A Nice Hot Cup of Fail

[Rhys W]

Nice article Mr Gates 

Oh and the vacuum jug is unnecessary for anyone who actually likes fresh coffee. If it's finished, we make some more, not drink stuff that was brewed 4 hours ago 

[cometworm]

How we make coffee in the Uni department I work in:
Put 3 ozs of ground coffee in a big metal teapot.
Pour just off the boil water on it.
Give it a good stir. *
Wait 5 minutes.
Pour through a tea strainer into cup.

Of course, the "best" way of making coffee is the Moka express pot.  Unchanged since 1933, a true design classic, in a way that anything made by Porsche won't be!

* Being an atmospheric physics department, full of self professed nerds, we always flip open the lid, observe that the rotating coffee is an analogy to baroclinicity and that the eddies breaking away from the centre of the coffee and travelling towards the edge of the pot are similar to the eddies observed in the atmosphere due to baroclinic instability.  Fun and games!

If you're making a single cup of coffee, say at work for example, this is by far the best way: http://www.swissgold.com/e/c_produkt06.php

[bikenerd]

...
Of course, the "best" way of making coffee is the Moka express pot.  Unchanged since 1933, a true design classic, in a way that anything made by Porsche won't be!
...

If you're making a single cup of coffee, say at work for example, this is by far the best way: http://www.swissgold.com/e/c_produkt06.php

I have a Bodum single cup drip filter similar to that at work.  I find the coffee a bit "thin" compared to the Moka pot and even the "let it stew" method of big teapots with baroclinic eddies (and cafetieres).
But that's why I put best in quotation marks, to reflect the subjectivity.

[Mr Larrington]

I have a Phillips.  In most respects it works admirably.  However, the lines on the water reservoir are etched onto clear plastic, and the whole of the remainder of the machine is off-white¹, including the inside of the water reservoir.  The result is not dissimilar to having a black button labelled in black on a black, with a little black light which lights up black to show when you've pressed it.

Twonks.

1 - when it's properly clean, obv.

[ian]

I have a coffee making robot from Cuisinart and it's brilliant. Given me a good five years of service and is still going strong (despite my ignorance of the 'not for dishwasher' warnings). Good stuff about it:

1. It's programmable. I wake up every morning and there's a hot pot of coffee ready and waiting. Prior attempts to get my wife to make me coffee every morning mostly hurt.

2. It grinds its own beans and makes the coffee without needing adult supervision (other than for me to add the beans and the water the night before).

3. it has a thermos (steel so you can drop it, believe me I've tried) rather than a hotplate. This keeps coffee hot for about 4 hours without that nasty burnt coffee taste you get from leaving it on a hotplate (actually there is a little hotplate that comes on briefly to warm the thermos). It also means I don't go out and have to come back home because I've convinced myself that I've left the coffee machine on and it's about to burn down the house.

[Charlotte]

I want to dislike Nespresso so much, I really do.

But the coffee is jolly nice and you don't have to do any washing up.

Shame.  I wanted to use this

[Greenbank]

My sister has a Nespresso, very nice.

But little point as I'm down to one (Medium) cup of coffee a day at work (get a bit dozy at 4pm otherwise). Another couple of weeks of that and I'll be down to one small cup a day at work. Mrs G drinks tea.

[clarion]

Need.

Caffeine.

Now!

[Marco Stefano]

We all place a great deal of reliance
On the theory and practice of science
But the best of intentions
For many inventions
Can be quite buggered up in appliance.



Mine's a Bialetti espresso pot for the stove - simple and brilliant. 

[Cudzoziemiec]

We make tea and coffee in a small saucepan.

Andy missed out another 2 failures of the Porsche design. It's ugly, and it's far bigger than necessary.

[juliet]

Ah, I don't think we have any Oceanographers, and any planetary stuff is done either in Astrophysics or with us in Space Physics.  At least we are high up, we're on floor 6½ and Atmospheric are on 7.

I am in Astro (though not an astrophysicist, myself - I make the computers of astrophysicists work right) & we are right at the top - floor 10!  I have a *fantastic* view over London - on a clear day can see all the way to Canary Wharf (about 10 miles maybe?). 

[TimO]

Well, the Atmos lots are at the top as well, we only have 7 floors over this side.

(For those not in the know, Imperial College Physics is spread over two building, mostly in the Blackett Building which goes all the way up to 11 in places - very Spinal Tap, and some bits in the Huxley Building which only goes up to 7, but also has floor 6½ which Blackett doesn't have, for added amusement when moving between the two buildings.)

[mike]

Does Victor Law still work at IC physics?  he's quite, quite mad. 

[TimO]

It's not a name I recognise, but I suspect, like juliet, I don't have a vast amount to do with academics and those who run the department, so don't necessarily know all the names of bods.

Having said that, the name doesn't appear to be in the College Directory, and likewise isn't in the physics staff list either, so I suspect the answer is no.

[mrcharly-YHT]

We have one of these at home


works quite well.

Work is a lexan cafetiere