{"id":6487,"date":"2010-01-25T16:17:13","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T16:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/coffee-rituals-cosmic-variance\/"},"modified":"2010-01-25T16:17:13","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T16:17:13","slug":"coffee-rituals-cosmic-variance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/coffee-rituals-cosmic-variance.php","title":{"rendered":"Coffee Rituals | Cosmic Variance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&rsquo;re long overdule for an open-type thread around here, so let me provide the excuse by asking one of the world&rsquo;s great questions: what&rsquo;s the best way to make coffee? <\/p><p> I&rsquo;m an eclectic coffee drinker; I like espresso but also enjoy a really good cup of American coffee, and I prefer coffee black but am willing to adulterate it with milk if I suspect the quality is not going to be that high. (Sugar under no circumstances.) For the past few years I&rsquo;ve relied on the lowest-effort method I know of that is guaranteed to produce a good cup: freshly-ground dark roast beans, placed in a simple cone filter and hot water poured right in. Practically instant coffee, but a result that can be as good as the beans allow.<\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/ed24b_S1CO.jpg\" alt=\"S1CO\" width=\"241\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-3881\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"> But I&rsquo;d like to start mixing more espresso into my home coffee experience, so I&rsquo;m in the market for a new espresso machine. If I were a physicist of means, I might go for a work of art like the Elektra Micro Casa Lever on right. Or would I? This is a spring-action lever machine, which is to be contrasted with the manual levers, not to mention the automatics and super-automatics, and then there&rsquo;s the matter of boilers, switches, heat exchangers &hellip; a complete mess. The pumps are certainly elegant, but I&rsquo;d also like something that is functional and doesn&rsquo;t require constant pampering. So I am in the unusual position of being frozen with indecision about what kind of espresso machine to get. Any opinions out there?<\/p><p>The ground rules here are:<\/p><ol><li>There&rsquo;s no such thing as right or wrong; different people have different tastes, for which different approaches are appropriate.<\/li><li>Answers with specific comparisons of advantages and disadvantages are more useful than simple insistence on truth.<\/li><\/ol><p>I do understand that this is the internet and rules are unlikely to be followed, but I feel I should try.<\/p><p>Obviously not all advice on such a topic is too be trusted. The <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/01\/22\/engineers-guide-to-drinks\/\">Engineer&rsquo;s Guide to Drinks<\/a> thread featured a sobering (as it were) number of people who think a &ldquo;martini&rdquo; should just be chilled gin rather than a <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2005\/11\/21\/three-and-im-under-the-table\/\">proper cocktail<\/a>, and were proud to admit it in public! So caveat lector. And if you want to talk about something other than coffee, be our guest.<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/SHkgNIJYsac-IC1yK6AzEaSKtEs\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/ed24b_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/SHkgNIJYsac-IC1yK6AzEaSKtEs\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/a4409_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/a4409_Ppn4L9ecfNs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/a4409_i0nHxzeP9Zo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&rsquo;re long overdule for an open-type thread around here, so let me provide the excuse by asking one of the world&rsquo;s great questions: what&rsquo;s the best way to make coffee? I&rsquo;m an eclectic coffee drinker; I like espresso but also &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/coffee-rituals-cosmic-variance.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}