You Oughta Know #21
In this week’s issue: Immersion iced coffee; Order your kawhe in Te Reo; Coffee cups literally making roads.
Nau mai, hoki mai and welcome back to You oughta know.
It’s Mental Health Awareness Week this week, a time to stop, reflect and think about yourself and how you’re doing.
On the MHAW website are great resources to help you assess and reset your mental health. Check it out.
In this week’s issue: Immersion iced coffee; Order your kawhe in Te Reo; Coffee cups literally making roads.
Immersion Iced Coffee - has James Hoffmann done it again?
Seems like the internet is a buzz with iced coffee at the moment - just in time for the New Zealand summer!
Last week I shared a great technique by Lance Hedrick that took flash brewed iced filter coffee to a new level. IMHO. But a week is a long time in coffee and low and behold old mate Jimmy Hoffmann has a new method.
It’s quite different. Instead of a pour over brew, Jimbob suggests an immersion brew.
Mr Hoffmann also suggests adding some some saline…. Salt helps to mask the perceived bitterness that you can experience with coffee. Sounds weird, but how does it taste?
I did a side-by-side comparison between these two methods.
Both were pretty yum tbh. There wasn’t a huge difference between the brewers, though the V60 seemed to have a bit more body and fruity notes.
The immersion brewer that I used was the Clever Dripper, and it was certainly easier to make the cold brew, when compared to the V60. There’s just less admin involved, so on that alone, it’s worth a shout.
The addition of saline in both coffees did remove the bitterness, which was a pleasant development (and you couldn’t actually taste the salt).
So overall impressions:
Go with the James Hoffmann immersion cold brew if you want very minimal fuss and great tasting coffee.
Go with the Lance Hedrick V60 flash cold brew method if you love the V60 coffee experience.
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Order your kawhe in Te Reo
Last week was Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori and I totally forgot to post this absolute gem.
A great way of learning Te Reo is by given a few every day phrases a hoon. And what better place to start than with your morning kawhe.
It’s as easy as saying “Mōrena, he mōwai koa?” which translates to “Good morning, can I have a flat white please” (ALWAYS say please).
There’s a bunch of coffee related words to learn. Check them out below:
Aussie council using recycled coffee cups for asphalt
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Penrith City Council has made roads using 136,000 coffee cups and 1.2m glass bottles.
In addition to the thousands of coffee cups, the surface also includes 1.2 million glass bottles.”
Given New Zealanders throw away 295 million single-use cups a year, maybe there is something here for New Zealand authorities to explore.
I’ve asked the Waka Kotahi media team if this is something we do here, and if we don’t do it, what it would take for us to start using this sort of material. I’ll let you know what they say in next week’s You oughta know.