Cushy plier handles

Perfect suggestion.

... if it jumps out of the sink in your travel trailer, landing on the floor, "last" is not all that long.

I bought a refurb'ed Bunn A10-series in 2002. I've replaced both thermal fuses. One at about year 4 and the other around year 6. Radio Shack online. They were... I don't know... a buck a piece?

The A10 has an (internally) adjustable thermostat. Going from 500' elevation to 5500' means a drastic reduction in boiling point. At low elevation my preference is to set it to 205F... which is completely impossible at 5500'. I have it set to 197F here. The B series (what you see in big box stores) has a fixed thermostat.

Three minute coffee as a convenience is the least of the advantage. The quality of the coffee is much improved over a Mr. Coffee. That's true of any method using the "optimal" parameters for coffee brewing. The temperature should be in the 195-205F. range. Hotter extracts more bitters (caffeine being one of those). Cooler fails to extract many of the body components. Optimal brew time is 3 to 5 minutes. Longer extracts more of the bitters. Shorter... well, just plain isn't enough time to extract much of anything.

Coarse grind / light roast can somewhat make up for too hot or too long brew times. Fine grind / dark roasts can better withstand too cool or too short brew times.

It's all about getting a nice balance between the sugars, acids and bitters. Many people think of a bitter cup as "strong" so reduce the amount of grinds they use. This is exactly the wrong direction to go. The beginning of the brew process gets the very soluble compounds; mainly the sugars. Only after the bulk of easily dissolved compounds are extracted do the less soluble compounds start to extract. The more grounds you start with, the more time it takes for the extraction of bitters to start.

So, if your coffee is "strong" aka, bitter, use the correct amount of grinds, 17:1 water to grinds by weight(*), cooler brew temperature, shorter brew time, coarser grind, lighter roast... in whatever combination floats your boat.

(*) For a typical 50 oz. coffee pot, that amounts to

2.9 oz. of grinds. With our 48 oz. pot, I generally go with 76-79 grams.

For less caffeine, use 100% arabica. For even less caffeine, try Monsooned Malabar specifically. If you don't care about flavor, and just want the caffiene jolt, go for blends high in robusta.

The key to "great" coffee is all the above, using coffee roasted no more than two weeks prior and ground no more than hours prior. Grinding creates orders of magnitude more surface area, and oxidation begins immediately.

Bunn takes care of time and temperature, but the rest of the quality cup is still in your hands.

It is a bad wait in that it's already been extracting bitters for many minutes.

There's a saying that you get what you pay for. The double wall stainless caraffe with the BTX-B (in the travel trailer) is unbreakable.

Maybe try some Monsooned Malabar once? Low caffeine, low acidity.

Negligible as far as I'm concerned. The A-10 has a keep warm "blanket" heater that draws 37 watts, so less than a KWh/day. The B series will obviously use a bit more with its exposed tank. Our Melitta Momentum of similar design to the B series, used 1.17 KWh/day.

Oops. Looking back at an old post on alt.coffee, I find,

I don't recall now what the OEM spec was on the thermal fuses, and I can't find it in the online manuals, but at the time I replaced them, 141°C. was the closest Radio Shack had. This machine never blew a thermal fuse for the first three years we had it, and then three fuses the following three years.

Gunner Asch on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:26:09 -0800 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

Ah, but that's all "organic" and "natural", donchaknow?

It is why I buy my soda pop in Canada - up north it is made with Real Sugar, which is natural and organic, not like that "high fructose corn syrup" stuff they get from a refinery.

tschus pyotr

(...)

Snipped and saved 'everything I need to know about coffee'.

Much appreciated, Steve.

--Winston

(...)

Yup! Just about the same here.

--Winston

Gunner Asch on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 13:06:32 -0800 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

Oh yes, that too. And I've seen it growing in urban areas. I'm told it got the name Belladonna" because the "Good Ladies" would use it to dilate their eyes, thus making them "beautiful." OF course now they can do that with Contacts ...

What really concerns me, are all the "health foodists" who are going to find themselves at the end of a life eating naturally, in the hospice, dieing of natural causes.

My GE electric teakettle died last week. I took it apart (special spanner screwdriver tip required), broke a piece off so I could get to the contacts, burnished them with a claycoated paper, buffed the blue terminal and connector, and put it back together. It worked! Alas, only one more day. I tried to find parts online but couldn't, so I asked Hamilton Beach, which makes them for Wally World. After almost

3 weeks of delays later, they came back and said that the switch was not available for those. But for just $29.99, I could buy a replacement kettle which looked nothing like the artsy one I bought. That's a full five dollar savings off their online price!

Damn, life is sure unfair lately.

-- You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. --Jack London

(...)

I get (and give) lots of neat stuff via my local Freecycles.

Prolly lots of electric kettles available free for pickup if you ask nicely.

--Winston

I recently dropped out of the Rogue Valley Recyclers (a branch off FreeCycle when they got intrusive and started selling our email addresses.) due to moderator malfunction (took weeks to post a simple message) and lacka booty (25:1 wants vs haves) I did well and found an outlet for lots of things I didn't want to just throw away. I got one person on a bicycle who was walking 4 miles a day to work, etc.

Yeah, FreeCycle/Recyclers is an excellent idea.

-- You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. --Jack London

(...)

What about Medford?

My local Freecycle group is so broken that two competing Freecycle groups also occupy the same space. One mentally ill moderator can ruin the whole experience.

Good on ya.

Freecycle has treated me very well.

--Winston

I refuse to work with the spam-mongering bastards at FreeCycle again after what they did.

Indeed.

-- You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. --Jack London

Maybe I missed something, what did they do?

i

Aww, no two Freecycle groups are very much alike. I got burned by a famous moderator on my local group and just went around her to competing groups in the area. They have been cooperative and civilized, though I agree that all have slowed their throughput speed significantly.

Back on the bicycle, Jaques! :)

--Winston

Does anyone else suspect their moderator intercepts the most tasty offers and that they never show up on the general list?

(...)

Yup. My postings used to go up instantly. That new 3 hour delay is necessary for the moderator to check with various friends and family members, I'll wager.

I recently offered a box of thermal printer labels and was delighted to see the post go up within a few minutes. Guess the moderator didn't see the value in them. :)

She was right, too. Only one person responded.

--Winston

They were selling our email addresses.

-- Invest in America: Buy a CONgresscritter today!

Wow. To whom, I wonder?

i