Tead's Indoor-ish, Winter, Hempy, OGK, SOG

Well m gonna give dynamite a try but dont have to worry to mich bout temp in va. We have a taste of all seasons but none of either is to bad. I appreciate all the great info u have given me. M gonna do my best to take it n run. How big I let ur girls get in two liter bottles? The misses is wondering why m collecting the pepsi bottles lil does she know its saving us a couple dollars!! Dont have to buy pots when we buy two liters all day long.. Our lil secret I guess. Lol!!
 
Well m gonna give dynamite a try but dont have to worry to mich bout temp in va. We have a taste of all seasons but none of either is to bad. I appreciate all the great info u have given me. M gonna do my best to take it n run. How big I let ur girls get in two liter bottles? The misses is wondering why m collecting the pepsi bottles lil does she know its saving us a couple dollars!! Dont have to buy pots when we buy two liters all day long.. Our lil secret I guess. Lol!!

The 2Ls give some unique challenges.
If you're doing hempy, you'll find they dry fast. Not surprising of course. I'm on a 3day run but should probably be on a 2day routine.
The plants can easily and often get top heavy... the 2L form just doesn't really provide a wide or heavy base. You'll need to find some way to support the 2L container in bloom. I just started using 'Weas's Butt Plates'... see previous posts.
 
It was a nice quiet Sunday indeed. Barkus was rolling thru the Qtr., but my pup is not such a fan of the crowds. We tried it one year... she was just so uncomfortable and thus twitchy. She had a parade of 1 all the way home in her Sock Monkey outfit. Shame... I mean... a dog parade is just old fashioned fun I dig in a campy sorta way.

My wife has Portuguese sausage made by a local meat market. I know you can actually have stuff like that made, so I'm certain you can have some crafted. If ya find a yat, ya know they're good for some Boudin.

Having been raised upon the teat of the java industry in the Great NW, I have certain standards regarding the bean I love. Personally, I'm of the opinion that mixing Chicory into one's brew is an abomination that should be scoured from the face of the planet... violently. Having said that, I point every visitor towards a cup.... no accounting for taste and I 'try' not to judge.

The Mrs. might manage to drag me to Muses next weekend. Shoe floats... she just can't resist. Endymion is within walking distance. Most locals hide on Fat Tuesday... it's just impossible to get anywhere... the city is bifurcated and the highways are full of floats moving to or from parades. I like to go out in the mornings on Fat Tuesday and chase the Indians, but then I hide.

Mardi Gras ...blah blah ... I hear what you are saying.. yep

and now ...

Having been raised upon the teat of the java industry in the Great NW, I have certain standards regarding the bean I love. Personally, I'm of the opinion that mixing Chicory into one's brew is an abomination that should be scoured from the face of the planet... violently. Having said that, I point every visitor towards a cup.... no accounting for taste and I 'try' not to judge.

Chickory is a solution they came up with when they couldn't get real coffee beans. It IS an abomination. The young man drinks it. The wife puts a little taste of the Cafe du Monde mix into her real coffee sometimes. I don't mind the aroma, but I'm not drinking it.


I was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. I lived 122 feet away from (and 40 above) a coffee roaster when I was 22 - 27. Restaurants, doughnut shops, and ice cream parlors had Bunn coffee makers with fresh ground American Roast Coffee. So when I'm in my house, I'd smell the beans and try to guess whether it was Ethiopian or Sumatran or Peruvian beans. And when the smell was just right, I'd wait about 45 minutes and take a stroll down to the coffee roaster. I'd drop in for a chat and he'd say he just roasted up a batch of xxx, and the oils were xxx and what would I like. I'll have 1/2 lb of Peruvian mixed in with 1/3 lb of Zimbabwe and ... he'd ask me didn't I prefer the Kenyan which was a lot richer, and I'd say I already have the richness of Peruvian and I know Zimbabwe doesn't have the intensity of flavor, but there is something about it ... and then he'd suggest a little Kona, and I'd say just top up with the Peruvian... and then he'd suggest "How about a touch of French Roast?" and he'd be zipping up the bag as he said it, because even though he like's a touch of French Roast to add a little insouciance I won't touch the stuff.

How is French Roast made? It's the equivalent of burnt toast. It's an abomination to cover up the flavor of bad beans. You can see in the roaster how the oils have dried up and the bean is a bit ashy/powdery and they just burn't the damn coffee before you even had the chance to put it in one of those coffee urns in the banquet hall and overcook it for 2 hours. They pre-burned the beans!!! Why? Because when the Germans took over France in one of their world wars they cut off the coffee trade and the French had to burn beans and add Chicory and such to make pretend coffee.

But that was when my grandparents or parents were in their 20s, and the USA held firm with the American Roast for decades. Sure they made Sanka and freeze-dried coffee and certain brands preground in coffee cans and left on the shelf for a year - but when you went into a roadside diner you could order fresh, hot coffee from a Bunn coffee maker. And you didn't know it was American Roast. It was, well, it was a damn fine cup of coffee.

But those hippies started traveling to Europe and French colonies and they came back with their wild ideas. Pete's Coffee in Berkeley started serving French Roast, alongside Medium Roast and Dark Roast - but at least they were quality beans. Then these companies swept down from the Pacific NW with their overpriced French Roast - and sometimes the beans were good and sometimes the beans should have been thrown away before they even shipped them. But you went to work and you found a way to get some nice beans and you enjoyed several cups of coffee brewed by the denizons of your corporate overlord. (a nice guy, but still an overlord.) And then I ended up in Boston where Dunkin's can't make one batch of coffee taste like the other batch of coffee because they don't have a clue where to buy a quality bean so they buy from Jorge Valdez, Juan Valdez's cousin, and they pay some millenial who'd rather be living with his parents than doing this stupid coffee roasting thing.....
and I gave up on drinking coffee because coffee ain't what it used to be.

I'll have a cup now and then, but it's for the warmth and nostalgia. If I taste the flavor, it pretty much always sucks.

- - - Bottom Line - - - - French Roast is an abomination that ruined America's coffee taste buds - - - -

I just ranted all over your thread when you behave like a gentlemen on my thread - - - Sorry for being a tourist.

I love food. You should get your town back to 'normal' in March. Enjoy and I wish you good weather for the times y'all venture out.
 
Meanwhile here in Antarctica, I survive at my lonely outpost, with only a few sacks of green beans. Costa Rican, Ethiopian, Cuban Peaberry... And I'm run out again so tomorrrow I'll be outside freezing my ass in an open-sided shop, roasting them up in an old popcorn popper. A popper full will get me through four or five days. Got the 'in a hurry zing' -medium roast. The 'stoned 30 min perfect dark roast'. The 'oops I fucked it up a bit but it's still pretty damn delicious' roast. Got the 'shit it's cold I'm looking forward to this coffee, where's that vape pen' roast. Got the 'whatever the f... I want to roast' roast. Times are tough all over but if I didn't have this newfangled popcorn popper I'd be back to rubbing the beans together and that was backbreaking.
 
Good Gawd there's a whole lotta coffee love floating about this morning.... lemme wrap my hand 'round my own cup and join in.

A fresh brew right out of the press.... a nice sheen of oil floating on the top. Yowsa.

Picture a young Tead.... wearing way too much green at the time... gathered with his comrades on a cold misty morning with the express purpose of sending rounds down range to improve our accuracy. Tead wasn't bothered with the flying lead. He and his buddy had the duty of maintaining radio contact with the folks that ran the show. Of course, this is a very boring task, and as anyone wearing green knows, bored troops are a bad thing.
MREs (ya know... funny brown bags of food eaten by green folk) were brand new... I believe it was Tead's first run in with such things. There's a little packet of Sanka like substance in the MREs. Of course, warm water was nowhere to be found and MRE heaters were a year or three away. While there were some other substances in that funny brown bag, the faux java caught our attention on a cold and dreary morning.
So, 2 bored troops. Little envelopes of Sanka. No warm water. What to do, what to do?????
Why, snort it of course... how else could 2 humans ingest coffee in an effective way?!?!
It burned... pretty damn bad. We quickly move to treating it like a touch of chaw and stuffing it betwixt the cheek and gum.
For the record, later that day Tead was involved in a sling-loading exercise. His jeep fell about 75ft when a hook on the Chinook failed. It was an odd day all around.

These days, Tead prefers a nice Sumatran from a french press but would stuff a touch in his cheek with a green buddy in a heartbeat.
We have a huge Folgers plant over in the east. The funny smell of roasting coffee sometimes invades the city when the wind is right.

Java love all around baby!
 
Meanwhile here in Antarctica, I survive at my lonely outpost, with only a few sacks of green beans. Costa Rican, Ethiopian, Cuban Peaberry... And I'm run out again so tomorrrow I'll be outside freezing my ass in an open-sided shop, roasting them up in an old popcorn popper. A popper full will get me through four or five days. Got the 'in a hurry zing' -medium roast. The 'stoned 30 min perfect dark roast'. The 'oops I fucked it up a bit but it's still pretty damn delicious' roast. Got the 'shit it's cold I'm looking forward to this coffee, where's that vape pen' roast. Got the 'whatever the f... I want to roast' roast. Times are tough all over but if I didn't have this newfangled popcorn popper I'd be back to rubbing the beans together and that was backbreaking.


Good gawd man!
Old school.... respect!
I've never had the need to roast my own. Now I wanna kick those tires.
 
I feel like a failure for going to Waffle House and getting two large coffees to go once a week. :) The other 6 days Mtn Dew takes care of the caffeine need.

The second to last time I went to waffle house was around '95 in mormonville Arizona. The coffee was good. The cockroach on the counter at 3 PM was not so good. I went to Waffle house near Atlanta a few years later, but I just couldn't get past the cockroach in Arizona incident - Not as bad as the cockroach brewed into oolong tea across the street from the coffee roaster in San Francisco - but still bad.

Thanks for not lashing back after my French Roast rant :)

Tead - Weaselcracker - reps and respect for the way you tell a story.
 
Living in the coffee mecca of the US, I have to concur on the chicory being added to the coffee at Cafe Du Monde. I just used to get milk with my beignets. You get spoiled living up here everyone is trying to out coffee everyone else which makes for some great coffee in some tiny establishments.
 
My neighbor was a waiter at Mr. B's. Clinton loves Mr. B's and always asked for my neighbor. He was Pres. Clinton's waiter whenever he came to town. Plus, he always hooked us up whenever we wandered in. Too bad he retired. Palace Cafe is another of my favorite Brennans haunts. Next time you're in town, head over to Liuzza's down Esplanade way.... get the BBQ shrimpies.... trust me.
 
It's been a while, and the restaurant may not even be there anymore, but Irene's was my favorite place to dine just outside the quarter. it always seemed like it was at the brink of becoming a rock star restaurant but always stayed welcoming and true to its roots when I came to town. I recommend the orange duck if it's still around.
 
Hey Tead, four new babies opened their eyes today above ground, today is day one. I love coffee, just black and no creamers or sugars, without it work would be non existent. Im no expert on it though.

Oh my.... putting bells on shoes and heading over!

If you put cream and sugar in it, it's candy not coffee.

Goes without saying . but glad you guys said it :)



I need to go to some of these restaurants !
 
I have to say, Tead, that the way you put your words together has one thinking perhaps his next vacation will not be to AK, but rather to your neck of the woods. Everytime i think of your RH% floating there next to that lovely lady of yours though, i shudder.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand"
 
I have to say, Tead, that the way you put your words together has one thinking perhaps his next vacation will not be to AK, but rather to your neck of the woods. Everytime i think of your RH% floating there next to that lovely lady of yours though, i shudder.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand"


Yes... the devil tempts many to join his domain with his silver tongue now doesn't he?
It's a fun vacation if you're into food, history, liquor, or just a break from the cold. Plus, you just never know what kind of hookup Tead has available... sometimes even an empty apartment during Mardi Gras.... just sayin.
Say.... isn't it cold in your world? I had to wear pants this morning, but it will be shorts and sandals as soon as the sun pops up.
 
I need to go to some of these restaurants !


There are just soooooo many. One can't even cover all the "New Orleans Institutions" like a Brennans, Liuzza's, Irene's...... the list goes on forever! Then there are all the new places that pop up all the time. Hell.... I've been trying to make it over to Finn McCool's for years.

Of course, finding things outside the cajun/creole vein is an issue. If you want good Chinese food, ya gotta cross the damn lake... and even then it's not great. Thai can be had locally, but again, good but not great. Vietnamese food has become pretty common, but their diet is not one I appreciate much. Middle eastern food is represented pretty well.

Damn yats.... it's always about food with them. I swear, when 2 locals meet, the subject of food is like 100% guaranteed to pop up within the first few minutes of banter.
 
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