Hare airport on what should have been a busy Monday morning. However, that was nothing compared to my flight back to the UK, which is the subject of today’s Travel Spot.

It was as if someone had thrown a switch, changing the world almost overnight. When I’d flown to Chicago from Atlanta just three days before, the world had seemed pretty normal. Now it was anything but…

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Brian’s Travel Spot: Coast Starlight, Los Angeles to San Jose

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The glorious, vaulted ceilings of one of the old waiting rooms at Los Angeles' Union Station.Welcome to this, today’s bonus Travel Spot, covering a journey I took exactly a year and one day ago, when I boarded Amtrak Train No. 14, the Coast Starlight, at Los Angeles’ Union Station. This was part of a much larger, five-week trip that began in New Orleans, then saw me travel to Los Angeles, San Jose/the Bay Area and Chicago (on the California Zephyr), from where I (eventually) returned home.

The Coast Starlight is a daily service between Los Angeles and Seattle, although I was only going as far as San Jose, an all-day journey that departed Los Angeles at 10:10 and arrived in San Jose at 20:11, ten hours and one minute later! It was also very cheap, a one-way advance fare in coach class costing just $60, although since I was going to be on the train for 10 hours, I’d decided to spend the extra $30 for a seat in business class. Along the way, I saw a lot of the Pacific Coast as well as some awesome mountain scenery, plus I had two excellent meals in the dining car!

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Making Coffee at Home: AeroPress

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Coffee brewing in my AeroPress, using the inverted method, as seen from above.Welcome to another instalment of my Coffee at Home series (which now has its own page on the Coffee Spot). I started three weeks ago with a simple guide to the cafetiere to help (non-coffee) people who have unexpectedly found themselves at home all day due to COVID-19 make good coffee. I’ve also published articles on the importance of grinding coffee at home, as well as a guide to the Clever Dripper, another simple, reliable method. Today it’s the turn of the AeroPress, one of the coffee world’s favourite preparation methods (it’s even got its own World Championship!).

I’m a big fan of the AeroPress, so much so that I have three of them (one for home, one at my Dad’s and one that forms an integral part of my travelling coffee kit). However, it wasn’t always the case. I got my first AeroPress at the end of 2012, when I visited Leighton Buzzard’s House of Coffee, but I really didn’t get on with it. In fact, had it not been for a chance encounter at the Caffé Culture Show in May of the following year, I might have given up on it entirely. So, what changed? And why?

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Brian’s Travel Spot: Heading Home – Chicago to Boston

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My Global WAKEcup, full of coffee I'd just made in the lounge and brought on the plane with me before my flight from Chicago to Boston.Welcome to the fourth instalment of this, the second (and possibly last) Travel Spot of 2020. It covers my recent trip to America, which began when I flew to Boston at the end of February. It’s been shaped throughout by the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic, no more so than at the end of the trip. I’d originally planned to return at the end of March, but, as you’ll see, that’s not quite what happened.

I’d arrived in Chicago on Saturday, 14th March, having flown in from Atlanta. Everything felt fairly normal as I settled into my usual hotel right on the corner of the Chicago River, although the hotel itself felt rather quiet. The following day was gorgeous, with clear, blue skies, the temperature hovering a few degrees above freezing.

While people were taking precautions COVID-19, the city felt pretty normal. However, by the end of the day, the Governor of Illinois had announced the closure of all bars, clubs, restaurants and cafes except for takeaway customers and I decided that it was time to head home. I rearranged my flights that evening and, the following morning, I left for the airport. When, I wonder, will I be able to return?

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Making Coffee at Home: Clever Dripper

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A Clever Dripper, sitting on top of a glass carafe, the brewed coffee draining through the bottom of the filter.Two weeks ago, I launched my Coffee at Home series (which now has its own page on the Coffee Spot) with a simple guide to the cafetiere to get you started, followed by a piece on the importance of getting a grinder at home. As I explained in the cafetiere guide, it works well for bold coffees (I typically use it with espresso blends) but less well for subtle or delicate single-origins. So today I’m taking you one step further with a method that’s more suitable for those subtle/delicate single-origin coffees.

I’ll be honest: there are plenty of excellent filter methods out there, each with its own set of devoted fans. There’s the AeroPress, V60, Chemex and Kalita Wave to name a few. However, today I’m writing about the Clever Dripper, which, in my opinion, is the easiest method for those of you taking your next steps into home-brewing. Like the cafetiere, it doesn’t require any fancy equipment, other than the Clever Dripper itself and some filter papers. It also shares other important characteristics with the cafetiere: it’s simple, reliable and, above all, very forgiving. All you really need is coffee, a mug, kettle and a timer (plus, ideally, a grinder).

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Brian’s Travel Spot: Flying from Atlanta to Chicago

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Making my own coffee in the Admirals Club at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport. On display are my Travel Press and Aergrind, with beans from Tandem Coffee Roasters and hot water from the lounge's coffee machine.Welcome to the third instalment of this, the second (and possibly last, the way things are going) Travel Spot of 2020, all about my trip to America just before the COVID-19 crisis. Part 1 covered my flight to Boston with British Airways to spend a couple of weeks with Amanda in Portland. In Part 2, Amanda and I travelled from Portland to Atlanta by a combination of car and train to visit her mother. Then, after a week in the Atlanta suburbs, we parted company and I flew to Chicago, which is the subject of today’s Travel Spot. I was supposed to be there for two weeks, although subsequent events radically altered that plan!

It’s now exactly three weeks since I made that flight and, sitting here, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it feels very surreal to be writing about taking an internal flight in the US when so much has changed since then. However, at the time I flew, although people were starting to take precautions against catching COVID-19, everything seemed pretty normal. Little did I know at the time that this would be the last “normal” flight I’m likely to take for who knows how long!

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Making Coffee at Home: Grinding

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A comparison of different grind sizes from coarse (top left) to very fine (bottom right). The first three are ground with my feldgrind hand grinder: cafetiere (top left), V60 (top right), Aeropress (bottom left), while the fourth (bottom right) is my espresso grinder, ground for espresso in my Sage Barista Express.Last week I wrote about making coffee at home, using just a cafetiere and kettle. At the time, I said that the most important thing you can add is a grinder, so picking up on that, here’s a short post on the importance of grinding your own coffee at home, including some practical advice to help get you started.

The simple reason I advise everyone to grind their own coffee is that it tastes better! Coffee ages over time, slowly losing its taste, but ground coffee ages incredibly quickly (it’s to do with the amount of surface area exposed to the air). In contrast, whole beans keep much longer (and can be successfully frozen to further prolong their life). You then just grind the beans you need, ideally right before brewing, and off you go. You should notice an immediate improvement in taste.

Like many things in coffee, it can seem a little daunting at first, but grinding your own coffee needn’t be difficult, particularly if you are only grinding for one preparation method, which means you’re not always fiddling around with settings. In this post, I’ll talk about selecting a grinder and the all-important consideration: how fine to grind!

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Brian’s Travel Spot: The Demise of Amtrak’s Full Dining Service

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Amtrak's new "contemporary" menu on its Viewliner sleeper services: prepacked meals, delivered in a paper bag, a far cry from the full service dining cars it replaced. Bottom, my vegan Asian noodle bowl, and top, Amanda's red wine braised beef.One of the great pleasures of taking Amtrak’s long-distance trains used to be the dining car, where you could enjoy three hot meals a day, cooked to order from a varied menu, along with dessert and full table service. While this is still true on services running west of the magical line from Chicago to New Orleans, since the start of October last year, Amtrak has replaced its full dining service on all other sleeper services (except the Silver Star from New York to Miami, which is due to move to the new service on 1st May this year).

Although the new service is touted as an “upgrade” by Amtrak, it’s anything but. Having experienced (and loved) the full service dining car, what’s replaced it is vastly inferior, as Amanda and I discovered when we took the train from New York to Atlanta at the start of this month. Instead of a bustling dining car, full of happy passengers, we found a near empty carriage, grumpy staff and, while the food was good, the menu was limited (particularly if you don’t eat meat). As an experience, it was an immense disappointment, fundamentally detracting from the enjoyment of our journey.

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