News and notes from around the interweb:
- Research finds that adding a bit of water before grinding beans makes better coffee by reducing static electricity, microscopic clumps don’t form during brewing.
“When you grind coffee, it goes everywhere,” said study coauthor Christopher Hendon, an associate professor of computational materials chemistry at the University of Oregon. “Dust comes out of the grinder, it’s like a plume that covers everything. But if you add a little water, it seems to not go everywhere. It’s cleaner. That was the primary reason people did it.”
The mess is caused by static electricity, which is created by friction when the beans are smashed together. This static charge then makes the particles of ground coffee repel each other — like magnets of the same polarity — sending them off in every direction.
- A guest trashed a hotel room – doing $15,000 in damage – and faces up to 10 years in prison on a charge of ‘felony mischief’. Terrible as it is, and unfair to the hotel, that seems like an overcharge to me?
- Man lured to the Hilton Boston Back Bay for sex, robbed at knifepoint once inside a guest room. He didn’t even get elite night credit, $18 food and beverage credit, or late checkout subject to availability.
- 48 Hours at Fontainebleau Las Vegas seems nice but sterile?
- He forgot his shirt for a job interview. A hotel employee had a novel solution What’s weird is he didn’t actually want the job?
- New York City’s Roosevelt Hotel, which owner Pakistan International Airlines wants to demolish, is currently leased out to house migrants. There are actually a couple of retailers left on property still! And unsurprisingly they want a break on rent.
I must say that the area around The Roosevelt Hotel has become like a favela in the middle of Midtown. I have nothing against immigration but housing people who are forbidden (wrongfully in my opinion) from working with welfare and nothing to do all day except hang out outside and smoke pot, drink beer, etc., right on Madison Avenue next to Grand Central Terminal, is not conducive to getting people to return to the office.
The guy tried trashing a room in cliché Vegas movie way but in a small town.
While the guy didn’t get his other Hilton rewards at least he got points, errr point – knifepoint.
Isn’t that what a burr grinder does – reduces static electricity?
James Hoffmann did a nice video on this, including an interview with the author / professor. Link here https://youtu.be/nLnB99VJ0HE?si=OMyMicZjQaRfYAdA
Get a proper burr grinder – some Italian models will do the job (I have Rancilio Rocky) – and your coffee would taste much better. Actually, you cannot pull a proper espresso shot with beans processed using conventional rotary blade grinder.
For coffee the grinder is the most important part – the machine could be (reasonably) cheap but there are no shortcuts on grinders. Cheap burr grinders are not worth of trying.
The guy going for sex was not lured, he went willingly at a negotiated price for service. He later found out that the deal was not what he thought it was. If lured is to be used this way, I am lured to the grocery store, lured to restaurants and lured to the gas station.
What is serious coffee? Does frivolous coffee taste better?
I found it odd that one of the lawyers representing one of the store owners at the Roosevelt claimed that “the lease contemplated it being a first class hotels”. By the sixties when I became familiar with it, it was no longer a first class hotel. Doesn’t mitigate the stores’ problems but seems quite hyperbolic.