I bought a piece of 1.5 inch stiff foam to try to fix a sag in a bed. It didn’t work but having that thick piece of solid foam around has been a life saver.
Need something flat to put a laptop on? Throw it on the foam. Going to be doing something that requires you to be on your knees for a while? Get the foam!
It went from stupid purchase to something I’d gladly replace if it broke.
A burr grinder for coffee beans. I thought coffee snobs were full of shit. I was wrong.
Same! I only tolerated coffee before the pandemic and thought I just didn’t really like it, I had a Kuerig, then a Nespresso machine and all were “meh” tasting to me, I drank it for the caffeine, not the taste. While everyone else was making sourdough bread during the pandemic I became a coffee nerd, largely because I could no longer walk to the store and pick up the Nespresso pods. I got store bought whole beans and used a simple $30 electric herb grinder and was like “alright, this is better than the pods”. I then dropped about $130 on a Barazza Encore and that was miles better, even with store bought coffee. I switched to fresh roasted delivery coffee and that was even better. Then I dropped $500 on an espresso level grinder and that was even better, but not anywhere close from the cheap blade grinder compared to a burr grinder. I cut myself off there.
I got my husband a manual coffee grinder when he got into coffee. I thought it was stupid to spend over 250€ on a stupid coffee grinder for a phase he would drop soon but oh well. I was wrong. Neither did he drop the phase nor was the grinder not worth it. It is a great grinder, I love it myself, and I am enjoying coffee so much more now. The snobs were indeed right all along.
Lol I have one but don’t notice the difference. I mostly bought it because my husband tends to overdo things (like more coffee in the grinder, grinding longer). So I got it so he’d only have to press one button and we’d get consistent coffee. What difference do you find with it?
Coffee comes out a little easier to drink while simultaneously more flavorful than my blade/spice grinder. I’d love to give you an answer but i’ve always been really bad about describing taste. I’ll try to remember to ask my wife when she gets home since she’s the resident sommelier.
Which one did you get? I’m looking for a good one that won’t break the bank.
Not op but I have the baratza encore. Not exactly cheap but could be affordable if you save up. They’re 150 new on Amazon and go for around 80-100 on ebay here in USA. It’s really good too, especially if you stick with coffee only being a casual hobby or even just want your morning coffee to be good and don’t wanna futz with anything else.
Also an FYI, if you ever do get around to doing espresso, you’ll see a ton of PPL saying you can’t use it for espresso. They are honestly just more enthusiastic about coffee than I am, because I used an online deep cleaning video from Baratza to change the gap between the burrs and it does espresso just fine to my tastes. Like it does well enough that I can’t justify the expense of a better one yet and I’ve had it like 3 years already.
Obv there are better ones, and there are cheaper ones, but th Encore will just last you a long time in your coffee journey, and potentially forever if you only ever want it to do non-espresso grind sizes
The Barazza Encore is a good entry level burr grinder, it’s what I started with. They’ll run you about $125-$150 and won’t do espresso, but they’re great for any type of coffee brewing method that doesn’t require fine grounds.
Amazon has a bunch. If you keep looking, you can find a lot that look almost identical but have wildly varying prices and I couldn’t tell the difference between the expensive and cheap ones. Just search manual coffee grinder and go for one of the metal only ones. They look like pepper grinders with a metal crank on the top. I got one of the cheaper ones (around 30 CAD iirc) and have been happy with it.