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"Espresso! My Espresso!"
An Ongoing Internet Novelette
by Randy Glass - Copyright 2002 - All rights reserved
E-mail me at frcn@digitalpath.net
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37
2/14/01 - It has been an interesting four days. Just as I had finished my nine roasts for blending espresso we got hit with a snow storm that lasted for three days. We got about 18 inches. On Saturday morning at about 6:00 AM the electricity went off and did not come back on until today (Wednesday) at about noon. Fortunately we heat our home by wood so had heat but we are also on a private well so we ran out of running water sometime on Sunday. We 'survived' by drinking much of the four gallons of filtered water I keep for Silvia and by using melted snow for everything else.Grinding by Hand By the second day we were both Jonesing for a cup of coffee. We had jars and jars of roasted beans and except for a hammer and a metal plate, no way of grinding them. I chained up the Ford 4WD pickup and we made it into town where we scoured the thrift shops and antique stores for a hand grinder. At the first thrift shop there were no hand grinders but I found a beautiful West Bend "The Poppery" popcorn popper. I wasn't looking for one, but there it was. I pulled it off the shelf and examined it. It appeared new and when I plugged it in to test it a "new roaster smell" came out of it. The price was so good I bought it. "The Poppery" is the model that is so popular with many home roasters. I figured that I could use it as a back up for my HWP if nothing else.
I used it to grind for three batches of press pot coffee, and it was sure nice. It is a real workout to grind that much coffee, but when the electricity is off and you're snowed in, the coffee just tastes that much sweeter for the effort. The details of the coffee I made will appear in a subsequent chapter.
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