I have something really quickly I want to talk about before I get into my post about coffee. I got a reminder today that I'm supposed to post the second "Podcast Sunday" article tomorrow. This is some advance warning that that may not go up at all, and if it does it will almost definitely be quite late.
I'm sorry for starting this series without at least a few backup posts in the chamber. I just got a little to excited to get the first post up talking about how much I love podcasts and what some of my favourites are that I jumped the gun a little bit. I thought I would be able to keep up, but given that I'm having a hard enough time posting anything every day, clearly a few of my plans to churn out content have fallen through. This includes my ideas for vlogs. I have the camera and the ability to record, but my computer is too shitty to edit on. iMovie, if it decides to start after (not even joking) 15 straight minutes of startup, runs so poorly on this ancient artifact of a computer that it's just way to frustrating to work with. Actually, I take that back, it's not only frustrating, it's literally impossible. So until I get a better computer, January at the earliest, most likely after April, there will be no vlogs coming form me. I still plan to start up a podcast though. I'm going to get everything in place on my next days off.
Something else I can't wait for on my next days off is making several pots of coffee and enjoying them all throughout the morning. Did you like that segway? Pretty smooth, huh? Seriously though, that's one of the worst things about driving truck right now, is the serious lack of decent coffee.
I really love coffee. It's been a recent obsession of mine, but one that has taken hold of me very tightly and refuses to let go. Even now, as I sit writing this before bed at 9:30 pm, I crave a cup. The smooth, bitter taste that so brilliantly offsets the sweetness of dessert is really addicting. The caffeine high also probably aids and abets the addiction, but that's besides the point right now. In all honesty I don't think the caffeine really does all that much for me, but I'm not willing to give it up for a week to find out. I love some delicious coffee in the morning.
The biggest problem right now is that I've become accustomed to a certain standard of coffee. Shoutout to the coffee subreddit, which has taught me everything I know and gotten me to spend far more money than I should have already on beans and paraphernalia. I started out by forcing myself to drink black coffee from Timmies and Starbucks, but I've moved far beyond that by this point. I got myself used to black coffee for two main reasons and one side reason. It's less fattening, it's easier to order and make, and it's more mature. I'll let you figure out which of those reasons is which.
Since I started getting into the chemistry of the coffee I've developed a bit of a snobbish taste. I still totally drink Starbucks coffee or a cup from the only gas station within a hundred kilometers of where I usually run out of coffee in the morning when I'm in the truck, but I still vastly prefer my own brew to these lesser concoctions. Something about the brew process really allows me to enjoy the coffee more too, I think. But mostly it's the fact that I'm using beans that I know I like and brewing with a method that's gone through trial and error and arrived at my perfect blend of body and richness. And while hand grinding the beans, measuring everything out to the gram, pre heating my brewing vessel as well as my cup, allowing the grounds to bloom before beginning my precise pour over, and all the other small methods and details that go into my morning brew are fantastic and even slightly therapeutic on my days off, they can get a bit annoying at 5 am when I have to do it twice to fill my mug and my thermos, when all I want to do is roll out of bed as late as possible and get on the road in a hurry.
So the pour over, snobby coffee definitely has its pros and cons. I'll keep making it in the morning because I've gotten pretty good at doing it quickly now, and I also don't really have a choice. Buying an electric grinder will really cut down on the frustration, since literally about 10 minutes of my time each morning goes to hand grinding my beans, but they are super expensive and I need to get all my cards paid off after my euro trip. For now, I'll just have to deal with getting up that little bit earlier. It's all worth it though for that perfectly smooth yet tart sip of joe every morning. Yum.