Fruddled Gruntbugglies

Blog

  • This and that

    My dream of running 10+ miles on Saturday mornings is going to have to wait at least another week, as it’s still oppressively humid out there. Today, I settled for 10K, and probably sweated out about 30% of my body weight. If I’m able to consistently run longer distances through fall, winter, and next spring, then I’ll figure out what I need to do to keep it up this time of year. At a minimum, I’ll need a way to carry 1.5 to 2 liters of water, as well as a strategy to replenish electrolytes lost through sweating.

    On the pool front, after malfunctioning twice so far this season, my SWG temperature sensor has been working correctly for the past several days, but I now have a tri-sensor simulator that I can use to troubleshoot it the next time it acts up. For now, though, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I just ordered a new Skimlite R16C leaf rake to replace my old one that I bought in 2007. That’s right — the old one lasted 16 years as my only leaf net. It had a few holes in the mesh, but was still usable. Recently, though, the frame has started flopping back and forth, which is inconvenient enough that I finally took the plunge and ordered a new one. They are not cheap ($70 in 2007; $100 in 2023) but they are made to last, and when you consider that the cheaper nets only last a season or two, the Skimlite basically pays for itself over time. I expect that this will be the last one I ever need to buy.

  • More Pourover Notes

    More Pourover Notes

    My AeroPress has been a little bit neglected lately, as I’ve been really enjoying the pourover cups I’ve been brewing with my bag of light roast beans. Both the pourover and AeroPress methods take about 5 minutes (start to finish) to brew a single cup, so going forward, I’ll probably be using both, depending on the beans and (to an extent) my mood. Two things I’ve learned over the past week:

    • With pourover, small adjustments to the grind size seem to have a larger effect on the finished cup than with the AeroPress. The first few pourover cups I brewed tasted a little bit sour and under-extracted, but at just a slightly finer grind (6 clicks on my JX), I’ve been getting fantastic cups.
    • When brewing single cups with boiling water, the coffee will cool to a drinkable temperature faster if I use a room temperature ceramic mug instead of an insulated Hydro Flask mug, so I can enjoy it sooner and without burning my tongue. 😀

  • Cold Brew Redux

    I made some cold brew at dinnertime today, with the same recipe I’ve been using for most of the summer, and decided to measure the quantity of water used so that I can double the recipe more easily and accurately. Here’s the latest recipe. Note that a “scoop” refers to the scoop that comes with the AeroPress.

    1. Set AeroPress up in inverted orientation and add 1 heaping scoop of drip-grind coffee
    2. Add 200 to 220 grams room-temperature water (enough to fill AeroPress to about 1cm of the top)
    3. Stir vigorously for 1 minute
    4. Flip and press into a glass tumbler (30 seconds)
    5. Add 2-3 ice cubes and a few drops of stevia to taste
    6. Stir and serve

    Doubled recipe:

    1. Set AeroPress up in inverted orientation and add 2 heaping scoops of drip-grind coffee
    2. Fill AeroPress with room-temperature water to 1cm from top and note how much was added by weight
    3. Stir vigorously for 1 minute
    4. Flip and press into a tall glass, small pitcher, or carafe
    5. Top up to a total of 400-440 grams of water
    6. Add several drops of stevia to taste
    7. Stir, pour into tumblers, add ice, and serve

    I’m still using Wellsley Farms Breakfast Blend pre-ground coffee to make this, but I’m almost out of it. Once it’s gone, I’ll try it with some Maxwell House Original Roast that we have in the cabinet.

  • Morning Notes

    After alluding to it yesterday, I brewed a cup of pourover coffee this morning using this recipe, with the same beans and a slightly finer grind. I went back and forth over whether to try it coarser or finer, eventually settling on finer just because of how my earlier pourover cups have tasted. I used a setting of 18 on the JX grind chart, which is two rotations minus 6 clicks (54 total clicks). I think this was the right call. The cup had a little bit more fruitiness than the cup I brewed with the AeroPress, with more body to balance out the fruity acidity than my previous pourover cups. Now I’m wondering how fine I can go before it starts to taste bitter.

    The weather was quite pleasant this morning, and the past several days have been dry, so I hit the trails and commuted to work through PVSP on my mountain bike. It was my third bike ride in 4 days. On the HoCo side of the river, I rode Belmont Trail to Morning Choice to Lewis and Clark to Garrett’s Pass, which is a route I take frequently. It was a great ride, except something stung me on my arm at one point. I am wondering if maybe I ran over an underground hornet’s nest, and one of them got me. If that’s the case, I’m glad I was moving fast (and I’m not allergic)!! We’re still in heavy summer growth season, but with a few exceptions, the trails I rode were not overgrown. Upper Soapstone Trail, which is on my route home, may be another story, so I’ll see how that is doing later this afternoon.

  • Running/Climbing

    Running/Climbing

    After a hot and humid day yesterday, this morning saw a cold front sweep through and take a lot of the humidity with it. I got out for my run at about 8:30, which is later than I typically like in August, but it worked out in my favor today, as the dewpoint had dropped considerably by then. I ran a very typical weekday distance of 7 miles at a very typical pace of 10:30.

    Last week’s tweaked foot nerve seems to have mostly resolved. I had no issues climbing last night. I climbed somewhere around 6-7 routes, about half on lead and half on top rope. Instead of my usual Scarpa Force V shoes, I wore my La Sportiva Solutions for all of my climbs. Although they are less comfortable than the Scarpas overall, they put less weight on the balls of my feet (because the soles have a downturned shape), which seems to help with nerve issues. Running did not aggravate the nerve at all last week, but I did feel it after 45 minutes or so on my treadmill desk.

  • Pourover vs AeroPress

    Pourover vs AeroPress

    I’ve brewed the same light roast coffee beans with the same pourover method four times now, and the results have been fairly consistent — good cups that could probably be a little bit better. Today, for comparison, I went back to my AeroPress, using a recipe I had tried once before with these beans. Other than the brewing method, the main differences were that I used a slightly coarser grind with the AeroPress (2.5 turns on the JX vs 2 for pourover) and also a little bit higher ratio (1:14 vs 1:16.67). Both cups seemed good strength-wise. The AeroPress cup was stronger, but the pourovers weren’t thin or weak tasting. They did have more of a noticeable fruity/acidic taste than the AeroPress cup. I think, overall, the AeroPress cup was a little bit better, but I’m curious to see what happens if I try the pour-over with a different grind size. I’m just not sure whether to try it coarser or finer.

  • Ride to work

    Ride to work

    I rode to work through Catonsville this morning, for the first time in two months. I went through Patapsco Valley State Park on the Grist Mill Trail, then out to Ellicott City via River and Frederick Rds., and into Catonsville via Oella Ave. and the #9 Trolley Trail. This route is roughly 15 miles, and back when I commuted by bike almost every day, I used to ride it about once a week. Lately, I haven’t done it much, mainly due to the recent long-term closure of the Grist Mill Trail (there are other ways to get to Catonsville by bike, but they’re not much fun to ride on weekday mornings). I’ve always liked the route as an alternative to my usual ride through Halethorpe/Arbutus, and it’s not bad to do even on school days, so it was kind of nice to ride it again for the first time since the trail reopened. Going forward, I’d like to get back to riding the route once or twice a month, so we’ll see how that goes.

  • Late-season swimming report

    It’s that time of the year where I’m wondering where summer went. I figure we have at worst 4 weeks of swim season left, and at best 6 weeks. Our record for latest swim of the year (October 9), was set in 2007, and still stands after 16 years. Will it ever be broken? We’ll have another shot at it in a few short weeks.

    I would guesstimate that I have been getting in the pool and swimming laps about 4 days a week on average this year, which seems like plenty to me. It’s less frequent than I swam last year or the year before, but I’ve got more going on nowadays than in 2021 and 2022. I am still swimming with a tether, and tracking the workout by counting strokes. I typically do 720 strokes, which consists of 3 sets of 60 breaststroke, 60 freestyle, 60 butterfly, and 60 backstroke, in that order. It takes me a little over 30 minutes. This is the first year I’ve swum backstroke regularly, and it is still decidedly a work in progress. For some reason, I struggle with coordinating the arm movement and the leg kicks. It reminds me kind of like trying to pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time. I also occasionally splash water into my nose, which is not the most pleasant sensation, and staying straight (with the tether perpendicular to the pool wall) can be a challenge. I expect that I will improve over time, but it may take a couple of seasons.

    We have a new winter safety cover this year. The old one lasted a long time — I installed it in fall 2002, and we used it through this past winter. It was in rough shape by then, and we really should have replaced it last year, but I’m not going to complain about getting 20+ winters out of it. The covers have more than doubled in price since 2002, but with any luck, this will be the last one we have to buy while we’re in the house. Next season, it’s looking like I may finally have to replace the pump. The current pump is a 1hp Hayward Super 2, and the previous owner installed it, so it’s at least 22 seasons old. It’s on its second impeller and second or third shaft seal, but now, the motor is finally starting to go, so I’m going to have to replace it before it gets loud enough to annoy my neighbors and then eventually freezes up. I may try to take care of that in the early spring, but I first need to decide if I want to swap out the entire pump, or just the motor, and then there’s the question of whether to go with a variable speed (VS) motor. Lots of stuff to think about there.

  • Biking Report

    I rode my bike into Baltimore today, for the first time since May 14 (according to my geocaching logs). My usual route into the city has me picking up the Gwynns Falls Trail at Wilkens Ave. about 0.6 mile east of Caton Ave. Then, I follow the GFT into the city and past Carroll Park, where I can go north towards the B&O Museum, or east past M&T Bank Stadium, towards Federal Hill and the Inner Harbor. To exit the city, I usually go south through Federal Hill, over the Hanover St. bridge, and through Brooklyn and Harmans to Linthicum. Both routes are roughly 14 miles one-way to or from home, so I’m guaranteed to get 28 miles plus wherever I go within the city. Today’s ride took me through downtown along Light and Pratt Sts., and along the waterfront promenade to Fell’s Point, one of my former stomping grounds which I hadn’t visited since probably before COVID, and never on a bike until today. I had mixed luck looking for a few geocaches along the way — I found a couple, but struck out on several others. That’s kind of the way it goes with me with urban caching.

    Baltimore really gets a bad rap nowadays, even amongst people I know who grew up there. It’s kind of depressing. The city has its problems for sure, but there are parts of Baltimore that are still very nice. The city has added two-way protected bike paths in a lot of downtown areas, and when I was there, the whole harbor area was busy with walkers, joggers, and bikers. There were lots of folks out and about in Federal Hill and Fells Point, as well. I will grant that some areas along my routes in and out of Baltimore leave something to be desired. Parts of the GFT between Wilkens Ave. and Carroll Park are secluded and a little bit creepy, and Brooklyn is not a great neighborhood, in spite of being along the East Coast Greenway. It probably helps that I usually ride through these areas early on Sunday mornings, but I’ve never had a problem after 3 years and 15-20 rides. Once I’m in the city proper, I stick to nicer neighborhoods like Downtown/Inner Harbor, Federal Hill, Locust Point/Port Covington, and Fells Point, and I have always felt safe.

  • Pourover

    Pourover

    I needed to shift gears after using up the last of my dark roast beans this morning, so this afternoon, I decided to finally try making pourover coffee.

    • Beans: Local Coffee Roasting Co. (Roxana, DE) Breakfast Blend (Guatemala/Colombia) light roast
    • 15g coffee / 250g water (1:16.67)
    • JX: 2 rotations or 20 on the grind chart (medium — a little finer than what the chart shows as a pourover grind) Note — better a little bit finer at grind setting 18 (2 rotations minus 6 clicks)
    • Water at boil (100°C)
    • Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique (see below)
    1. 0:00: Pour 50g of water to bloom
    2. 0:10 – 0:15: Gently Swirl
    3. 0:45 – 1:00: Pour up to 100g total (40% total weight)
    4. 1:10 – 1:20: Pour up to 150g total (60% total weight)
    5. 1:30 – 1:40: Pour up to 200g total (80% total weight)
    6. 1:50 – 2:00: Pour up to 250g total (100% total weight)
    7. 2:00 – 2:05: Gently swirl
    8. Drawdown should finish around 3:00

    This went pretty much according to the script, except I maybe waited a little too long before the first swirl, and I completely forgot the second swirl. I will try to improve my swirling technique next time. To preheat my ceramic V60, I went downstairs to the workshop and found a rubber Fernco cap that was just barely large enough to fit around the flange on the bottom of the V60. I took the metal clamp off the cap, put the cap on the V60, filled the V60 up with water from my insta-hot tap, and let it sit while the brew water was coming to a boil. It worked great, and the V60 was nice and hot when it came time to use it.

    I have to remember to let the cup cool for a little longer when brewing with boiling water, as I got a little impatient and burned my tongue. 😮 Other than that, I was pretty happy with how this turned out, especially for my first time doing pourover. The flavor and strength both seemed good. I’ll probably brew it exactly the same way next time. I’m curious to see how a coarser or finer grind affects the taste, so I may play around with that a little bit eventually. I hadn’t brewed these beans in about a month, so I’m also curious to try this AeroPress recipe again and see how it compares to the pourover.