We take our coffee pretty seriously ’round here. And before I get into today’s post I’ll take a moment to remind everyone that I am not sponsored in any way by any of these companies. Rest assured that if I mention something here it’s because I have a personal affinity for it, not because I’ve been compensated to do so.

Now, before moving to Vermont we almost exclusively drank Katz’s Coffee. Back then they did a “Buy 3 lbs. Get 1 Free” online deal, so we’d order coffee direct from their warehouse in Houston and have it shipped to our door…in Houston.
Houston is a very large city, you see, and it would’ve taken us 2 hours (without traffic) to drive to their warehouse and back. So it just made more sense to have it shipped to us, even though we technically “lived in the same city.”

Once we moved to Vermont, we wanted to find & support a local coffee roaster. And so far we’ve stuck with the Vermont Coffee Company.
Yes, we’re aware that it was sold to Stonewall Kitchen back in 2021, but we’ve found there to be little to no change in the quality of their coffee. In fact, the only difference we’ve noticed so far is that we can’t get “Friend” mugs anymore from saving up and mailing in a stack of their UPC codes.

They do make a fine dark coffee, but we’re not exactly married to them. I’d be interested to hear any suggestions about other coffee roasters, particularly in the NEK. (Kingdom Coffee Roasters is on our short list to try very soon.)

As for the daily process of making coffee, this is our little Caffè Creation Station:

There on the left is a Baratza coffee bean grinder that we use to burr grind whole beans each morning. Burr grind just means it crushes the coffee beans rather than slicing them into randomly sized bean bits using a food processor blade. Grinding them preserves the flavor and it allows us to adjust how coarse/fine we want the grounds. We started using this after we moved away from the Burr Grind & Brew Cuisinart coffeemaker which had a built-in bean grinder right on top.

Alas, despite that convenience, we found that not only was the Cuisinart a serious bugger to clean (bean shrapnel had to be painstakingly scrubbed out of the chute every couple days or it would clog and you’d end up with a carafe of taupe-tinted water), it also had a tendency to break after 6-10 months of regular use. And at around $200 per machine that got pricey, not to mention wasteful, quick.

Pictured above is what we use these days, the Technivorm MOCCAMASTER. Which is both lovely to look at and has the most amusing name of any coffeemaker in history when shouted aloud.

Now these things aren’t exactly what I’d call “cheap.” They’re around $400.
For a coffeemaker.
That said, it’s been an absolute workhorse for us and it very nearly made it through 5 years of daily, if not twice daily, use. If we’d kept up the Cuisinart replacement program over that timespan we would’ve been out significantly more. Thus proving, once again, the Sam Vimes Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness.

Oh, did you happen to catch the “very nearly” in that earlier sentence? That’s because the heating element in the reservoir finally gave out this morning, which is why in the above picture it’s still full of water.
With that, it’s faithful morning watch has finally ended.

And so I turned to our camping percolator in a desperate bid to keep Jen and I from going on a murderous rampage due to lack of caffeine…

then immediately ordered a replacement MOCCAMASTER! which should be here on Thursday.

Between here and there I definitely need to improve my percolatin’ skills, though. Today’s brew was decidedly not delicious. Hopefully tomorrow’s will be better.

See you then.

j.s.