A New Coffee Activity

Coffee is one of my first thoughts every morning. If I'm an addict, at least it's legal and available everywhere in the world.

I have (had) a great coffee maker. It ground the beans and then brewed the coffee so it is (was) always fresh. In the middle of the night last night, Terry heard a weird noise and when he investigated it turned out to be the coffee pot. He unplugged it and forgot about it.

When I got up and tried the grind cycle, nothing happened. It made a weak noise, attempting to grind the beans but nothing happened. I cleaned it out, tried again. Re-set the machine's functions, tried again, the same. So, we had Nespresso.

I thought I had a spare coffee maker in the garage. I dusted it off, washed it, set it up, set it's clock and tried to make a test pot. The "on" button wouldn't work. The "off" button wouldn't work. It's gone, too.

Shopping was on the agenda anyway, it's a week before Christmas. So, this afternoon, I entered the world of the french press. I've wanted one forever but had a hard time justifying one with a coffee maker and a Nespresso machine (in both places). I bought a 12-cup model (shown above). Twelve cups of french press coffee equal about 36 oz total, or maybe two Starbuck's medium cups (I think it's called Venti but I'm not well-versed in Starbucks lingo). But, it's the biggest model they make.

I saved the brushed stainless thermos carafe from the old coffee pot, perfect to keep french press coffee nice and warm. I'm set.

I dashed home, tore open the packaging to my new french press. I'm not one to read and follow directions. Even when I get something complicated like a computer, I unwrap it, plug it in and play with it until I get stuck before reading anything. Reading is for the details, not macro usage instructions.

But, looking at this thing, I was a bit stumped. How does it work? How do you keep coffee grinds from getting (ick) in the coffee? I had to read the directions. Twice. They still didn't make complete sense, so I decided a late-afternoon pick-me-up was in order. I followed the directions to the letter. Tested, tasted the result. Fabulous.

I'll never go back. It's all set up for tomorrow's first real test.