The journal.

Things I notice. Things I am still learning.

Browse

December 2025

People at the tables of a Kolkata coffee house

Dec 14, 2025 / Indian coffee

Is Indian coffee any good, and what should I buy?

I grew up in a tea family across the river from Calcutta, saved for weeks to buy one coffee at CCD, and kept going back to a room called the Coffee House. What India grows, why the south drinks coffee and the north drinks tea, and what to buy.

16 min read

August 2025

A traditional brass filter and a frothy tumbler of South Indian coffee

Aug 10, 2025 / Espresso and milk

Do I need an espresso machine to make good coffee at home?

Back in India after twelve years, there is a steel filter on the counter older than I am. No pump, no pressure, no timer. What espresso actually is, why milk goes wrong, and what you can have without a machine.

12 min read

February 2024

A snow-patched field and a path under a bare tree and a deep blue winter sky, houses on the ridge behind

Feb 11, 2024 / Tasting

How do I learn to taste coffee?

Covid took my sense of smell, gave most of it back, and kept some. For a while coffee smelled like something scraped off a road. What I learned trying to get it back.

11 min read

September 2023

The falls on the Snake River at Idaho Falls, with the temple behind

Sep 17, 2023 / Buying

How long do coffee beans stay fresh?

In Idaho Falls most of the people I worked with had never tasted coffee, and a man called Cliff told me the date on the bag is not the one printed on the front. How long beans last, and where to keep them.

9 min read

June 2023

A waterfall pouring between granite walls in a canyon above Boulder, with pines and a pale dead tree on the rock

Jun 18, 2023 / Roasting

Can I roast coffee at home, and what actually happens in a roast?

A machine on the back porch, a temperature probe, a stopwatch and my ears. Roasting is the same job I do all day: keep a curve decelerating without letting it stall.

12 min read

December 2022

Snowbanks and bare trees in front of the Flatirons under a blue sky full of white clouds

Dec 11, 2022 / Brewing

Which coffee brewer should I buy?

A sixty-centimetre counter, a boy of four, a boy of five weeks, and six brewers. I am keeping one. Which one, and why repetition matters more than equipment.

12 min read

July 2022

The Flatirons rising above green hills and ponderosa pines under a streaked summer sky

Jul 17, 2022 / Brewing

Grinder or brewer, what should I buy first?

A second boy on the way, a company on the way out, a capsule machine humming on the counter, and a hand grinder in a hallway at five in the morning because the electric one wakes the house. Where the money should go, and why.

11 min read

March 2022

A hand holding a coffee capsule beside a capsule machine

Mar 13, 2022 / Brewing

Is a Nespresso Vertuo worth it?

In the muddy end of a Boulder winter, with the company bleeding and a second child on the way, I bought a capsule machine. What it actually does, what it costs, when it is the right answer, and what a shortcut tastes like.

11 min read

November 2021

An orange gantry crane in a laboratory yard beside a steel shed, with the Flatirons and a snow-covered peak under a clear blue sky

Nov 14, 2021 / Brewing

Does water really change how coffee tastes?

I moved a mile above the sea and my coffee went wrong in a way I could not name. It took two weeks and a thermometer to find out that the water had changed, not the recipe.

10 min read

April 2021

The Alabama Theatre sign in downtown Birmingham, Alabama

Apr 11, 2021 / Buying

How do I choose a bag of coffee?

Forty bags on a shelf, a friend on the phone from Bogotá, and a startup with weeks of money left. Five things on a bag predict whether you will like it. One beats the rest.

11 min read

July 2020

Two men on decorated white horses pass the Hawa Mahal in Jaipur

Jul 19, 2020 / History

Where does coffee come from, and which of the stories are true?

Stranded in Jaipur with a jar of instant coffee and a great deal of time, I read about coffee instead of drinking it: five hundred years, a few lies, a stone observatory, and the question of who writes a country's history.

13 min read

October 2019

The New York skyline at sunset with the Empire State Building

Oct 13, 2019 / Brewing

Why is my coffee sour one day and bitter the next?

Why is the same coffee sour one morning and bitter the next? Because you did not do the same thing. One idea, extraction, and the three dials that move it.

11 min read

October 2018

New York seen from a bedroom window before sunrise

Oct 7, 2018 / Ritual

Why make coffee at home when there is a café next door?

There is a café ninety seconds from my door, and I make coffee myself anyway, badly, at four in the morning, with a three-week-old boy on my shoulder and my father's lesson about settling time in my ear.

12 min read