Remember how we home roasted coffee beans with The Durhams, all that time ago when we were back in Australia? Remember how crazy the Brezzinator 44 was, and how doubtful you all were that it would work*? Yeah? Well – check this out!

Beautiful crema!

Yeah! That should keep all you haters quiet! Not only was the crema amazing, but it tasted amazing, too! The whole packet didn’t last a week – we were having doubles every morning!

So thanks very much Durhams – please open a store for us in Putney, we’re fresh out of beans!

* Doubts may be false, I’m not sure anyone is even reading anymore, since I changed web hosts.

Yes, it may look like a paint stripper which has burnt a hole into an old bread maker, and all sitting atop a four-burner BBQ tray, but what you’re actually looking at my friends, is the Brezzinator 44: The Durhams’ coffee roasting machine. No, I didn’t believe it would work either when I first saw it, but you’d be amazed at how effective it is!

Fired up for around 15 minutes, the paint stripper pushes the temperature of the coffee beans up to around 215 degrees celcius where they go through two distinct cracking phases. The trick to a nice roast is to quickly transfer the beans to the fan-mounted cooling tray, which rapidly brings their temperature down before the sugar caramalizes too much (and they develop a distinct burnt flavour).

Only time (and our seasoned palettes of course) will tell how good they taste, but if the sample we enjoyed at the Durhams’ house beforehand was any indication – well, suffice to say we’re in for a flavour sensation when we get back to old Blighty.

A number of weeks ago (well, to be honest, it was on my tour of the office when I first started 18 months ago) I noticed an espresso machine tucked away in the corner of our kitchen at work. “Hello…” I thought, “what have we here?”. It was a stupid question really; clearly it was an espresso machine.

Regrettably, instead of immediately going out and buying some beans and trying that sucker out, I held off. And since the kitchen is at the other end of the building to me, it’s rare that I pay it a visit – hence the espresso machine faded from my memory. But a man needs his espresso – so I joined the rest of the lads from work in subjecting myself to the horrible “coffee” served up by the local vendors. It’s so appalling that Starbucks became our local supplier. Yes, it pains me to write it as much as it pains you to read it. I’m even more ashamed to admit that we go there so often that the staff know us all. By name.

But no more! I recently had to visit the kitchen to search for some stolen tupperware, and during my search I again encountered the espresso machine. “Hello!” I thought, “What have we here?”. Once again a stupid question, but I’m not the fastest learner when it comes to kitchen appliances.

So today I took the machine for a test run. I must admit, it’s not the most beautiful piece of equipment you’ve ever seen – it’s clear that the other users don’t treat it too well (dried coffee stuck in the grouphead, overflowing drip-tray, etc etc). But like a four-eyed librarian that rises to become the prom queen in a cheesy Disney flick, I managed to extract every ounce of potential that the little thing could muster.

And the results were – well, exceptional! All I need is a better frothing jug (an empty mug just doesn’t cut it) and it’ll be latte art time at work. Yeah, baby!

… to Al an Suz, for sending us some Zarraffa’s Coffee all the way from Australia! We’re almost at the bottom of our current bag, and I reckon we’ll be onto this stuff before the week is out.

Meanwhile, they must have each donated one of their vital organs to afford the postage; why-oh-why does Australia Post have to charge such unreasonable fees to send things overseas?! I’m sure that explains why we don’t get care packages more often…. *sniff*

Kristy is away today, so there’s no-one here to drink the second shot of our morning espresso. We’re currently on Monmouth Coffee beans which ordinarily quite nice; but I’m sorry to report, today’s coffee is exceptional.

*sigh* What a waste.

Two doctors in one week! Well, three if you count my lovely friend Suz in Australia, but I didn’t call her for medical advice, so probably just the two.

Anyway – tonight’s visit was to our regular doctor, and was pre-booked on Monday. (As an aside: I don’t particularly like that you have to book so very far in advance for a doctor’s appointment over here – hence why I had to go to the walk-in clinic on Wednesday. Still, to book on Monday and be seen on Friday is from all accounts somewhat of a miracle, so I guess I can’t complain too much.)

Today’s doctor – Doctor Drewry to be precise (though I’m sure my spelling of his name is anything but precise) has prescribed a nasal spray for me to start taking. Two pumps per nostril. He reckons that it will help prevent my issue of my nose becoming uber-blocked as soon as I lie down (which in turn makes me snore good, but sleep bad). Good news indeed; except that it will take up to two weeks before it has any effect! So now I’m trialling this system for three months, and if after that time I’m still having issues, he’s going to refer me to an ENT specialist.

On a related topic, lovely friend Shelley (yes I have more than one lovely friend) reckons I should try giving up dairy for a week to see if that clears up my sinuses. I’m not sure how I feel about this one though; lately it seems as though going dairy free and waving the “lactose intolerant” flag is the new vegetarian, so I’m kind-of defiant out of principle. Plus – what would I have in my lattes?!

(Latte shot especially for Gute!)

I recently saw a news article on the BBC saying that the UK is going to introduce a “gold star standard” for coffee houses. Apparently the idea is to help Brits understand the difference between “coffee” and “espresso”, and to try to educate them as to what a good quality coffee should taste like.

The customers they talked to during the segment made it clear why this was necessary, with such intelligent remarks as, “I don’t know what’s in it, but it tastes good!”. Hmmmm…

Anyway – I’m wondering how I’d go about applying for one of these gold stars! Maybe I could post it on our apartment door. Then the only question would be – how much should I charge per cup?

It’s been a very successful week in terms of acquisitions!

First up on the list is our new blender. Finally we’re back to enjoying a fruit smoothie every morning – hugely helpful towards the seven a day directive. And one wonderful thing about London is all the fresh berries that they have – and for so cheap!

Second on the list – Miss Silvia! We had planned to drive to Coventry last Saturday in order to pick her up, but we found out on the Friday before that we could no longer go due to circumstances beyond our control. Somewhat annoyed (I had already paid for the car hire), I jumped onto the google, and was pleased to discover that a retailer not too far from where I was working, sold the machine as well! (Now why on earth couldn’t I find them when I had looked previously?) And not only was their price £20 cheaper, but they also threw in a free 1KG bag of coffee as well!

Let me tell you, that was one very uncomfortable trip home – Miss Silvia is heavy! Still, this is by far the most amazing machine I’ve ever used, and way more powerful than any of our previous machines. I am amazed how quickly it heats the milk – instead of two minutes or so like the last machine took, this one gets the job done in twenty seconds!

And finally, the Pièce de résistance – our new television. Kristy had been begging me to get a nice 40″ LCD with 1080p and lots of HDMI inputs (probably for that Playstation 3 she’s so keen on). So I just couldn’t take the begging anymore, and forked out for a nice Samsung box. Sweet!

We also accompanied it with a Philips DVD player which has 1080p upscaling, and a USB slot from which you can play DivX and MPEG movies. Totally awesome! It’s a wicked good setup – now all we need is broadband and Sky…

Our Amazon.com delivery came through a couple days back, and one of the things that it brought with it was our new coffee grinder! As I mentioned earlier, we got this one at a bargain price of only $29.99.

Well, they say that you get what you pay for, but so far the jury is still out on this one. If I had have paid the full price of $79.99, then I’m pretty sure I’d be sending it back. But at $29.99, I haven’t decided if it’s a keeper or not.

It certainly looks stylish enough for our little New York apartment, but that’s about as far as the pluses go. Unfortunately though, there’s plenty of negatives. Firstly, though you can turn the hopper to adjust how fine beans should be ground, it doesn’t seem to go low enough. Even on the finest setting, the grind comes out much too coarse. This means that you have to tamp the coffee extra hard in order to get the flavour out of it.

Secondly, the litte chamber down the bottom which catches the ground beans is very badly designed. There’s a bunch of static electricity in there, which means the grinds all stick to the edges of the chamber instead of collecting in a nice pile down the bottom. And lastly, it makes a really nasty noise while it’s on – not only is it loud, but it’s quite high pitched and hard on the ears.

At the end of the day, the coffees that we’ve had by using it have been very watered down (grind too coarse), but they taste ok if you don’t mind weak coffee. We’ll give it more of a run over the weekend, and send it back next week if we’re still not happy.

We’re running low on coffee. When we came back from Australia, we brought about 4 packets of coffee beans with us. Plus, we have 2 packets that we acquired at various times throughout our stay in the USA.

But the problem with having unground coffee beans is – you need to grind them. Seems rather obvious, really. And I’ve been reluctant to buy a cheap blade grinder for fear of producing sub-par coffee. So instead, I’ve purchased a burr grinder which I found on Amazon – generally it got good reviews, and most importantly, it didn’t break the bank. (In fact I got it on sale, from $79.99 down to $29.99!)

Since I’m a cheapskate though, I shipped it with Amazon’s “Free Super Saver Shipping” service – generally acceptable, but packages can take up to 10 days to be delivered. And in the meantime, we’ve run out of pre-ground Illy, so we’re only pulling out decafs! At least the latte art isn’t suffering.