Month: June 2023

Ride Notes

lpaulriddle

2023 marks the 15th anniversary of when I started using a bike as my primary method of commuting to work. Nowadays, I only go into the office once or twice a week, so I’m not bike commuting nearly as much, but I’m happy that I’m still doing it, and I almost never drive my car to work any more. In fact, I’ve been able to save some money by ditching my annual parking permit in favor of pay-as-you-go daily permits.

Today, I rode through Catonsville, which I haven’t done much lately due to the Grist Mill Trail closure in PVSP. With school out for the summer, there’s less traffic on the roads, so I rode through Ilchester and out River Road to Oella, where I picked up the #9 Trolley Trail. I then rode Edmondson Ave. out to Ingleside Ave., found a geocache off Harlem La., and headed to UMBC via Prospect Ave., Short Line Trail, Kenwood Ave., and Wilkens Ave. I’ve ridden on all of these roads before, but never this exact route. The weather was cloudy, windy, and drippy. I wouldn’t call it rainy, but it sprinkled almost the entire time I was out. I ended up putting my rain jacket on when I stopped for the cache, as I was actually getting chilly. It definitely was atypical weather for the first day of summer. My watch tells me I rode 17.33 miles, which is a couple miles longer than my usual commute through PVSP and Halethorpe/Arbutus. All in all, not a bad ride.

Today’s (cold) brew notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: German St Coffee & Candlery Private House Blend
  • Coarse grind (JX: 3 rotations + 4 clicks / 94 total clicks)
  • Recipe: https://www.acouplecooks.com/french-press-cold-brew
  • 140 grams coffee (roughly 2 cups ground), 840 grams water

With summer upon us, I decided to try making some cold brew. The hardest part of this was grinding 140 grams of coffee with the JX. This job would be better suited to a higher capacity electric grinder. Other than that, there’s not much to it: just add the ingredients to the french press, stir, cover with plastic wrap, refrigerate for 24 hours, and strain into a glass jar or pitcher. The resulting brew is concentrated, and the recipe recommends diluting 50/50 with either water or milk. I tried it with milk, and it was pretty good. Now, I need to work on trying to get a good cup of regular hot brew with these beans, but that’s for another day…

On an unrelated note, I just moved the back end database for this blog to a AWS RDS MariaDB instance. It had previously been running in a MariaDB Docker container on my old EC2 instance. This is the first step to getting my stuff off the EC2 instance and into (probably) EKS with Fargate. If you’re reading this, it means that it worked. 😀

Today’s Brew Notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: Lost Dog Coffee “La Esparanza” Organic Medium/Medium Dark Roast (Nicaragua)
  • 17 grams coffee, 160 grams brew water
  • 90°C water
  • JX 1 full rotation + 6 clicks (36 total clicks, or 12 on the grind chart) (fine)
  • Recipe: V60 Style Aeropress (dark roast)
  • 40 grams bypass water for a 200-gram cup (roughly 1:12)

This was the best cup I’ve gotten so far from these beans using the Aeropress. My previous tries all turned out under-extracted. I suspect I had been grinding the beans too coarse. This recipe seems to work best with a very fine grind. This was the exact same formula I used yesterday with a darker roast, except I increased the water temperature from 85°C to 90°C. Seems like I’ve found a go-to recipe for medium to darker roasts.

Today’s Ride Notes

lpaulriddle

I’m trying to start using my long-neglected blog kind of like a daily journal. We’ll see if I keep up with it.

Ever since COVID hit back in 2020, I’ve been doing more weekend bike rides, combining them with geocaching. Prior to that, I used my bike almost exclusively to commute to work. I still commute by bike, but not nearly as much as I used to, so these weekend rides are a good way to get some more biking in.

Today, I rode a 32 mile loop, which included some areas where I hadn’t previously biked: BWI Trail to B&A Trail, then back to Linthicum via Marley Neck Blvd., Fort Smallwood Rd., Hawkins Point Rd., Pennington Ave., and Ordnance Rd. Ordnance through Glen Burnie is not a route I would typically recommend, but it was doable early on a Sunday morning. The rest of the ride was great, and I found 5 caches along the way. I rode my Masi single speed for the first time in several months. The bike had been out of commission because the valve stem on the rear tube had broken, and I was out of tubes that fit the wheel. It took me a few months to get around to buying new tubes, putting one on, and reinstalling the wheel. Also, last year, the bike shop rebuilt the front wheel, because I had been breaking a lot of spokes. I wanted to take a few longer rides on the bike before I take it to the beach later this summer, just to put the wheel through its paces, although I’ve taken several rides on it already. So far, so good.

Brew Notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: Lost Dog Coffee “Mocha Sidamo” Organic Dark Roast (Ethiopia)
  • 17 grams coffee, 160 grams brew water
  • 85°C water
  • JX 1.5 rotations minus 3 clicks (fine)
    • See comments — an even finer grind than this (1 rotation plus 6 clicks, or 36 total clicks), seems to work better
  • Recipe: V60 Style Aeropress (dark roast)
  • Cup #1: 80 grams bypass water (240 grams total; 1:14)
  • Cup #2: 40 grams bypass water (200 grams total; 1:12)

I got pretty good results the first time I tried this recipe, but didn’t measure how much bypass water I added. The recipe calls for 100mg, but even 80 tasted weak to me. 40 grams (a 200g cup) seemed about the right strength, and was not a bad cup. Given that the recipe calls for so much more water, I’m wondering if I’m not getting enough extraction out of the beans. I don’t think I want to go up much on the water temperature, so I guess I could try grinding even finer and see what happens.

Today’s Brew Notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: German St Coffee and Candlery Private House Blend
  • Attempt #1:
    • 13 grams coffee, 200 grams water (roughly 1:15)
    • 95°C water
    • 2 rotations (medium-fine)
  • Attempt #2:
    • 11 grams coffee, 200 grams water (1:18)
    • 99°C water
    • 1.5 rotations (fine)
  • James Hoffman’s Ultimate Aeropress Recipe

I’m not sure exactly what kind of beans these are. It looks like a medium roast (darker than light, lighter than dark) but the bag doesn’t have any info on it. I remember getting OK but unspectacular results with it in the French Press. Previous attempts with the Aeropress were underwhelming, and today’s weren’t much better. This recipe assumes a light roast, so I started out by tweaking it with a slightly coarser grind, lower temperature and more coffee per volume (Attempt #1) and that turned out underextracted. Then I tried treating it like a light roast, following the recipe exactly, (Attempt #2) and that turned out weak and flavorless.

Although neither of these cups was very good, Attempt #1 was slightly better. I might try Attempt #1 again with a finer grind, and see if I can get more extraction out of these beans. If not, maybe I’ll go back to French press with a really long steep time, or just use the beans to make cold brew.

Paddle Notes

lpaulriddle

Cathy and I headed to Middle River, MD today and checked out Dundee Creek, where we had not previously paddled before. The put-in is at Marshy Point Nature Center, just to the south of the nature center building, from a floating dock at the end of a several-hundred-foot-long pier. Definitely bring a set of wheels, or a partner to help carry. It’s an easy put-in once you get there, though.

Dundee Creek runs on the north side of Marshy Point, and Saltpeter Creek is on the south side. The two converge and feed into the Gunpowder River, which in turn feeds into (of course) the Chesapeake Bay. All of these are tidal estuaries. We were there near low tide, but we mostly avoided the shallow side channels. Marshy Point has set up a nice paddle trail, which we followed using the provided GPS coordinates. The paddle trail would probably be about 2 miles if we had gone directly point-to-point, but we meandered around and stretched it out to 3 miles. Almost all of the shoreline here is lined with reeds, which we learned are invasive Phragmites australis. It is kind of scary how it has taken over almost every inch of real estate along the shore.

For a Tuesday morning, there were a lot of people out on the water — a bunch of people kayak fishing, a ranger-led canoe tour, and several folks out in identical sit-on-top kayaks, who I figured must have been together, although I’m not sure where they launched (possibly from the nearby Dundee Creek Marina). Definitely plenty of room for everyone, as the creek is essentially a very large expanse of open water.

This was a nice place to paddle, but given that it’s 35 to 40 minutes’ drive from home, I probably won’t be coming here all that often (although I do enjoy the hiking trails here). Nice to have checked it out, though, and I’m sure I’ll return one of these days.

Brew Notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: Starbucks house blend medium roast
  • 18 grams coffee, 210 grams water (1:12)
  • 205° water
  • Medium-fine grind (JX: 2 rotations minus 6 clicks)
  • Our Favorite Aeropress Recipe

Reused 2 paper filters (this was maybe their 4th or 5th cup). Started timer and pour at the same time. 20 seconds or so to pour. Steeped 40 more seconds (60 second total bloom per recipe), stirred 10 seconds. Flipped at 1:30 and pressed all the way through the hiss, ending at 2:00. I have had good results with these beans and this recipe in the past, but it turned out bitter today for some reason. Could be that I forgot to pre-wet the filters.Will use new, pre-moistened filters next time, and may stop pressing a little earlier, although that has not been an issue in the past.

Just an update: I brewed another cup of this after dinner with the following changes: I poured slightly faster (about as fast as I could go with the gooseneck kettle without overshooting), I used 2 new paper filters pre-moistened with warm water, and I stopped pressing as soon as I heard air escaping. Same overall brew time (60 second bloom which includes pour time, 10 second stir, flip and press at 1:30, finish at 2:00). Turned out perfect! I doubt the pour speed made any difference, so maybe it was the dry filters? Who knows.

Brew Notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: Lost Dog Coffee (Shepherdstown, WV) “La Esparanza” Organic Medium/Medium Dark (Nicaragua)
  • 0.75 oz coffee, 9.5 oz water (1:13 ratio)
  1. Preheat French press
  2. Heat brew water to 200°F
  3. Coarse grind (JX setting: 3 full rotations + 4 more clicks)
  4. Add all of the water at once, then start timer
  5. 30 second bloom
  6. Stir a few seconds until grounds settle
  7. Steep 6 minutes

I was having a hard time getting a good cup of coffee with these beans with the Aeropress, so I decided to try the French press and this turned out pretty good. Started timer after fairly slow pour from gooseneck kettle. Made a pretty strong cup. Might cut back to an 8 oz cup or possibly try at 1:14 next time.