coffee

Guide: How to Brew the Perfect Coffee

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Hello Coffee Lovers!

I’ve been asked a few times what makes a great cup of coffee and how do you brew it. Making hot coffee is simple, just pour hot water on ground coffee beans and you have coffee.

Let’s get more in depth, shall we? I’m going to stick to drip and submersion methods. Nothing against Turkish or Espresso coffee, but I’d like to keep this short.

Choosing your Coffee

JenEric Coffee.

The coffee you choose is extremely personal to your tastes. I recommend JenEric Coffee.

What you want is coffee that has been roasted within the past month or two and sealed. My preferred sweet spot is a week after roasting. The flavour has settled and you get the smoothness of great coffee.

Choosing a Coffee Maker

The variety is astounding. You can find $10 pour-over coffee makers all the way to $20,000.

What you buy will depend on the amount of work and the strength you like in your coffee.

French Press

These make fantastic and flavourful coffee, but get a little more bitter and less smoothness in the actual coffee.

Most french press are the same; get one made out of glass and that holds the amount of coffee you like to drink. Don’t get one too big or too small.

I don’t recommend the travel mugs with french press built in. the longer your coffee is submerged, the more bitter it’ll get.

Use hot water and submerge your ground coffee (coarse or you’ll get an unfun surprise.) Leave them in between 3-6 minutes and then pour. I usually forget mine for upwards of 10 minutes and it’s ok but around 15 it gets bitter.

Drip Machine

These are the standard home coffee makers, and they make okay coffee. I like Sunbeam and President’s Choice for the cheap end and Hamilton Beach, Mr Coffee, and Black + Decker for the mid range.

All you need is a coffee maker that makes coffee. Avoid all the bells and whistles; they just take power away from heating the water.

This is what I use at home when I’m making coffee for more than just me.

Grind your coffee medium fine and let the machine do the rest.

Pod

DON’T!!!!!

Pour-Over

This is the hidden gem of coffee makers. It makes the best coffee. Just put in the filter and the coffee grounds (medium fine) and pour boiled water over it.

I really enjoy the Melitta Signature I have. I bought my father-in-law the Bonavita Wide Base Porcelain Immersion Dripper which lets you control the speed of drip in order to control the flavour.

It’s a cheap and easy way to make fantastic coffee. Melitta also always has special deals, sometimes so cheap you just pay shipping.

Water to Grinds Ratio

The standard ratio is 1 TBSP of coffee grounds for 3-5 Ounces of water.

I recommend 1 TBSP (14.7 ml) of ground coffee for 4 Ounces (118ml) of water.

*WARNING*
A cup of coffee on your machine is equal to 6 ounces and not the standard US cup of 8 ounces. This can cause some serious confusion.

That’s the quick and easy way to make a great cup of coffee. There are plenty of other methods but these are the most common and simplest.

Thanks for reading and enjoy your cup,

Éric

Geek Market 2019 (This Weekend)

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Hello!

Come join us this weekend at the Nepean Sportsplex for Geek Market.

We’re at booth 606.

Map designed by the talented Morgan Dunbar
JenEric Designs will be at booth 606 in the Curling Rink.

New Merch

We’ll have the following new merch!

  • A light roast with orange flavouring
  • Sailor Scout Hair Clips
  • Hello Kitty Hairclip
  • Flounder Dice Bag
  • Sailor Moon Dice Bag

For sale we’ll have the following coffee flavours:

  • A light roast with banana flavouring
  • A light roast with coconut flavouring
  • A light roast with orange flavouring
  • A medium roast with mint chocolate chip flavouring
  • A medium roast without flavouring
  • A medium roast with raspberry flavouring
  • A medium roast with green apple flavouring
  • A medium roast with Canadian maple flavouring
  • A dark roast with strawberry flavouring
  • A dark roast with cinnamon flavouring

Hope to see you all there!

Éric

New Roaster and New Flavour

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Hello Coffee Lovers,

I’ve been complaining about capacity for the past few years. We used to roast with the fantastic Behmor 1600+ Coffee Roaster, two of them. They are great but lack in capacity. Doing roughly 1.5lbs each every 45 minutes.

To give you an idea, for a medium convention we’d roast 40-60 lbs of coffee. that would take us roughly 16-20 hours of roasting. It was getting to be too much work. Taking 4 days or more to roast for a large convention like Ottawa Comiccon was tedious.

I looked into all kinds of options and discovered RK Drums. They custom-build roaster drums, turning motors, and a whole lot of other awesome stuff. We took the plunge with last years profits and two weekends ago I spent a long day building a bbq and modifying it for coffee roasting with equipment from RK Drums.

Isn’t it pretty?

The first roast came out a little burnt and smoky, but this past weekend I spent 5 hours roasting and I’m confident the coffee will be up to our high standards.

New Flavour!

This coming weekend at Geek Market we are debuting the newest JenEric Coffee flavour:

The Mighty ThOrange

Yay for coffee!

Hope to see you this weekend at Geek Market.

Éric

Molecular Coffee

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Hello My Imaginary Friends,

Atomo Coffee sounds like something from a science fiction story. Coffee that isn’t from coffee beans. It’s the lab grown meat of coffee.

My biggest worry with this sort of thing is allergies. I have a severe intolerance to coconut oil and milk, along with IBS, so I try to be very careful.

Here’s what they say:

Atomo will not have any allergen components or materials that impact metabolic disorders.

For the insoluble, non-volatile portion of the molecular grounds, we are still exploring many options and targeting an upcycled play that would take the byproduct of a current commercial operation and add value to it by using it as the carrier matrix for our flavor and mouthfeel compounds – essentially the proteins, carbohydrates and oil components you can expect from coffee grounds. Some examples of that would be watermelon seeds or sunflower seeds husks. Much of what we are doing at this stage is still proprietary as we have a good journey ahead to optimize the perfect molecular coffee that can be enjoyed as your daily ritual. All compounds and strategies will be shared as they evolve and are optimized.

The kickstarter is already funded and has 22 days to go.

I’m interested and a little skeptical. What do you think?

Éric

Ottawa Coffee Fest

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We here at JenEric Designs love coffee, obviously. So when we heard about The Ottawa Coffee Fest that’s happening this year on March 23, we were pretty excited.

Image from www,narcity.com.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to attend because we’ll be at Ottawa Geek Market. So if you go, please tell us all about it!

Details:

  • Where: Horticulture Building 1525 Princess Patricia Way (Lansdowne)
  • When: March 23 10am-7pm
  • Cost: $15 each + $0.50 per coffee sample (tickets on sale now!)
  • Who: The vendors look super amazing and professional (vendors)
  • What: Not only will you get to sample amazing coffee, but there are workshops given by professionals (workshops)

Éric’s 2019 Resolutions

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Hello My Imaginary Friends,

It’s 2019 and I’m setting my goals for the year. I did really well with last year’s goals.

I’m toning it down a little for this year since I want to concentrate on baby Pegasus.

I make these resolutions to push myself and to do more. Even if I only accomplish half, that’s more than I would have without them. Let’s hope this year is fruitful.

Writing

1. Write a Monthly Serial Story

I like writing these, they don’t stress me and they’re a lot of fun. It forces me to think on my feet and learn not to plan too hard and let the story go where my weird brain sends it.

If you haven’t already voted for the 2019 Serial story, go do that now.

2. Write the Bookend Material for the Short Story Collection

I need to get this finished. It’s not a lot of writing, but once I’m done I can submit to my publisher and see if they’re interested.

3. Finish Paragenesis

I need to finish this book. It’s at halfway now and I really want to see how it ends.

4. Get to the 2/3 mark on Mystery of the Dancing Lights

Once Pargenesis is done, I’ll dive back into this one. It’s at 1/3 now and I finally know what’s going to happen next.

JenEric Designs and Coffee

5. Continue to ensure there’s content 5 days a week on JenEric Designs

We’ve been going for six years now with content every weekday on JenEric Designs and I’m very proud of that. Jen and I have worked hard not to miss a day. I’ll do my best to ensure we keep that streak going.

6. Test, Design, and Produce 2 new coffee flavours

I have one flavour already finalized for debut at Geek Market in March. The second will be tough to choose since I have 2-3 strong contenders.

Editing and Marketing

7. Edit and send Dinosaur Road Trip to a willing beta reader

I failed to finish this last year. I just need to work up the courage and get at it.

8. Submit Everdome for blurbs

I really want to get a blurb from authors I respect for Everdome. So I’ll do the research and write some letters to a good half dozen authors I respect and ask them to read my book and write a quick blurb about it. Most will say no and that’s okay but hopefully I’ll be surprised.

9. Playtest the higher levels of FADDS

There are still some mechanics that need testing and that’s what this year will be about. Building opponents, testing higher levels, and trying out superheroes.

10. Figure out how to market and sell CoasteRPG

I don’t think this is a good idea as it is. A character sheet as a coaster sounds awesome until you realize that it needs to be waterproof and reusable.

I’ll think of something. Hopefully.

Personal

11. Read 20 books

I succeeded at 30 last year, barely, and hopefully I’ll do 20 this year. I love reading and it’s important to me that I keep doing it.

I love reading and it’s something that makes me happy.

12. Don’t Burnout

Last year I overdid everything; work, coffee, and a lot of other personal things.

I need to calm down and scale back some things. I’ve taken some steps to make things easier. I also have to learn how to say no.

It killed my mental health and destroyed my writing productivity.

13. Be More Patient

Part of the burnout was a complete loss of patience. My wife and Dragon took the brunt of that and I need to be better. It’s not always easy on 5 hours sleep but I can/should do better.

14. Play Some Video games with Dragon

I wanted to try and play some simple games with Dragon this Christmas but time and health weren’t on our side. I’d like to play some this year though. Maybe Lego or Disney Infinity.

I hope that list is manageable.

What are your goals?

Éric

Resolution Review 2018

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I had so many resolutions this year that I need to make categories. Here’s the list of them on my Resolution Redux post.

Let’s see how I did:

Writing (4/7)

Write 2000 words a week for The Mystery of the Dancing Lights (Fail)

I failed at this one. I have 30000 words when I was hoping to have twice that. But I did manage to add another 5000 words to Paragenesis so yay?

Write a Monthly Serial Story (Success)

I’ve been writing the serial story every month since January and I have one bonus episode to post on New Year’s Day. Start reading Devices of Desire.

I learnt this year that I’m not great at making romance the forefront and that I hate love triangles.

Finish the new content for FADDS and playtest it (Success)

I finished the extra content early this fall and Playtesting is going well. Almost done the current campaign and I plan on running a new high level campaign to playtest the later levels.

Pitch Everdome and the Super-Secret Project (Success)

I managed to finish this early in the year. Unfortunately everyone involved is ridiculously busy. I’m hoping it’ll gain more steam when the book is published but I have plans for something new next year.

Start getting a short story collection together (Success)

The collection is ready for editing and I need a few filler bits, but overall this is a great success and I’ll hopefully be pitching it in the new year.

Write the Bookend Material for the Short Story Collection (Fail)

It’s been a slow writing year for me and I’ve barely started on this. Pushed to next year.

Rewrite the introduction to FADDS (Fail)

This should have been the easy part… I forgot. Next year.

JenEric Designs and Coffee (3/3)

Continue to ensure there’s content 5 days a week on JenEric Designs (Success)

There is only a week or so left in 2018 so I’m safely going to say this is a success.

Test, Design, and Produce 2 new coffee flavours (Success)

I’ve tested and created 3 new flavours for JenEric Coffee. Minty Mountain, Beanpool, and Waking Dead. I’ve also started work on next year’s flavours.

Look into pricing and interest in CoasteRPG (Success)

Interest is great, pricing not so much. It’s extremely expensive to print double sided coasters that can be dry erased. I’m going to need to think more on this.

Editing (1/2)

Edit and send Dinosaur Road Trip to a willing beta reader (Fail)

No excuses here I just couldn’t bring myself to even look at this manuscript. It’s too sad and personal and I had a bad year for stress.

Edit and Submit A Case of Synchronicity to my publisher by end of summer. (Success)

Not only did I submit it but it was accepted! 

Pleasure (2.5/3)

Read 30 books by authors I have interacted with (Success)

I will fail my goodreads book challenge but unless something terrible happens I succeeded at this. The difference is 2 books. Since I beta read 2 books for the fantastic S.M. Carrière, I consider this a success. 

Play more Videogames (Partial Success)

I have played a lot of Lego Incredibles with my wonderful wife. We’re almost done the game. It’s not a lot more but it is more.

I plan on trying some Disney Infinity during the holidays with my daughter and seeing how that goes.

Finish Star Trek: Discovery (Success)

I succeeded pretty quick with this and I’m glad I finished. I enjoyed the last episode and have adored the shorts they’ve released. I’m even willing to give season 2 a chance.

Final Tally (10.5/15)

Wow 70%, that’s possibly my best score since I started doing this. *Runs to blog to check* Second best result. In 2014 I had 3 resolutions and succeeded at all of them. 2015 was 65%, 2016 was 55%, and 2017 was 65%.

So I guess this means I need a lot more resolutions for next year? Maybe not, we’ll see.

How did your 2018 resolutions go?

Éric

Busy Busy and Paragenesis

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Hello Imaginary Friends,

I’m juggling multiple things at the moment. This weekend is Comiccon Holiday edition, we have another event the week after, I’m doing a bunch of other creative work and finally I have NaNoWriMo, which is kicking my butt.

So in the spirit of not wasting time here’s the first 1000 words of Paragenesis: The Copper Tarnish.

Old Cover from when I thought the book wouldn’t be part of the Aetherverse.

Enjoy and Later Days,

Éric

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