☕ Coffee

♫ Jazz Cafe by AKIKAT on SoundCloud to enjoy with the coffee. Then please hit the Lightbox view button on the top right corner and click play (▻) to enjoy the slide show. 1) Dibs! Topic "coffee" taken! 2) "Damn good coffee!" 3) Coffee consumption 4) One liter per day 5) Guilty pleasure 6) Something expired 7) Paper cups 8) Espresso excursion 9) Laskiaispulla 10) ƎƧAƎ⅃ꟼ ƎƎꟻꟻOϽ 11) Kalter Kaffee macht schön 12) Abstract espressoism 13) Coffee break at home office 14) Home front 15) Take away coffee! 16) Use mask! 17) Between the devil and the deep blue sea 18) Moomin mugs 19) Mr Nobody having a coffee break 20) Cafetière à piston 21) Bubbles = rich taste 22) Granny style 23) Cafes are open again! 24) Doppio =,D 25) Café Puusti 26) A sign 27) Coffee cup 28) Diuret 29) Lukewarm 30) Beans 31) Scaring coffee 32) Best espresso ever! 33) Misfortune 34) Salt 35) Wet coffee grounds pareidolia 36) Best served cold 37) Take a sip... 38) A drop of coffee 39) Coffee beans 40) Addicted 41) French press 42) #DIYpareidolia 43) Macro Dreams 44) Con o sin plomo? 45) Artsy fartsy 46) Texture 47) Sweet scent 48) Travel mode 49) Learning continues ... ---- ➽ Me and my 366 daily coffee project at Instagram ➽ Me and my 366 daily coffee project at Twitter ➽ Me at Facebook

Dibs! Topic "coffee" taken! Here it comes, my next The 50 Images-Project topic for 2020! =D This is also my plan A, before I considered the plan B, which would have been " trash ". But after thinking long and hard, I decided a topic close to my heart, or more likely close to my nose is much better. What I am actually going to do is shoot 366 photos for a leap year, one photo per each day. But those daily pictures I will "dump" to Instagram (maybe also to Twitter), and publish here only 50 selected photos during the year 2020. Moreover, here I will write a photo blog (photolog, plog) articles on various topics on coffee, covering all kinds of issues like how to make it, why one should drink it, or not to drink, what it causes to individuals and to planet, and is it fair or not. I am surely not an expert on what comes to coffee, but I will write about it from my personal point of view, and how coffee has affected to my life. So, keep tuned to this project of mine, if you are interested to see and read more, and especially find out if I succeed. During this year 2020 I am also going to try marketing (advertise, promote) the ipernity web site whenever and where ever I can. As soon as I manage to get this project started, I am planning to make noise about ipernity on other social media accounts of mine (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and maybe also somewhere else). The reason for the division of daily pictures at Instagram and weekly stories here at ipernity is to prove that this can be a practical way to use social media. Instagram, Twitter (and other similar platforms) are good for "quick and dirty" mobile phone photo blogging. Whereas ipernity is better for long articles like this. So, in the long run other platforms may help me, my "followers", and hopefully even totally new contacts to find ipernity, and how wonderful it can be. Well, this is pretty ambitious goal, and very likely may flop. Mainly because I am after all Mr Nobody on the world wide web. But if we all try to do the same, we may become somebody. =D ➽ Me at Instagram ➽ Me at Twitter ➽ Me at Facebook P.S. Post processing done with Mirror Lab and Snapseed Android apps.

" Damn good coffee! " Or at least good enough to get the day started. Around here it is popular to drink "brewed coffee" made with electric drip coffeemaker. There are then few things to consider in order to get good coffee: Use separate clean jar to fill the reservoir. Never use the coffeemaker's own carafe to fill the reservoir, unless you clean the carafe after every use. What you do not wish to have is the remains of earlier made coffee to circulate through the pipes of the coffeemaker. There is for example surprisingly lot of coffee grease stains left after each time you brew the coffee. Use fresh and cold water. Especially if you use tap water, make sure it is cool and fresh enough. Water standing long time inside the copper or plastic water pipes starts to take taste from them. If you wish to save water, then consider filling glass bottles and store them in the fridge. Use proper grind for your coffeemaker. Coffee packages are usually marked with symbols and texts to indicate how the grind is supposed to be cooked. Find out what is the best roast and brand for your taste. I used to favor light roast coffee, but I discovered it is then usually also more acid than dark roast, and therefore causes heartburn (gastroesophageal reflux). Moreover, the brand I used to favor was sometimes shoddy and bitter. Therefore I changed to less acid dark roast and more homogeneous brand. Filter paper may matter. Purists recommends to use oxygen bleached coffee filter paper. I am not a purist ;-) Brew several pots of hot water through the coffeemaker, if it has been unused for long time. If you are not using the coffeemaker on daily bases, and especially if it has been unused for over a week, it is better to clean the pipes before you make coffee with it. Clean the coffee maker regularly. Wash the funnel and carafe once a week, or at least once a month. Moreover, use cleaning agents or vinegar every now and then to clean the pipes as well. What comes to my 366 coffee project at Instagram and Twitter, it has been started well. ➽ How to Clean a Coffee Maker with Vinegar at wikiHow ➽ Me at Instagram ➽ Me at Twitter ➽ Me at Facebook UPDATE January 9, 2020: Storage your coffee in cool and dry place. I prefer to use ready ground coffee because I drink coffee on daily bases, and like to get the grinds homogeneous. If one makes coffee less often, then it is probably better to buy coffee beans and grind them at home with a coffee grinder. But then you also need to pay attention on the grinding process and keep your grinder clean. Some say it is better to keep the coffee grind package even in the fridge, to avoid the coffee oil become rancid. But when drinking coffee somewhat every day, I think ground coffee is way more easy. Although, grinding the coffee from beans of course can be a very enjoyable part of the process. ➽ Whole Beans Vs Ground Coffee: What’s the difference? at Craft Beverage Jobs

Coffee consumption ... ... per capita is the highest in Finland! And that has been the way for decades. The nobility in Finland started to drink coffee in 18th century (1700 ->, when Finland was under Swedish rule). Lower class people started the coffee consumption in 19th century (1800 ->, under Russian rule). Finnish coffee consumption is almost ridiculous and the subject of jokes. There are many strange cultural phenomenon affiliated with coffee. Some collective labor agreements may regulate that the worker must have right for 15 minute coffee break(s) besides the normal lunch break. It means that the work places even have to offer the specific coffee rooms for that. If something can get Finns on barricades, it is the right to have coffee, coffee breaks and space for it. Coffee is also the must have beverage in somewhat all festive occasions from cradle to grave. When a child get the name, a teen get graduated, a couple get married, or when someone achieves somewhat anything remarkable like wins a medal is sports, there is then coffee served for the guests. According to some statistics the Finnish coffee consumption is even 12 kg per capita per year! But in any case it is somewhere around 10kg. Coffee can be bought almost in every corner. I recon there are even more coffee selling shops, cafes, restaurants and coffee machines than there are pubs. Especially because one can by coffee also in pubs. Personally 2-4 dl filter coffee per day is enough for me. But I must have at least one cup of it per day! I got a tonsillectomy done at rather old age, and at that time I tried to get rid of the coffee. I discovered that I am coffee addict and had terrible withdrawal symptoms for weeks! And after getting over that, I realized that my overall state of vitality was much lower than it was when I used coffee. So, after few months I again end up drinking coffee on daily bases. ➽ Finnish coffee culture is one-of-a-kind , by Jori Korhonen

One liter per day ... ... is what one could or should drink to gain the optimal health benefits of coffee. I do not know how strong or dilute coffee Americans have used to drink, but to get one liter of decent coffee for Finnish taste, one needs to use approximately 85 grams (3 oz) of coffee beans. According to recent studies, 4-5 cups of coffee per day is the "sweet spot" to "live longer" . It means that such amount of coffee will help one to get a good doze of some essential nutrients (vitamins B1, B2, B3 and B5; folate, manganese, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus), boost metabolism, may protect from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, lower risk of type 2 diabetes, lower risk of liver diseases, and lower risk of depression and suicide. On those studies a cup of coffee means "American cup of coffee", which seem to be 8 oz (240 ml). Which then means that 4 cups is approximately one liter. I have used to manage with 200 ml per day. And therefore it means I "need" to increase my daily coffee intake substantially! =D But one should of course also live healthy. For example one should then rather drink coffee without sugar. Moreover, it is recommended to use dark roast, which causes less jitters and heartburn. Caffeine is also addictive and can cause anxiety and disrupt sleep, which is why it is probably better not to drink coffee in the evening. But I do wonder if anxiety and disrupted sleep is actually merely caused by heartburn. So, again, try the dark roast to get less heartburn. Then few words about the post processing of this shot. I used my "the best camera" aka Canon Powershot G5 X. But then I uploaded the image to my smartphone, and used Snapseed software to edit the image. What I particularly like there is fast and pretty well working perspective correction. With that I manage to get the scale turned into rectangle, and gain this nice poster kind of outcome. Moreover, there is a tool to change the basic settings in a selected tiny area, which was useful here to increase the lightness on the scale display digits. ➽ Coffee — Good or Bad? by Kriss Gunnars

Guilty pleasure This week I decided to get two group contributions done at once, and use the same image for The 50 Images-Project and for The Sunday Challenge . For The Sunday Challenge the topic was to illustrate guilty pleasure . I first thought I have no such thing. But then I started to think the concept of carbon footprint . From that point of view the whole human life is nothing but one huge guilty pleasure. Lately in Finnish media it has become common to make the whole nation to feel guilty for eating meat . On news and advertisements it is made clear that everyone should become as a vegan. And the carbon footprint is often mentioned in that context. So, we can try to calculate what is the carbon footprint of almost anything . In my case I started to wonder what is the carbon footprint of coffee . As in most of the cases, it is not very straightforward. One should try to take numerous aspects into that equation , like: farming , mill, exportation, roasting, grinding, packaging, distribution, purchasing, consumption and disposal. Further on, one can try to examine what the consumption exactly consist of. It for example makes a huge difference whether you go out to buy your morning coffee from the café , or whether you make it at home . And if you make your coffee at home, then do you wash the cups and pots every day, or just rinse them? One big waste of energy and resources is all the water we use . And do you let the coffee stay long in the coffee maker, or do you put it in the thermos bottle? That also matters! One way to cause smaller carbon footprint is to start drinking espresso or instant coffee . And one should absolutely give up adding milk , because anything that requires farming animals is absolutely worst thing we can do! Even the way how we boil the water matters. Or give up on coffee or tea entirely, and switch to drink tap water only. Or do like the deceased horse did. Just when it learned not to drink, it passed away. So, we all are more or less ashamed because of destroying this planet of ours. Sometimes I think it would be better to just "quit". But even the disposal of our remains is going to cause a carbon footprint. So, one reason to keep on living is to help each other to try making our carbon footprint smaller. Sharing information is the least we can do. But to change for example my bad habit to love coffee is much harder thing to do... And imagine how much energy and resources I used when writing this photo article on laptop, listening music from SoundCloud, and posting this online... ♫ guilty pleasure by Flamingosis at SoundCloud

Something expired Two birds with one stone again. My contribution for The 50 Images-Project and for The Sunday Challenge #420 . I used to drink espresso, but obviously I have become lazy. So, the can of espresso grounds had expired six months ago. The date format we Finns use is dd.mm.yy. And in case of coffee it is merely a "best before" date. One can also try to keep a package of coffee grounds fresh longer by storing them in cool, dark and dry place. And of course it would be even better to use coffee beans and grind only what is need at home. But as said. I am lazy =D Anyway, I keep on dreaming to have time to spend time to make all by myself. Maybe even roast my own coffee. And especially time to enjoy a nice cup of espresso at home.

Paper cups A year ago I posted on this same topic . I was exited and happy to find out there is a Finnish company that had started to manufacture plastic free paper cups. This year I come up with even better news. A big Italian company has started to use those plastic free paper cups on their vending machines worldwide. The paper cups on the image unfortunately are not those. I suppose it will take at least a year or two before such fully biodegradable and recyclable paper cups becomes common and available at wholesale markets and stores. Lavazza Professional launches biodegradable and recyclable cup for vending machines at Packaging Europe

Espresso excursion I spent the last week as an excursion to espresso. Back in 1990s I bought this nice Alessi moka pot. It has an "handy" lever lock, which still works reliably after 25 years of use. Although, I have not actually used this moka pot much lately. Only thing that I have had to do is to buy a new rubber ring seal. Luckily this pot is still in production. And why not! It is a classic beauty, and very functional. Brewing espresso with moka pot I have pretty much learned from my big brother, who has lived somewhat 30 years in Catalonia, and has used to brew and drink espresso every day. But there are of course good instructions all over the web these days. As mentioned on my earlier coffee post , I am pretty lazy, and still using ready grind coffee. I probably should experiment using freshly roasted and grind coffee, because that is required to get crema on top . Crema is of course not must to have, but freshly roasted and grind coffee of course also makes the coffee taste better. Back in 1990s, and again during last week, I also experimented extra filtering with paper filter. This is not necessary, but if one wish to get rid of all dregs, then that is easily done by cutting such from coffee machine filters. Purists may wish to use bleached filter paper and rinse it before use . Somewhat the only step that I find extremely important is to use moderate heat. As said on the instructions I referred to: "You don’t want to boil the water in the pot but rather to create a gradual, controlled extraction." But I also now followed the suggestions to heat the water first in the kettle, and heat the coffee cup with hot water before pouring the coffee into. It is often also suggested to leave the lid open. If no other reason to do so, then at least it provides an enjoyment to watch how the coffee starts to run. When you use moderate heat, it should not even splatter much. If you have used to sweeten your espresso with sugar, I recommend making a "sweetener" of your own. When the very first drips of espresso starts to run into upper pot, pour a teaspoon of it into a stone cup or mortar. Then start adding there sugar, and try to grind and whip it into a foamy extraction. You can store it in the fridge and add little of it into your espresso (or any coffee). It gives a nice crema on top of your drink, and much better sweetness than plain sugar. Last but not least, do not afraid to wash your stainless steel moka pot in the dishwasher. This is also something I learned from my big brother, who has several moka pots in use. If you use aluminum moka pots, then of course those had to be washed by hand. And also the rubber seal ring should not be put in the dishwasher. Again, purists may frown, but it is not your moka pot I am "spoiling". You do as you please =P UPDATE Feb 21, 2020: ➽ How to make great coffee with your moka pot on Yuppie Chef ➽ The Great Paper Coffee Filters Debate: Bleached vs Unbleached by Brendan Nemeth on Perfect Daily Grind I also forgot to mention and illustrate the "right" method to empty the moka pot funnel: And naturally do that on top of a bowl or compost, not over the kitchen table =,D

Laskiaspulla / semla Instead of pancakes, in Finland we celebrate Shrove Tuesday with bun filled with whipped cream, marzipan, and/or jam. And as Lutherans or even pagans we do not remorse ! What comes to Finnish " Laskiainen ", it comes from word " laskea ", meaning something like to settle down for Lent . So, as in case of Pancake Tuesday, it is the last chance to feast before fasting. Except again, majority of Finns does not fast either. But we do like bun , with coffee! Not only on Shrove Tuesday, but around the year. However, in "modern times" Laskiainen has also become a day in the middle of the winter vacation, called as "hiihtoloma", when Finns have used to go out to have fun skiing and in sled hill. Unfortunately winters with snow has become rare, and leave no other option but do some "dementia skiing" (forgetting skis at home, and use only ski poles). Lately it has also become common to have fun inside, in so called "indoor amusement parks".

ƎƧAƎ⅃ꟼ ƎƎꟻꟻOϽ February 29th already went. So, I am a little late with this post. But leap year continues, and at some point I probably will confront DFAS (Desperate For A Shot) =D At some Finnish source I noticed that leap day is not only about women proposing a marriage to men, but it is also a backwards, reverse, opposites, upside down, topsy-turvy, all wrong, mirror, invert, or even perversion day . So, for example on that day one can enjoy some cross-dressing, walk backwards, do all wrong, or even do something perverse. But that is indeed not a very common or known "tradition" in Finland either. Meaning that I could not find much evidence for such traditions. Please share here in comments if you know more. Anyway, I have lately got interested in all kinds of inverted things, like backwards text. There are many text generators that does backwards and upside down text transformation, but not many that does especially good backwards text. Usually one only gets something like this: ESAELP EEFFOC That is definitely not the same as: ƎƧAƎ⅃ꟼ ƎƎꟻꟻOϽ But then I found Flip Your Text generator , which does a good job. Especially text with capital letters get reversed pretty nicely: ZYXWVUTƧЯϘꟼOИM⅃ꓘႱIHӘꟻƎꓷƆꓭA And also upside down and backwards: Z⅄XMꓥꓵꓕSꓤῸꓒONWꓶꓘſIHꓨꓞƎꓷꓛꓭⱯ And just upside down: ⱯBCDEԷҼHIՂKΓWИOb⥀ʁƧꓕꓵΛMX⅄Z For my surprise all those characters are also in UTF-8, aka can be used here at ipernity. Only upside down diaeresis are not supported. I am definitely going to add that onto my useful online services found article. Although, I am not sure how useful this one actually is... And yes, the picture is a retake on my old photo: P.S. Leap day also would be a perfect palindrome day ;-)

Kalter Kaffee macht schön In Finnish we have very similar expression, and I have always wondered what does it mean. Well, luckily we have Google these days. Although, one can't always be sure what online information is reliable or not. Anyway, the first sources I found claimed that the cold coffee makes one beautiful because the coffee is no longer warm after the time spent to do something else. So, somewhat sexist claims were that especially women spend so much time on their makeup, that they forget to drink their coffee while it is still warm. But who's fault it is then? One should blame the person in the household who can't wait, and must brew the coffee before everyone else are ready to enjoy it together... ;-) But then I found sources where the origin of the phrase was tracked way back to baroque period (early 17th century). At that time heavy makeups and wigs became fashionable, as did coffee. And makeups at that time were much less water and heat resistant than today. So, if one wanted to enjoy coffee after makeup, it would be better to drink it cold , to avoid hot steam spoiling all the hard work. One has to keep in mind that both makeup and coffee were privilege of nobles, merchants and aristocrat. But so were the "social media" at that time. Music was one form of media and advertising, and for example Johan Sebastian Bach wrote a cantata to ridicule the suspicious attitudes against coffee at that time . Anyway, I sincerely recommend cold brew coffee , if you wish to avoid the hot steams ruining your " heavy makeup " =) ➽ Johann Sebastian Bach - "Coffee Cantata" BWV 211 at YouTube (English Subtitles) P.S. The collage done with Pixlr for Android. It comes with number of layouts, and allows one to change the overall aspect ratio and frame colors.

Abstract espressoism Not much more to say this week but trying to get inspired by abstract art. Inspirations updated here, when discovered Maarten Rots (Aalten, 1982) is a Dutch artist working with photography as a medium. His photographs reveal abstract qualities that can be found in everyday life, often with architecture as a prominent ingredient and a strong focus on composition, texture and color. Rut Bryk (1916, in Stockholm – 1999, in Helsinki) was a Finnish ceramist. She is considered a key reformer of modern Finnish ceramic art. In the 1960s Bryk's built large-scale ceramic mosaics meant for public spaces made on individual small tiles. Her previously narrative and figurative subject matter was replaced by geometrical abstraction. She made especially complex compositions, that make use of the three-dimensional nature of tiles and changes in glaze to create patterns with shadow, light and reflection. ▻ RUT BRYK: Touch of a Butterfly , by Hideki Ookura on YouTube

Coffee break at home office Probably I should hoard coffee instead of toilet paper, if the current COVID-19 situation is getting even worse... On the other hand it is good that I chose a photo project that I can continue even homebound, as long as I do not run out of coffee. And when working from home, one also have an opportunity to discover new computer tricks. For example I never thought I would need Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection myself, but now I even need to use it at some point, if I wish to get all work related software updates done, and access some university servers. But the recommendation is to avoid using VPN during office hours, and use it only when really needed, to avoid slowing down the network for others unnecessarily . I also learned how to upload images from PC to Instagram . So far I have uploaded images from my cameras to my mobile phone, and then uploaded images from phone to Instagram. But now that I know how to upload images directly from PC to Instagram, I do not need to take any extra steps if and when I for example wish to use GIMP for editing images. The instruction and web page mentioned above is mainly for Mac users, and for Chrome and Safari users. Moreover, there it is mentioned a little complicated way to navigate via top menu. Easier way is via mouse control's right click menu, and choose 'Inspect', to get the "Developer mode" opened. Very likely there is similar feature also on Firefox and on other browsers as well. Next you just "toggle" from computer layout to mobile phone layout. Finally choose some ( any Galaxy S5) phone model from top menu, refresh page to get mobile phone tool buttons appear, and continue as you have used to do on your mobile phone. And just for fun I used laptop's very poor quality net camera to take this selfie and coffee image. I also used a clip-on fisheye lens on the camera to take this wide angle shot. Then on GIMP I used ' Lens Distortion ' to "stretch away" the black corners.

Home front Ladies and gentlemen! Let me introduce to you my alter ego eoR. Or commonly known as Eeyore. Back in 2010 he used to show up quite often, together with my wife's alter ego Eek, the Monkey. And on a contrary, as commonly believed, donkeys are not stupid. They are only stubborn and ponderous, often spending even hours trying to choose their words right and make up their mind. Which my wife merely sees as hard of hearing... While taking care of the home front, by defending our coffee stockpiles, eoR has pondered the problematic of web searches. For example the following Google searches gives easily a lot of "noise" aka off topic search results: www.google.com/search?q=eoR www.google.com/search?q=home+front Which is why one should try to formulate the searches somehow. For example the following search gives much better results if one try to find something to do with donkeys in context of eoR as a nickname: www.google.com/search?q=eoR+donkey And in case of "home front", one may wish to exclude all so popular films named so: www.google.com/search?q=home+front+-film More about web search formulations for example here: Google search help 10 Advanced Web Search Techniques You Probably Never Knew About Not much talk about coffee this time. Cafes are currently only selling "to go" aka "take away", which is why I am forced to postpone my plans to introduce some of my favorite cafes around. And therefore home still life photography it is then for awhile. P.S. Some intentional and deliberate product placement. Löfbergs Kharisma is an excellent dark roast blend for filtered coffee!

Take away coffee! Use mask! Stay at home! Wash your hands! Do not touch your face! Stay safe! This is the mantra we've been hearing during COVID-19. In Finland restaurants and cafes can still stay open, but only to sell take away or home delivery. At the "corner kiosk" I asked where the cups are, and the salesperson had them behind the counter. Logical indeed, to avoid letting customers to hassle with them. I was also happy to find out that their cups are made from 100% renewable, plant-based raw materials. And naturally customers are nowadays asked to use debit card for contactless payment.

Use mask! The last thing you want to do is to contaminate your coffee. To avoid drooling onto coffee grounds, you can do a pretty neat mask out of a coffee filter paper. Just attach two rubber bands onto it with staples, and pull the strings behind your ears. EDIT: Folks, this is of course a joke mask ;-) In Finland there is a huge debate going on this. Masks should be made out of safe materials. The "official" masks made out of some sort of paper, are supposed to use only once per "session". For example in health care, only for per one visit at the patient/customer. Some "official" crappy ones sold and shared looks somewhat like this joke coffee filter of mine. The string is attached with some sort of a staple that causes rash to those that has a metal allergy. If one makes them out of fabric, they are equally supposed to used only one per session. Then the used one should be washed in 90 degrees Celsius, or cooked for five minutes. Cheap and self made ones are not protecting the user. They are merely supposed to protect others around , if the carrier is having the Covid-19 (or any ither flu or influenza). Those who work for example at home care are asked to wear them especially when in close contact with the customer. In case the caretaker is already infected with no symptoms. If using a crappy mask for long time, one endangers one's own healthy because of breathing one's own toxic breath (bacteria and carbon dioxide). And when wearing a mask, one should be very careful with hand hygiene when putting the mask on and removing it.

Between the devil and the deep blue sea Recent study shows that I seem to be doing something right. Or have I? In the recent Swedish research it was discovered that drinking filtered coffee, and especially using paper filter, reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases. Paper filters away kahweol and cafestol , meaning that it reduces the cholesterol intake. However, I also discovered earlier studies claiming that kahweol and cafestol has some chemo-protective effects. In other words, coffee oils could help preventing cancer. Which then makes me wonder if kahweol and cafestol are either "bad" or "good" cholesterols ? So, which one is lesser of two evils? Cardiovascular disease or cancer? UPDATE (few minutes later): I almost immediately discovered yet another research article , where this same dilemma has been presented. So, kahweol and cafestol are "bad" LDL cholesterols. However, they still have also that chemo-protective effect.