“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

— Steve Jobs, 2005 Commencement, Stanford University

Turpentine, yum.

Let’s be clear: there are countless maladies in want of a cure. We have climate problems. Food source problems.  Economic problems aplenty. And for cryin’ out loud, we’re desperately close to losing Terry Pratchett to Alzheimer’s — can we please try to focus on what’s important?

The Slick-Drip. Image links to Amazon.

I’d argue the key to a collapsable anything is that it collapses when you *want* it to, and not when you don’t. On that front, it seems to me the construction of this little dripper is pretty well suited to task… and in use the coffee grounds themselves further lend stability to the cone. More, its silicone construction means it’s hugely flexible (my read, packable, but you can simply consider it bouncy if you like) dishwasher safe, and unlikely to take on stale coffee flavors.

Time will tell. Meanwhile, it’s earned a spot in my coffee travel bag. Now if I could find a collapsable grinder…

This is a plenty bright cup (which I learned the *first* time I roasted it). Its fragrance is rich and honeyed, with toasty, savory notes that just really ring my bell. It’s that lovely, very intense, salted caramel sort of fragrance that I used to associate with great Indonesian lots years ago before they all started to taste like mulch and wood moss. (But I digress.) The honey carries over sweetly into the brewed cup’s aroma, where a bit of sour orange makes an appearance, as well. The sweet and tart flavors dance a tango here; the lively citrus zing and honeyed sweetness play off each other all throughout, and even intensify with the cooling cup.

While I appreciate the zest and zing of this bean at a lighter roast, I’m really enjoying the warmer tones and rounder body of this Full City number. Clean, sweet, bright and finishes well… this is a superbly slurpable coffee.

Like so many of the beverages we enjoy today, coffee was once prescribed as a tonic for what ails you… and provided that what ails you is a lack of alertness or a sour mood, it’s good on its promise. Let’s leave patent medicines and snake-oil salesmen aside for the moment, though, and ask: is coffee good for you?

The answer is yes!

Coffee has been a frequent subject of scrutiny by the medical community… perhaps because it’s so widely consumed, yet offers no apparent nutritive value. Or, maybe doctors are just looking for a really good cup of coffee.

Studies continue apace, and likewise the remarkable findings… the latest, that caffeine may be an effective agent in preventing skin cancer. I’m not going to set aside my sun-screen just yet, but as io9 notes, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a caffeinated version any time now.

Just the same, there’s learning to be done here. If the roasts weren’t everything I hoped they might be, at least I might try to figure out why. And — to keep things interesting and to keep myself honest — I included a control: the latest batch of beans from Tony Konecny’s spiffy flash-sale like bean business at Tonx.org.

Cup 1: Panama Las Flores de Boquete, from Sweet Maria’s. Roasted Full City+ (+?) I get nutmeg aromas, loads of bittersweet, dry chocolate and a short, nutty finish. I believe I’ve obliviated anything that resembled acidity in the cup, but on the other hand there’s ample body. I’m quite certain this coffee deserves better.

Cup 2: Ethiopia Wet-Process Jimma -Duromina Coop, also from Sweet Maria’s. Roasted City+, offers promises of peach and apricot fragrances that are sweetly fulfilled. Brown sugar sweetness and a bit of spice makes the flavor profile evocative of gramma’s apricot preserves — if gramma were a southern gal, anyway. (Not mine… she was an Iowa girl.) Point is, this cup is all about jammy stone fruit. And if I’d been a little quicker at the roaster I’d likely have some vibrancy and a long sweet finish to go with it, but I don’t… there’s a tang of almond at the end of the cup that leaves a touch of bitterness I’d prefer to not be there.

Cup 3: El Salvador Finca Matalapa, from Tonx coffee. Roasted somewhere in the neighborhood of City+, has lovely, sweet and promising fragrance of honey and jasmine. It’s a bright cup, with orange-peel acidity and high-toned grape flavors with malty undertones. Great body, superb balance. Really this is a brilliant, lively and dynamic cup… and the product of a really sure hand at the roaster. Good on ya, Tony.

This is a person in want of a cup of coffee. And his expectations are simple: a cup of something that is hot, black, has caffeine and flavors and aromas that are agreeably coffee-like.

In the conference world, these expectations may be considered aspirational. Lofty, even.

Consider the cup before me. It’s black. I presume it is caffeinated. Those faint aromas it possesses recall boiled cork, dusty grapevine. In the cup it reveals flavors of chalk, cereal, wood char and kerosene. It’s over extracted, and yet has chewy qualities… it has been reheated. It was brewed in a far-off kitchen, splashed into water pitchers, trundled around on a service cart and poured into a commercial coffee urn that continuously rewarms it.

In short, this coffee is dead. It’s been reanimated in a fashion… it’s now zombie coffee. Given its audience, I guess that’s rather fitting… but no less a shame.

On a day when markets are tumbling, and politics are dividing and abasing, and London is *burning* for chrissake, this isn’t exactly a big deal. But our days are made of a hundred things that don’t matter… but add up just the same. And the sum of those petty outrages — from heavy traffic to poorly made umbrellas to bad coffee — these things color our collective outlook and our disposition to one another.

Maybe if we would pay attention to the little things…

It really doesn’t have to be this way.

On this trip I packed a coffee bag. In it are two half-pound valve bags of just-roasted beans (Panama Los Flores de Boquete, and  W.P. Ethiopian Jimma Doromina, ’cause sometimes you want a juicy Central and sometimes a peachy African), my trusty Braun hot water kettle (tough plastic, not glass), a Melitta cone pourover basket and filters, a measuring cup and spoon and a whirly-blade grinder. Yes, I said whirly-blade… this is just the scenario where the grinder you wouldn’t choose to have on your kitchen counter is just fine, thanks. So equipped, making coffee in your room is much the same as you’d make at home. ‘Course, you could also order something to go with from room service…