Fruddled Gruntbugglies

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  • Winter Biking Update

    Winter Biking Update

    It has been a very slow winter for biking. Sub-optimal trail conditions kept me off the MTB for most of January and February. I tried to ride last week after about 48 hours of above-freezing temperatures, but the trails were still extremely muddy from the freeze-thaw cycle — about the worst I had ever seen them, actually. That ride ended up being more of a hike-a-bike, as I tried to sidestep the muddy sections to avoid creating ruts. After slogging through PVSP Avalon on the Howard County side, I bailed out and rode the rest of the way to work on pavement. This morning, however, was a different story. We are in the midst of an early-March cold snap, and the past two nights have bottomed out in the low to mid 20s. The trails were nicely frozen, and I had a very nice 10.5-mile ride. There were lots of areas of frozen mud, with deep ruts from people who had ridden/hiked the trails while they were muddy, and it was easy to see the problem areas based on where the sun was starting to hit them. The window stayed open for my entire commute to work, though. I’ll have to ride home on pavement, which is not much fun on a full-suspension mountain bike, but I’m willing to pay that price for a nice morning trail ride.

    I’ve been commuting to work about once a week, mainly on roads, and mainly with my old 1993 Specialized Rockhopper, which has seen (relatively speaking) a lot of use this winter. My Surly has been out of commission for a month or so with a flat rear tire, because I didn’t have the right size tubes for it, nor did I have any patches. I’ve got tubes now, but I decided it was time to replace the tires as well, so those are on order. I’m probably going to order a sheet of 40 or 50 patches online somewhere, which seems like it should be more cost-effective than ordering those small patch kits. I don’t think I’ve ever patched a tire on the road (I typically either carry a spare tube or call for a ride), but even if I decided to start, I could just use the bulk patches to refill one of my patch kits.

    I ordered a bunch of new bike-specific water bottles last month. The Camelbak Podiums I had been were pushing 15 years old, and getting really beat-up and grungy. I went with Bivo water bottles, and ordered 4 of them in a mix of large, small, insulated, non-insulated, silicone-coated, and bare metal finish. I’m hoping that the insulated bottles, as well as keeping water cool in the summer, will keep it from freezing when it’s in the teens and low 20s. I do really like how the valve works with them. I found out rather quickly that the bare metal bottles do not work well with metal water bottle cages, though. I’m likely going to end up replacing some of my metal cages with plastic. The bottles do fit nicely in my waist-belt water bottle holder (one of my better impulse purchases) as well as the side pocket of my Osprey Manta, which I often use for MTB commuting in the winter. Overall, I like the bottles, and I’m hoping they’ll work out well.

  • Late Winter Running Notes

    Late Winter Running Notes

    Winter is almost over, but you wouldn’t know it this year. 2024-2025 has been one of the longest, coldest winters in recent memory. We’ve also had more snow than usual by recent standards, although compared to years like 2010 and 2016, it hasn’t been too much. All told, I’m not going to complain. We’ve got what figures to be the final cold snap of the winter hitting us over the next day or 2, with morning temperatures predicted to be in the low 20s. I’m hoping to take advantage of it and get out for a couple more hikes up at Loch Raven Reservoir, which has been my go-to winter hiking destination for the past couple of years.

    Running has been steady this winter. I haven’t missed a run in several weeks. I’m running around 25 miles per week: 7 to 8 miles on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 10 to 13 miles on Saturdays (days subject to change due to weather conditions, etc). I’ve gotten conditioned to the point where I can run 10 miles and not feel it the next day. I try to go 13.1 about once per month, but I definitely do still feel that distance the next day. This week, my weekday runs went really well. I typically leave the house at 8:30 to avoid school traffic, but Thursday, I had to leave at 6:30 due to a morning dentist appointment. Fortunately, by late February, it’s no longer pitch dark at 6:30 (at least until the time change in March). Today (Saturday), I had some issues with low energy. I made it 10 miles, but I was really dragging through the middle part of the run. I ate a protein bar at around 7 miles, which gave me enough energy to finish the run. I suspect it might have been a hydration issue. There isn’t really a quick fix for dehydration: you can’t just slam 32-48oz of water right before a run, because the body can’t absorb it fast enough, and most of it comes out the other end. It takes a lot of discipline to remember to stay hydrated over the course of the day. Sometimes I’m good about it, and other times I’m not. One encouraging thing is that I have learned to pace myself so that I don’t struggle during runs, even when I am not feeling 100%. Also, I have found that singing songs is a great strategy for willing myself to finish difficult runs. Sometimes, I’ll run through an entire album. Today’s selection was “Rubber Soul” by the Beatles, which I chose because I know the lyrics to most of the songs, and most of them have a tempo that goes well with my 180 steps-per-minute running cadence. Singing takes my mind off the physical act of running, and it also forces me to take it a little easy, as I have to save my breath a little bit more.

  • Brewing Good Decaf Ethiopia

    Brewing Good Decaf Ethiopia

    • Beans: Decaf Ethiopia,Sidama
      • Roaster: Brewing Good Coffee Company (Savage, MD)
      • Origin: Ethiopia (Arroresa, Sidama)
      • Roast level: Medium
      • Roast date: 1/26/2025
      • Purchase date: 2/9/2025 at BGCC in Savage Mill
      • Process: Washed; Varietals: Heirloom; Grade: 2; Elevation: 1850-2200 MASL
      • Tasting notes: Gentle brightness, medium body and sweetness, notes of spiced plum, crisp apple, almond, vanilla, and caramel
    • V60:
      • 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15)
      • Ode: 2+2
      • Water at 95°C
      • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 36-40g bloom water – finishes 04:00-04:05

    This is very different from the Ethiopian light roast that I bought at BG at the same time. It is a smooth medium roast with no hint of acidity. Definitely not as complex as the light roast, but nice body and overall a very drinkable decaf. The beans have one of the slowest draw-down times of anything I’ve brewed with the V60, but none of the cups have tasted bitter or over-extracted. The recipe also works well doubled, but with the slow draw-down, I had to be careful not to overflow the size 2 V60. I’m sure I’ll eventually buy more of these.

  • Brewing Good Ethiopia Tega & Tula

    Brewing Good Ethiopia Tega & Tula

    • Beans: Ethiopia (Tega & Tula Specialty Coffee Estate)
      • Roaster: Brewing Good Coffee Company (Savage, MD)
      • Origin: Ethiopia (Kaffa Zone, Limmu, Oromia)
      • Roast level: Light
      • Roast date: 1/22/2025
      • Purchase date: 2/9/2025 at BGCC in Savage Mill
      • Process: Washed; Varietal: Ethiopian heirloom; Elevation: 1500-2000 MASL
      • Tasting notes: Cocoa, spice, citrus notes with medium body and moderate acidity
    • V60:
      • 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15)
      • Ode: 1+2
      • Water at 100°C
      • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 36-40g bloom water – finishes 02:50-03:00

    I’m finally getting around to checking out some of the smaller roasters around home. Savage Mill is only around 10 minutes away by car, and I occasionally bike right past it on my Sunday morning rides. Going forward, I’m going to try to put a few of these places into my rotation and return every few months or so. This place was busy on Sunday morning, and parking was a little hard to come by. The coffee here is definitely “top shelf” (and priced accordingly), but sometimes you get what you pay for. This was a complex light roast with a good bit of acidity and a lot of interesting flavors. This kind of coffee is almost like wine- not so much a “daily drinker”, but rather something to be savored. That being said, I got slightly better extraction when I brewed larger cups of it (450g vs 300g). I never strayed far from 1:15, but I’m wondering if maybe I should have tried brewing a couple of smaller cups at 1:16 to 1:18, just to see if it turned out differently. Something to keep in mind for next time.

  • PJ’s Maple Street Blend

    • Beans: Maple Street Blend
      • Roaster: PJ’s Coffee (New Orleans, LA)
      • Roast level: Medium (3/5)
      • Origin: Brazil/Honduras
      • Roast date: unknown
    • V60:

    PJ’s apparently started out in NOLA in the late ’70s, but has evolved into a large chain (not on the scale of Starbucks, but they have multiple locations in several states). I’m not sure where or when the beans were roasted. The bag had a lot of husks and bean fragments in it — I don’t know if it was a handling issue during transit, or a Q.C. issue during bagging. It didn’t seem to affect the taste of the coffee until I got down to the end of the bag. My second-to-last cup was a little bitter. For the last cup, I spent several minutes picking out the whole beans, and composted about 3.5 grams of husks and fragments.

    The beans worked well with a fine grind, but I really felt the caffeine, more than most other beans I’ve brewed to date. Not sure why that is. I brewed most of my cups at 1:16 or thereabouts. Taste-wise, it didn’t knock my socks off, but was perfectly drinkable. The web site describes it as “nutty/floral”, which I mostly agree with. No fruitiness or acidity at all, and no burnt/roasty taste, either. I have a sneaking suspicion that the beans were a little past their prime, but have no way to back that up. It’d be interesting to get my hands on a bag that I know was freshly roasted, just to compare, but with chain coffee, that’s easier said than done.

  • Orinoco Old Man Winter

    • Beans: Old Man Winter
      • Roaster: Orinoco Coffee and Tea (Jessup, MD)
      • Roast level: Light
      • Purchase date: 12/24/2024 at Martha’s Café in Arbutus, MD
    • V60:

    I bought a bag of this on a whim, not realizing that it was flavored. I got the best cups at grind setting 3 after initially starting at 5. This was OK black, but the maple/butter/cinnamon flavoring didn’t really work for me. It would probably be better with sweetener and/or creamer, but that’s not how I roll (except on very rare occasions). Oh, well, live and learn.

  • Good Time Earth Coffee

    Getting caught up on a few coffees I have brewed (or am brewing) over the past few weeks or months. This one is somewhat unique. It’s made by Good Time Health, based in Finksburg, MD. The description from the web site is: “Organic Medium Roast Ground Arabica Beans from Mexico, are paired with the Fruiting Body Mushroom Extracts of: Lions Mane, Reishi, and Cordyceps! Giving you a rich and naturally smooooth black coffee.”

    So, coffee with mushrooms. It’s pre-ground (I suspect that they add the mushroom extracts after grinding) and looks to be a medium to coarse grind. My wife bought the bag in mid-December, so it’s probably a little past its prime by now, but my usual AeroPress recipe is still producing reasonably good cups. The mushroom extract adds a definite earthy flavor to the coffee.

    • AeroPress with Prismo, metal filter, and 1 paper filter
    • 1 heaping scoop of grounds (I use the scoop that comes with the AeroPress)
    • 250g of water at 95°C (or just pour to about 1/4″ from the top of the AeroPress cylinder)
    • Stir 6-7x / steep until around 02:45 / stir 6-7x again / press slowly

    The one thing I’m noticing recently is that it takes a good bit of effort to press this — I suspect this may work well without the paper filter, so I am going to try it that way next time.

    Update- As I had suspected, this is better when brewed with the metal Prismo filter only and no paper filter. I suspect that the metal filter lets more of the mushroom extracts (and coffee oils) into the cup, which is kind of what you want with coffee like this. I bet it would also make good French press coffee, so I may try that.

  • Zeke’s Snow Day Blend #2

    • Beans: Snow Day Blend
      • Roaster: Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
      • Roast level: Medium (3/8)
      • Origin: Bali, Indonesia (Blue Krishna) / Tanzania (Peaberry)
      • Roast date: 12/30/2024
    • V60:

    This is my second bag, and my first time grinding the beans with the Ode. Last March, I ended up using a very coarse grind with 95°C water, with good results. With this bag, I again started with 95°C water, but couldn’t quite get it dialed in. Grind settings 5, 6, and even 7 all had an unpleasant bitterness. Grind setting 8 was way too coarse — it did get rid of the bitterness, but the cup was weak and watery. So, I backed off to setting 6 (still on the coarse side for V60) and dropped the water temperature to 90°C, and the last couple of cups at those settings have been good. Interestingly, these are the exact same settings I used with my recent bag of Rise Up Winter Warmer, and the two also have a somewhat similar flavor. This tells me that when I buy Indonesian coffee in the future, I might want to start off with a coarser grind (e.g. Ode setting 6), and then adjust from there.

    1/28: I nudged the grind setting 1 click “coarser”, to 6+1, for my final couple of cups. Both were among the best I’ve brewed with this bag. Recipe adjusted accordingly.

  • Today’s Run

    I believe that today’s weather was the coldest in which I have ever run. It’s possible that I ran in colder weather back in my 20s or 30s, but if I did, I have forgotten. I have, however, biked in colder weather than today’s (and may do so again tomorrow morning). I headed out at around 10:30am, and ran 7 miles. The temperature was somewhere in the mid-teens, but perhaps more importantly, the sun was shining and winds were light. I changed things up a bit from my usual running garb: I wore 32° Heat synthetic long-sleeve shirt and long johns, Kühl running pants (relaxed fit instead of my usual tights), Under Armour long-sleeve top, Patagonia R1 jacket, REI balaclava, Injinji Snow calf-height toe socks, Correct Toes, winter gloves, and Xero Mesa Trail waterproof shoes. I also put petroleum jelly on the exposed parts of my face (cheeks, nose, forehead).

    Notes:

    • I worked up a good sweat in this gear. The gloves were a poor choice- my hands got too warm and sweaty, and I ended up taking the gloves off for probably 50% of the run. I should probably go with mittens over light liner gloves instead.
    • I am becoming a big fan of the Injinji Snow socks. My feet never got even the slightest bit cold. I may try these socks out for biking as well. In any case, I think I need to pick up another pair or two of them.
    • The balaclava was a mixed bag, much as it is with cold weather biking. Depending mainly on what direction I was facing, I alternately wore it up over my mouth or down around my chin. It kept my head and neck nice and warm. When I pulled it up over my nose and mouth, my sunglasses fogged up. With my mouth covered and my nose exposed, the balaclava did a decent job, but any breathing out of my mouth got it damp, so I mostly kept it up over my chin with my mouth exposed, again similar to how I use it on the bike. That worked well for most of the run, but was uncomfortable with any kind of headwind. I’m going to need to use something else if I ever want to run on a really windy, frigid day.
    • The pants worked out well. With tights, my legs sometimes get uncomfortably cold when the temperature is below 20. The combination of the 32° Heat long johns and looser-fitting running pants was quite comfortable. Never underestimate the power of air as an insulator! I didn’t seem to sweat as much “down there”, either. (Incidentally, 32° Heat is a Costco house brand. The material is a polyester/acrylic/rayon/spandex blend.)
    • I had a similar issue that I typically encounter in the summer: I kind of “hit the wall” around mile 6. It was a very similar feeling to what happens on a hot, humid summer day: I just run out of energy, and continuing becomes a struggle. I’m now wondering if it’s something to do with breathing and oxygen intake: it’s a lot harder to efficiently breathe when the air temperature is so cold. This is even more noticeable when I have to exert more (e.g. when running uphill). Similarly, in the summer, the humid, oppressive air (particularly on “code orange” days) can be hard to breathe as well. In the cold, this kind of goes back to choice of headgear: maybe I need something that will let me breathe more effectively with my mouth and nose covered, as that would help to warm the air I’m taking in. I should probably also just realize that I can’t operate at optimal levels of exertion on these kind of days, and maybe make a conscious effort to set a relaxed pace (particularly at the start of the run) and take the whole thing a little easier.

  • Ride Notes

    After an aborted attempt last week, I “rode” my hard-tail MTB to work today. I put “rode” in quotes because I ended up hiking about half of it. Last week, it was a little too soon after the snow fell, and there was too much deep snow for me to want to deal with. Today was better, but I think I waited a little too long. About 50% of the trails were well-groomed and fun to ride, but the rest was icy from snow melting and re-freezing. Everything was packed down very well, and I was thinking to myself that studded tires would have worked really well in these conditions. Alas, I do not have a set of studded tires to fit a 29er mountain bike. Maybe I should get a pair, but I’d likely only use them a couple of days per year, so I’m not sure it would be worth the expense and the effort to mount/remove the tires every year.

    More notes about the ride:

    • Weather: around 20ºF, light wind, sunny
    • Clothes I wore: Minus 33 merino wool short-sleeve shirt, regular long-sleeve cycling jersey, Canari long-sleeve full-zip winter cycling jersey, Performance Triflex winter cycling pants, 2 pairs wool socks, Altra Lone Peak waterproof trail shoes with fleece insoles, Yaktrax cleats, REI balaclava, Gore Windstopper heavy cycling gloves, Bar Mitts

    This kept me nice and warm. As I’ve noted before, I stay a lot warmer riding in the woods than on roads, likely due to the slower speeds and the terrain/trees providing shelter from wind. I didn’t sweat much, either, and my clothes were mostly dry when I arrived at work. The Yaktrax provided great traction while walking over icy areas and crossing streams. However, I noticed later that they scraped a lot of paint off my pedals. Not ideal, but not the end of the world, and I have no regrets, as the cleats kept me upright (one of my primary goals nowadays). Due to the ice, the ride took 2 hours, which is a lot longer than I would prefer. All the same, I’m glad I was able to get out. I also like how clean the bike always seems to end up after a ride in the snow. Nothing at all like riding in dirt and mud!