return to insanity

i kinda quit drinking espresso about a year ago. it wasn't exactly on purpose, it's just that it's kind of a lot more effort than drinking drip coffee, and hops drinks drip so it's easy to share, and it's a pain roasting two types of beans each week, and it's messy, and so on and so forth. plus, summer hit, and espresso on a hot morning isn't so nice.

but by far, the worst thing about drinking espresso is the insanity that accompanies the making of espresso.

espresso itself is liquid insanity. it takes 2x3 times as many beans to make a "serving" of espresso as a "serving" of drip coffee, and after a shot of espresso, or even a double shot, you're not "full" in the same way you're full after a cup of coffee. to make that single shot of espresso you have to warm up your espresso machine for half an hour. you have to heat your cups (okay, should be doing that for coffee, too). you have to have an expensive grinder (uh... more on that later) to not to mention a costly machine (and let me tell you, it's difficult to have an expensive machine staring you in the face every morning you visit the kitchen, unused, lonely, dusty, and shiney from misuse and repeated cleanings). espresso is a pain in the ass, and i haven't even gotten in to dosing, tamping, adjusting the grind, cleaning every gorram thing, including the floor where you dropped grinds and the counter where it got sprayed out of the crotchless pf, and a million other things.

but the rewards... when everything is "just right" from the roast to the grind to the tamp... well, there's a reason they call it a "god shot".

this morning marked my return to espresso, and though all i pulled were sink shots, they nonetheless stirred in my memory a powerful yearning to return to the insanity of making good espresso.

i keep using that word, and i mean it. the insanity of espresso is self-reinforcing -- the better the shots (and especially, the worse the shots), the more of them get drunk, the jittery i become, the faster and less logically my thinking spins, and before you know it, i've ordered a new grinder because the last time i took rocky apart i put him together 90 degrees off and now he won't grind fine enough for espresso and anyhow he never did grind to my satisfaction and he's got crappy vanes in the doser hopper and the doser switch cover keeps coming off and i was going to buy a new grinder anyhow but then i quit espresso so i didn't really have any reason to but now i plan to stay back on the stuff so dammit i need a better grinder and it's ordered now so it's too late to change my mind.

and that was all just from a couple of sink shots. imagine how much worse it will be when silvia delivers macap assisted god shots every morning.