a sweetmarias weblog

I am very happy to announce the availability of Sweet Maria’s Coffee Unofficial 2010 Dogs of Coffee Calender!! Tom and I had the idea to print a calendar of all the great dog photos he has taken at origin, but alas, that great idea occurred to us last March. Not a good time to sell a calendar. But November is! The calendar has 15 full color images of dogs from all parts of the coffee producing world. (We even slipped in a photo of our old dog Francy under one of the Typica trees in our backyard in Oakland.) The price is $6 and $2 of that will be donated to a number of charities active in coffee producing countries, including Coffee Kids, Grounds for Health, Doctors without Borders, etc. Check it out! (Can you tell I am excited about it?)- Maria

New to Sweet Maria’s, we now have the Hario Skerton Hand Crank Coffee Mill.  The grind quality is very good, and the mill grinds efficiently, fairly quickly, but not too fast. Like any manual mill, it takes some elbow grease to crank out a grind. But the work out is worth it! It is a conical burr design, so it can do a range of grinds from espresso to a passable French press grind (on the finer side of French press). It has a ceramic, conical burr set. It also makes a handy travel mill since it is so compact. I made a pretty interesting travel mill by combining the top of the Skerton with an aeropress (there’s a video if you follow the above link).By the way, this is not the Skelton or Skeleton … people have a funny way of getting the name wrong on this one. Can’t exactly blame them… -Tom

The tipping point, originally uploaded by sweetmarias.

Adding more images to our library of macro shots of coffee. Here I photographed coffee flowers, the leaf, leaf buds, some defects in green coffee and roasted coffee, and …what the heck … some bubbles. -Tom

It might seem silly, but I am really excited about this kettle,  the PINO Digital Kettle Pro. I need a lot of hot water for cupping and brewing so having a kettle that works as well as this does makes a big difference in my day-to-day life.   I  have the bad habit of forgetting that I am heating water.  On the stove, I will evaporate a full pan of water before I remember I had it on the burner … which led me to use the Bodum Ibis kettle.  It’s a fine kettle, but I also forget about it, and then my water is cool and I need to heat it again.

So here is the pretty sleek the Pino Digital Kettle Pro, an electric kettle that will heat water to a temperature that I preset, and hold it there until I am ready for it, or remember it, whichever comes first. It has a 50 oz (~1.5 Liter capacity), and the electric base is separate from the kettle top. It is 1000 watts, a bit lower than some other electric kettles, but will heat a full 1.5 liters from tap temperature to 205 in 9 minutes, and will heat 16 ounces of water in 2 minutes. It is pricey, but this paired with a Clever Coffee Dripper makes a great brewing set-up.