{"id":253,"date":"2017-09-21T10:32:31","date_gmt":"2017-09-21T16:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/home.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/?p=253"},"modified":"2023-11-06T12:32:16","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T19:32:16","slug":"coffee-zen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/?p=253","title":{"rendered":"Coffee Zen"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve recently been simplifying my coffee equipment at home, aiming for low-maintenance, inexpensive equipment without sacrificing the\u00a0great coffee<\/em>. Here’s my latest.<\/p>\n

\"Lee's<\/a>1 – Cuisinart electric kettle<\/a>. Add water, pick a temperature, and wait for the beep! Couldn’t be easier.<\/p>\n

2 – Rancilio Rocky “doserless” burr grinder<\/a>. This is the one essential–but expensive–component. (More important than a fancy brewer!) If you want great<\/em> coffee, you need a fresh grind (ideally, right before you brew) and the grounds have to be consistently the right size, which means it must be a burr grinder.<\/p>\n

3 – Aeropress<\/a>. This is where the magic happens. Like a french press, but faster and with higher pressure. Add ground coffee (use a finer espresso grind, not the coarser french press grind), pour in water, and push the plunger. Voila!<\/p>\n

4 – Scoop. For transferring ground coffee from the grinder to the Aeropress. (Comes with Aeropress.) For simplicity, I grind directly into the scoop.<\/p>\n

5 – Milk frother<\/a>. Warm the milk in a coffee mug in the microwave, then use this basic $10 frother for foam. It’s not quite<\/em> the same as a steamer, but close enough for me and Kristin.<\/p>\n

6 – Knock box<\/a>. When finished with the Aeropress, dump the used grounds here. (This is leftover from when I used an espresso machine and had to actually knock the grounds out of the filter cup. Now it’s just a handy place to put the grounds.)<\/p>\n

7 – Chocolate syrup and cinnamon. I always dust my latt\u00e9s and flat whites with cinnamon. (Get the good stuff<\/a> in bulk from Penzeys.) Everybody needs a mocha now and then, right?<\/p>\n

Bonus:<\/strong> This setup is ridiculously easy to take and use while traveling! Grind some coffee before leaving, put it in a bag, and pack the rest. Most places these days have a microwave for heating water and milk.<\/p>\n

What isn’t shown here, of course, is the coffee! I prefer to roast my own, starting with single origins from Ethiopia, Kenya, and Indonesia and sourced through Sweet Maria’s<\/a>, but my roaster gave up the ghost recently. So I’ve temporarily fallen back to my favorite source of fairly traded coffee, Equal Exchange<\/a>. Their espresso blends are terrific and usually quite fresh. I keep the cost down by buying the 5-pound wholesale bags.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve recently been simplifying my coffee equipment at home, aiming for low-maintenance, inexpensive equipment without sacrificing the\u00a0great coffee. Here’s my latest. 1 – Cuisinart electricRead More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,36],"tags":[44,7,52],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-cooking","tag-coffee","tag-diy","tag-gadgets"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Coffee-Setup.jpg",1024,765,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Coffee-Setup-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Coffee-Setup-300x224.jpg",300,224,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Coffee-Setup-768x574.jpg",768,574,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Coffee-Setup-1024x765.jpg",1024,765,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Coffee-Setup.jpg",1024,765,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Coffee-Setup.jpg",1024,765,false],"miteri-cp-520x400":["https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Coffee-Setup.jpg",520,388,false],"miteri-cp-450x450":["https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Coffee-Setup.jpg",450,336,false],"miteri-cp-700x700":["https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Coffee-Setup.jpg",700,523,false],"miteri-cp-800x500":["https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Coffee-Setup.jpg",669,500,false],"miteri-cp-1200x580":["https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Coffee-Setup.jpg",776,580,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Lee","author_link":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/?author=1"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"I’ve recently been simplifying my coffee equipment at home, aiming for low-maintenance, inexpensive equipment without sacrificing the\u00a0great coffee. Here’s my latest. 1 – Cuisinart electricRead More","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":550,"href":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leeandkristin.net\/rll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}