A few nice fitness machines images I found:
Before and After – Coffee Roasting
Image by cgfan
For a clearer view…
The particular beans that you see here are from a batch of Josuma Select Malabar Gold, a blend of coffee beans specially formulated for espresso.
In the center are the so called "green beans" before they were roasted, and on the outside are some beans after I roasted them in my home coffee roaster (a Fresh Roast Plus).
For espresso I manually grind them to a slightly gritty but still fine powder in a manual burr grinder (a Zassenhaus). This gets loaded and hand-tamped into a double basket portafilter, conventionally used to dose for a double shot, and inserted into either the La Cara or La Pavoni manual piston espresso machines. Both of these machines involve the user by having him push down on a lever to force the hot water through the tightly compacted espresso grounds.
The shot then gets pulled under great pressure into a pre-heated tazzina (a small espresso cup – I use a 68 cc feldspathic porcelain tazzina made by IPA Porcellane in Italy, pattern Bologna), for a total draw of around 1.25-1.5 ounces (2.5-3 tablespoons).
Such a very short shot is called a ristretto, which when made correctly has to be the purest form that one can enjoy an espresso – a wonderful concentration of coffee flavor with plenty of mouthfeel and a pleasant bitterness.
…and once in a blue moon when everything is right it produces the proverbial "god shot", which is actually creamy in taste. (And yes, this is all without using any milk! 🙂 )
Much has changed since I first posted this; here’s a video on YouTube that shows my current eqiupment and workflow…
Taken with an Epson Perfection 4990 scanner.
Before and After – Coffee Roasting
At home
Cardiff-by-the-Sea, CA
Jan. 9, 2006
blog sighting at:
BeautyBlog
Beauty is your Happiness
Biologiquement
Black Drop Coffeehouse
BloggBilder
Brewmeo
Cheirinho de Cafe
Columbia Board of Tourism
DariaDesign
Enterprise Blend
Fairer Globalization
Fotopedia
GoldSlim
HyperCaffeinatedLife
Italian Roast Coffee
La Estrella
Maxicep
Microbiology Bytes
My Espresso Machine – Love Your Coffee
MySmartCup
PlanetGreen
PolicyInnovations
PoM
Radio Nederland
RealityEquation
Sadaf Coffee Shop
Smithsonian’s Food & Think blog
Smithsonian Magazine
Sportblog
Squidoo
StoryADay
ThinkingInBits
This I Do
WorshipTheGlitch
Image search on Google
Also spotted in Flickr’s explore ("interestingness") blog.
New Fitness Machine
Image by MTSOfan
A guy that Janice and I encountered as we were walking in a park. He said he’s still learning to ride the unicycle, but he seemed to be pretty good at it! He also said that riding it gives him a good work-out.