1st Coffee Post - How I got into coffee

Well, seeing how this blog is called Knit, Purl and Brew I figure I should try to stay true to the title and have a few posts on coffee.  Yes, the Brew refers to brewing coffee.  Although, I had thought about opening it up to include tea and maybe even beer.  Let's just say that I'm not totally closing the door on beer - I'll probably throw a post or two about it.  Maybe I'll try knitting drunk one day.

Anyhoo, back to coffee.  Yup, I'm into coffee... alot of coffee.  I drink quite a bit of coffee at work everyday - most of it not very good coffee.  But on the weekends, that's when I break out the good stuff.  Nothing beats a freshly ground and brewed cup-o-joe on a cold Edmonton Sunday morning.

I got into coffee thanks to my mom.  I don't remember where we were, but I was quite young, maybe 7 or 8, it was cold and my mom gave me a sip of her coffee to warm me up.  Back then she had cream and sugar with her coffee.  When I tasted that warm sweet creamy liquid I was hooked.

Even though enjoyed the taste of coffee, I actually didn't drink much coffee after that first experience, but when I grew up, I re-established my addition.  Throughout university, coffee kept me awake and focused when studying.  Then I discovered coffeegeek - a website dedicated to coffee and espresso.  Soon, I learned that there was quite the coffee community online.  Even though I was in cold blue collar Edmonton, I could get all the coffee information I needed.  The only thing left was to taste great espresso.

With coffeegeeks reviews and forums, I decided to get Silvia, a tough little starter espresso machine that was very finicky with her temperature consistency.  But from the interweb I discovered that she could be modded.  Sites like Murphy's  and Pepe's (I can't seem to find his site), detail how a PID can be implanted into Silvia to make her great.Then on one fateful day in September she was mine.  Sandy and I had been dating for about a year and she surprised me with Silvia for my birthday gift.  

Of course any coffeegeek would know that you need a good grinder to get good espresso.  I had wanted to get the Mazzer Mini, the ultimate in home coffee grinders at the time.  But also at the time, I was short on free money so I looked around the netterweb and found Sweet Maria's.  

They carried hand grinders from Zassenhaus which had conical burrs - which is the latest thing in grinders now(conical burrs, not hand grinders, back then the flat burrs were the norm).  Plus, I figured, since the coffee was hand ground, physically, I would not be able to heat up the grounds through grinding - this was a good thing.  So ordered one from Sweet Maria's.

With the grinder on it's way, I needed some beans, freshly roasted beans.  These I found locally.  Even though, at the time, Edmonton only had one or two espresso cafes it had a roaster - Edmonton Tea and Coffee and they carried 100% Kona and Jamaican Blue Mountain beans as well as other coffees and blends.  But being me, with the mentality of going big or go home, I got a pound of kona beans.  Not really the best purchase for the newb barista on a new equipment.

So with freshly roasted beans and grinder in hand I set out to make my first espresso on Silvia.  I think I must have wasted half the pound of beans just getting the grind and tamp right, or what I thought was right.  Really, it wasn't right.  I basically just managed to find a grind and tamp that produced a puck that wasn't so tight that it choked Silvia or too loose that water just gushed out.  The first cup of espresso I made that was drinkable really wasn't.  It was horrid.  Sooo bitter and sour.  What had I gotten myself into.?