Sharing stories and adventures about all things coffee, stories, and stoke
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Brew Methods
It is definitely that time of the year where many of you travel greater distances and embark on epic adventures. As temps consistently warm up (speaking from the PNW point of view) and we shift into summer mode many of you with jobs that keep you close to home Monday through Friday try and eke out travels on weekends, explore greater distances on long weekends, and use hard earned vacation time to push the boundaries even farther.
Race season is now in full force ... Enduro World Series, DH World Cup, and then a host of local and regional enduro, DH, and cross country races. Whether you're a sponsored racer, privateer, or weekend shredder, many of you are now getting into race season mode as you dial in your routine. What to bring? How much? Sleeping arrangements. Food. Travel. Oh, and then there's your bike ... are you flying solo? Do you have a mechanic? Lots of questions as you tweak things from race to race and weekend to weekend.
How's your coffee game?
Drinking coffee is odd at times. No, not the actual process of drinking coffee itself but the stigmas attached to it. On one end of the spectrum you have blue collar miners packing a thermos full of (probably bad grocery store) black coffee in their lunch pails for the day. Gritty, hard-working, tough as nails and their coffee smells (and tastes) as bad their clothes at the end of their shift (or worse). At the other end of the spectrum you have bearded skinny jeans-wearing city-dwelling hipsters who're faux-gritty also drinking black coffee. The difference though is not about who's drinking coffee but the actual quality of coffee itself.
I like pizza. I also like (and love) sushi, peanut butter, pears, asparagus, and breakfast burritos. That's the easy part. The difficult question to answer is why? Why do I love what I do? I'm afraid that would would take years on the couch of a psychologist to plumb the depths of that question. Or maybe it really isn't that complicated after all. Maybe the answer is simply, "I just do."
There are radically different theories or approaches when it comes to brewing coffee. Heck, these completely diverse ways of thinking reflect a deeper philosophical approach to life. Not to try to play armchair psychologist here, but how you brew your coffee reflects much about who you really are. So what are those approaches? Let's tease this out, because it also reflects what kind of mountain biker you are too (doh!). Ready?
Arguing over brew methods is like debating whether 27.5 wheels are better than 29 ... or 27.5+, 29+, or even (gulp) 26. It is all in the eye of the beholder. As soon as we write off 26" wheels Brandon Semenuk wins the Redbull Rampage 2016 on a 26er (see bike check here). So when it comes to brew methods we all have our favorites ... and they all merit our attention and affection. But to say which one is "better?" ... whew, good luck.
