Month: August 2023

More Cold Brew

lpaulriddle

I’ve been making a cup of cold brew, using this recipe, almost every day that I’m at home in the afternoon. Somehow, though, my bag of Wellsley Farms pre-ground breakfast blend never seems to run out. I still have a ton of it left. Today, though, I decided to shake things up:

  • 15 grams Lost Dog “La Esparanza” medium/medium dark roast blend beans
  • JX: 2 rotations minus 6 clicks (54 total clicks or 18 on the grind chart) for a medium to slightly fine grind
  1. Set AeroPress up in inverted orientation with plunger inserted about 1cm, and add coffee.
  2. Fill AeroPress to within about 1cm of the top with room temperature, filtered water.
  3. Start timer and stir vigorously for 1 minute.
  4. Flip AeroPress and press gently into an 8-ounce tumbler.
  5. Add a drop or two of stevia and stir.
  6. Add 2 or 3 ice cubes to chill.

This turned out pretty good. I think I like it a little bit better than the cold brew that I make with the pre-ground coffee, but it does seem slightly stronger. It would probably be fine with 13 to 14 grams of coffee, although I’d need to be careful playing around with the ratio since I’m measuring the water by volume and not weight. I’ve been using the stevia for a while now with this recipe, as I’ve found that I like a tiny hint of sweetness with cold brew. A little definitely goes a long way — a couple of drops is plenty.

Tomorrow, I’m going to try making a hot cup with these beans for the first time in a week or two. I figure I’ve got 9 or 10 cups worth of beans left, so I’ll see if I can get a good, repeatable recipe dialed in before I run out of them.

Niner

lpaulriddle

I ran 9 miles this morning, for the first time since June 15. I was surprised that it had been that long, especially given the cool weather we had during the second half of June. Today, the temperature at 8:00am was around 70, and the weather was overcast and muggy. I got 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night, and had a smoothie, cup of coffee, and some water before heading out. I ran at a relaxed pace of 11 minutes/mile on average, and my form felt really good throughout. All things considered, it was a great run. I expect that my pace will pick up a bit as we get into cooler weather, and I am looking forward to taking some longer runs this fall.

I used up the last of my “private house blend” coffee beans from German St Coffee and Candlery this morning. I bought these beans back in May. I used a bunch of them for cold brew, and also tried them in the French press, with pretty good results both times. After some initial failures, I eventually found an AeroPress recipe that produced a really nice cup with them, and I’ve been brewing this recipe exclusively for the past week or so, just in an effort to use up my older beans (plus, it was cool to be brewing consistently good cups of coffee with the AeroPress — maybe I’m getting better at this). Next on the list are the two bags of Lost Dog beans that I also bought in Shepherdstown in May.

Running etc

lpaulriddle

Pool update: after yesterday morning’s weird SWG behavior, I returned from work in the late afternoon to find everything ostensibly working normally. The temperature readout had corrected itself, and cell volts/amps looked good as well. The Free Chlorine this morning was identical to yesterday’s reading at ~4.5ppm. Not sure what the issue was. This morning, I pulled the cell out and inspected it, which is something I try to do every year around the end of July. There was very little scale, which indicates that the controller’s self-cleaning function is working correctly. The manifold inlet screen was clean, and the check valve looked good. Some of the cell plates (particularly the ones in the center) have worn down a little bit more, which tells me that the cell might finally be nearing the end of its life, but it seems to be good for now. Since I had it out, I went ahead and acid-washed it for good measure. Next spring, I’ll have to decide if I want to retire the cell and put my new one in service. I bought it in 2019, thinking I’d need it a lot sooner.

It was another pleasant morning, and I got up with my 5:30 alarm, so I left at 6:40 and ran for 6.8 miles. It was a great run, and I would have gone farther, but I had to be home at 8:00 to take delivery of a new winter pool cover. Weather permitting, I am going to try to take an 8 or 9-miler on Saturday morning.

Miscellany

lpaulriddle

We took the “kids” (age 20 and 17) for an overnight trip out to far western Maryland Monday into Tuesday. We visited Swallow Falls State Park, the Maryland Rock Maze, Sideling Hill Creek State Park, Cumberland Narrows, and Washington Monument State Park. We got some hiking in and found several geocaches. Even though we were away less than 36 hours, it was nice to get out of the house for a while, and brought back memories of trips like this we used to take back when the kids were smaller. Who knows if we’ll ever be able to drag both of them out for something like this again!

I rode my mountain bike to work today, for the first time since June 7. Although I’m no fan of mountain biking in the heat and humidity, the main thing stopping me this summer has been the wet and stormy weather we’ve had since the second half of June. My schedule is most conducive to mountain biking on Wednesdays, and most weeks, the trails have been too muddy. Currently, we are in the midst of a several-day dry spell, so conditions were pretty good. I stuck to familiar trails, and they were in mostly good shape, but there were lots of muddy patches in areas that aren’t usually muddy. I passed around 8 hikers on the Howard County side between Belmont and Rockburn Branch, which is 8 more than I usually see in that area weekday mornings. I guess the beautiful early August weather brought everyone out of the woodwork. Temperatures were in the upper 60s, with low humidity.

On the swimming pool front, something seems to be wonky with our SWG today. This morning, I went out and noticed that the temperature sensor was reading 5-8 degrees higher than the actual water temperature. I calibrated it to match, but I’ve never had to do that before. I ran a test, which showed normal cell amps, but then after I exited the menu, the display started flashing a low amps warning. Not sure if the two issues are related. The temperature thing is usually related to the tri-sensor, but the low amps thing usually points to the cell, so I’m not sure what to make of this. I power-cycled the controller and also backwashed the filter, but neither helped with the temperature anomaly. The low amps display went away after a minute or so, but the Chlorine has been running a little lower than expected this week, so I wonder if this has been happening for a few days. This evening, I’ll pull the cell out and inspect it, and I’ll also look at the check valve and see if there’s anything impeding flow through the tri-sensor. The cell is 14 years old, and has outlasted the original controller and tri-sensor, so it could be that it’s finally time for a new cell. However, it doesn’t seem like a bad cell would cause the issue with the temperature reading. I’m sure I’ll get to the bottom of it, and I’m sure it’ll end up costing me more money. That’s just life with a pool.