Within Reason!

Ron Bailey at the Elysian, Seattle
Hosted on Flickr!. Click to enlarge.

So, last night I hauled my butt down to The Elysian Brewery to hang out with Ron Bailey, who had just the coolest job I can imagine: he's science correspondent for the libertarian magazine Reason, which I tend to read because unlike many libertarian rags this one actually tries to point out real-world solutions to real-world problems.

( A really good evening! )

I had forgotten just how amazingly good the beer at the Elysian is. I had only one glass of the Dragonstooth Stout-- my first in five years-- and it was as smooth, creamy, and oddly sweet as I had remembered. I wish I had excuses to head up there more often. Their blue cheese burger was damn good, too, but oh! my heart! my valves! I can't do that very often.

The Coffee Press Wars.

I tried roasting my own beans again this weekend and I have to say that I was very successful in doing so. I was quite happy with the quality, although it wasn't as dark as some previous roasts I've tried, and it was very smooth and not at all bitter. Most excellent.

I like my coffee, and I like it in a French Press. For the past couple of years, I've been using a Bodum Bistro Nouveau, 24oz, which made two-plus cups of decent coffee plus some grounds, and I was very happy with it. It broke. I'm told, by people in the know, that this is not unusual; the most people break about one a year.

When I went to replace it, the gourmet shop where I'd bought it had closed down, but the new one down the road had a similar model from Bonjour. It looked more or less the same, so I bought it.

Oh, big mistake. For one thing, it doesn't hold as much water as the Bodum, nor does its fancy two-filter system actually work as advertised. It's supposed to keep the grinds out of your coffee by having a secondary filter; I don't know what they're trying to do, but that doesn't work. Instead of a flat roof, the Bonjour has a curved dome that catches your coffee as it comes out, making it hard to actually extract all the coffee you've brewed. The Bodum came with the simplest insulation in the world: a cork platform. The Bonjour (and to be fair, Bodum makes one of these too) has a metal cage that keeps the carafe off the ground and prevents heat loss during brewing.

Anyway, if the Bonjour breaks, I'm getting myself another Bodum Bistro Nouveau if I have to mail-order the damn thing from Sweden!

Squeeee!

Squeeee! I must have one! But $400 is a bit pricey, even for me. And 32cm is a bit small for a regulation chessboard, ne?

But, but, but... SQUEEE!