PEAK COFFEE!!!

The sweet black taste of morning AKA: Americano. Battery Acid. Bean Juice. Beans. Black Gold. Black Ichor Of Life. Brain Juice. Brew. Brewtus. C8H10N4O2: (The molecular formula for caffeine). Café. Caffe. Caffeine Fix. Cup of Brew. Cup of Joe. Cup of Jolt. Cupped Lightning. Daily Grind. Day-Starter. Demitasse. Dishwater. Drip. Embalming Fluid. Express Train. Go Juice. High Octane. High Test (after the high-octane gas). Hojo. Hot Stuff. Ink. Jamoke: (Java + Mocha). Java. Jet Fuel. Jitter Juice. Jo. Joe. Kaffe: (Swedish).Kape: (Manila). Leaded. LAS-Legal Addictive Stimulant. Lifeblood. Lifer's Juice. Liquid Energy. Liquid Lightning. Misto. Mocha. Mojo. Morning Mud. Morning Thunder. Mother’s Little Helper. Mud. Muddy Water. Murk. Norwegian plasma. Oil. One's Daily Infusion. Pentecostal Whiskey. Perk or Perky. Plasma. Roast. Rocket Fuel. Swedish gasoline. Tar. The Fix. The Regular. Turpentine. Unleaded. Vitamin C. Wake Up Call. Wakey Juice. Warmer Upper. Zip or whatever you want to call it...

The shortage of high-end Arabica coffee beans is also being felt in New York supermarkets and Paris cafes, as customers blink at escalating prices. Purveyors fear that the Arabica coffee supply from Colombia may never rebound — that the world might, in effect, hit “peak coffee.”


In 2006, Colombia produced more than 12 million 132-pound bags of coffee, and set a goal of 17 million for 2014. Last year the yield was nine million bags.


The Specialty Coffee Association of America warned this year, “It is not too far-fetched to begin questioning the very existence of specialty coffee.”

Wherever you stand on Peak Oil [realists in one pile, la-la-la-I'm-not-listening-'s in the other] here's some very bad news. PEAK COFFEE. Seriously. Yield of the good stuff is down as much as 70%. Imagine life with 70% less coffee! I'm honestly too flustered to know what to do? It doesn't even keep that long in the freezer! What are we going to do?

Your worried pal
SBW

PS The first person to suggest that most fraudulent of products "instant' coffee is banned.

Pic is Cafuerteras by Javier Jaén

Handpresso - wilderness expresso maker review

Wanted one of these puppies for a while now. Here's for why

The punters have to trust us not to take pictures of their hideous taste in interior design and post them on the internet (heartily pasted in disparaging remarks), and we have to trust them to lay on an acceptable minimum standard of recuperative. Sadly even your pal the bushwacker AKA London's gentleman plumber is unable to consistently find customers worthy of the customer service they are treated to. 

Face facts: 
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INSTANT COFFEE. 

You might drink that filth, but madam, we don't. End of.

I've often though that we should get an expresso machine and flight case it, so we could set up our own coffee bar where ever we are, train one of the apprentices as a barista and improve our working conditions. So I was intrigued when I saw the Handpresso wilderness expresso maker in a french hunting magazine. Once again the internet came to my rescue and I was able to buy one at an 'unwanted christmas gift' price.

Let the Un-Boxing commence

After the customary new product dismay - as is usual today the packaging had been designed almost thoroughly as as the product it's self - I finally wrestled it from its box[es] and got to work. 


It's quite a chunky beast  - you wouldn't really call it 'wilderness equipment', but I'm not sure how many they'd sell if they called it the 'Handpresso builders expresso maker'. 


It really couldn't be much easier to use, if fact its a lot more straitforward than a lot of the counter-top expresso makers i've used. You set the release valve to closed, give it 30 pumps pressurizing it to 16 BAR [or 240 psi], pour a little boiled water into the clear plastic dome, tamp coffee grounds into the little hopper, drop the hopper into place, click the lid shut and you're good-to-go. 


Out squirts a very convincing Expresso, just the kind of required recuperative that puts a spring in your step, widens the eye, fires the synapses, and lifts the human spirit. In summation a great bit of kit for picnics, beach casting, and car camping. Not really the kit of a backwoodsman. But as i've reported before if a little 'Glamping' is the price a purist such as myself must endure to have my sleeping bag warmed by the likes of the Ex Mrs SBW, well so be it.


Design, build, and the end product, defiantly put it in the category of 'things that don't suck'.


All the best
Your pal
The Bushwacker.


EDIT It's stopped working - Company declined to fix it - new review on the way