So today I am going to teach you how to make coffee with jokes.  And by that I mean that the instructions are going to include jokes, not that the coffee will be made of jokes because that would be stupid.

First up, stack all of these things on top of each other, from bottom up.

1. A weighing scale of some sort.  Mine is a weird three angled thing but you can use any kind.  People-weighing scales are not so good, particularly if they're those paid-for ones in shopping centre toilets.
2. A glass thing for the coffee to drip into.  Mine is a Hario Server, but any old bucket will do.  But not a KFC bucket as the coffee will then taste like KFC.  Although then again, that might be amazing... so maybe try that...
3. A v60 coffee dripper.  Now be careful here and make sure you don't make the mistake I made of using a Volvo v60, because the coffee just ends up tasting of metal and oil.
4. A filter.  Get the v60 filters, genuine ones.  Not those lying filters, they'll just make your coffee taste bitter.

Pour water in to wet the filer.  Make it ASDA Eden Falls branded water.  Seriously, it's the best for coffee and really cheap.  The reasons are because it's got the right amount of minerals and herbs and spices that the coffee distributes properly throughout the water and lends to better flavour.

THROW AWAY THAT WATER.  It is evil water and tastes really papery.  And if you forget to pour this water out, your coffee will taste like paper.  And paper doesn't taste very nice with coffee, only by itself.  

Get some beans!  Here are some criteria for good beans:

1. They don't come from supermarkets, ever.
2. They don't come from high street coffee shop chains, ever.
3. They usually come from coffee shops with baristas who are either Australian, Kiwi, Eastern European, Hipsters, or Oriental.  Rule of thumb is that the more holes they have in their visible body parts, the better the coffee.
4. They are "single-origin", and roasted lightly for filter.  The coffee shop person with the face holes will be able to guide you here to choose the right ones.
5. They'll have descriptions of what they taste like and those things will be other things apart from coffee, like fruits, vegetables, and iPhones (if someone has dropped their iPhone in by accident.  Although if they have, don't buy those ones).
6. They do NOT COME GROUND, EVER!  And if someone asks if you would want them ground, look disappointed at them and shake your head.  

Grind the beans in a grinder, on a medium-course grind.  This part is a bit of an art, as the best grind can really depend on factors such as the origin, roast, and age of the beans.  But just try it medium-course, and if it tastes horrible then try something else.  But if it tastes as bad as Starbucks, then get your grinder and throw it through the closest glass window because you are never going to succeed at this ever and may as well give up now.  Oh also I forgot to mention before but you'll need a grinder, and I find the Baratza Encore to be a good mix of value and quality.  Or should I say quali-coffee?  Ha, see what I did there, quali-tea, quali-coffee... (I did promise jokes).

Boil some water and pour it into a goose-neck kettle.  The reason it's called a goose-neck kettle is because the bit where the water comes out of looks like a goose neck.  Although goose necks are actually quite thick, and I think they should have named it a swan-neck kettle.  Although the Queen apparently owns all the swans so maybe they avoided it just in case somehow the word got to Her Majesty that people were pouring boiling water in actual swans.  Yeah that's probably it.  Oh also leave the water in the goose-neck kettle for a minute or so before moving on as you want it to be less than boiling.

Now put the ground coffee in the filter, and pour some water on it until the ground are all wet.  Usually that's around 40ml of water.  If you do this right then little to no water will actually go through the grinds into the server.

Now once you've done that, put your ear up to the coffee and listen.  You'll hear a crackly noise, which is carbon dioxide escaping from the ground beans.  That's a good thing, because carbon dioxide tastes horrible.  Once the crackly noise subsides, continue on.  This part is called blooming.  You may notice that as a little treat, in this picture you actually see me.  Aren't you lucky!  There's more of me later so stay tuned.

Now reset your scale to 0.  We are going to pour 250ml of water through, but we are only going to do a bit at a time, because of reasons.  Also when we pour the water through the goose-neck filter, we want to pour it in the middle of the grinds and in a circular motion, so it makes a tunnel.  To do this you need to take it easy, and pour the water lightly.  If you pour it really quickly and the flow is too vicious then the coffee will all get broken up and it will taste horrible.  And so far this has been quite hard work hasn't it?  And do you want to make all that hard work a waste?  No.  Unless you're an idiot.  But clearly you're not an idiot because you're reading my blog which is for non-idiots only.

Pour 100ml in, and then wait for the water to go through.  So that's 100/250 done.  Congratulations!  Now start pouring more.

Pour another 100ml in, and again wait for all the water to go through.  So 100ml + 100ml is 200ml, which is 4/5 of the total of 250mls.  I can see that I've just lost some of you with this maths, and I really should have prepared you from the beginning that maths may have been involved because with that in mind you might not have been bothered.

Now pour the remaining 50ml in, which makes up 250ml.  Wait for the water to go through, then take all the tower of peripherals off the pourer and pour the coffee into a cup.  Now be careful with the pouring and make sure none gets on the table because your Mum will be so annoyed.  Although your cat might be happy as he or she might lap it up and go off on a caffeinated-cat rampage of fun and pleasure.  

Now this is the bit that you've been waiting for, more pictures of me.  Oh and also the final step to tell if you have made the coffee right.  So start with what I'm doing in the picture on the left, which I call "drinking the coffee".  This involves lifting the cup to your mouth and pouring the coffee in.  Be careful with this step as the coffee will be hot, although not too hot because if you've followed these instructions then the water will have had a chance to cool down a little.  And once you've poured the coffee into your mouth hole, take a moment to reflect on the journey you have been through to get to this moment.  Now the way to check if you have made the coffee correctly is to look at yourself in the mirror and if you look like the picture of me on the right then you've done it right.  If you look like the picture of me on the right but with the mouth flipped vertically, then oops you messed up.

By Richard Lindesay
Prefessional Coffee Maker

Prefessional = The stage before becoming Professional

I am immediately put off this article of mine because of the way I've used "vs" in the title.  It reminds me of two things that I am embarrassed about being familiar with, one being the fad of 90s and early 2000 computer games where the players names were shown at the top of the screen with "vs" between them, and the other being those songs where two Americans collaborate in a song and instead of referring to it correctly as a duet, they refer to it as something like Big-E-Small Vs Puppy-G-Dog.  I can barely bring myself to continue writing.

But I have continued, as you can see.  There are more words to this, here's some, here's some more, and a quick glance down will show you that there are a bunch more to come.  Is more words better than good words?  Is dubious grammar but more grammar better than not as much but better grammar?  Will there be a point to all of this?  Is it too subtle?

I was walking along the other day in the city of London, and as usual expending most of my energy observing people's coffee habits.  I noticed that the bigger the coffee cup, the worser the coffee, and the smaller the coffee cup, the better the coffee.  Although I think that it is more that the companies who make terrible coffee think that they can overcompensate for badness of coffee by providing more of it.  How do they manage to sell this idea?  We don't see Primark selling only massive clothes, that would be silly.  But the big chain coffee shops manage to convince people to buy and drink a gallon cup of something that tastes like it came out the back of a cow.  Surely it would make more sense for terrible coffee to be sold in particularly tiny cups so that those who are drinking it can think to themselves "Wow, this is absolutely awful but at least I'm nearly finished."

So you may be thinking that yet again I have managed to make one of my articles more about coffee than comedy.  But look closer, as each of the paragraphs above have comedy in them if you look really hard.  A clue if you are reading this on an iPad is to do that two finger thing where you put your fingers together then move them gradually apart therefore making the words bigger.  The bigger the words, the easier it is to see the comedy hidden in them.

Richard

So I'm leaving for the UK, and unfortunately that means that I'll no longer be able to go to my favourite coffee shop in the world, Double Barrel, on 33 York St, in the city of Sydney.  

So this is formal notice that there is a vacancy for Richard's main coffee shop.  Please read the following criteria carefully before you apply:

• Must be in London, walking access from a tube station that is easy for Richard to get to.
• Must be able to quickly pick up Richard's coffee lingo, such as "Double-up Tuesdays" which means that Richard wants a single origin espresso as well as a flat white.
• Must sell single origin espresso and flat whites.
• Your milk must not screech when you are preparing it, as screeching means that the milk is sad and will punish you by tasting terrible.
• Must grind coffee per order, rather than let a whole bunch get stale throughout the day.
• You must put up with Richard's special coffee joke of the day, a sample being "Why didn't the coffee cross the road?  Already bean."  Laughing is not compulsory, but heckling is forbidden.

Applications through my Facebook page, www.facebook.com/richardlindesay.

Richard Lindesay

Having lived in the UK a few times before, I had resigned to the fact that coffee I bought out would likely taste like mud that came out of the back of a cow.  In fact in my previous visits I had so much of this cow bottom coffee that I was getting accustomed to it and was looking forward to the sense of familiarity of having it again.  It turned out that the first place I went in London had amongst the best I've ever tasted, which was Speakeasy Espresso and Brew Bar in Canarby.  

So it turns out that I am an expert in finding good coffee shops, in fact I may go as far as calling myself a coffee-hunting mage, or demigod.  I know you're impressed, and the question at the forefront of your mind is "Richard, how can we learned to even be a tenth as good at finding great coffee shops than you?"  Well you're in luck, because that's exactly what I'm going to do.

So here are my top three ways to figure out if a coffee shop is good:

• At least someone working there must have some sort of dangly thing somewhere on their face or head.  It has to be something a bit more than the usual, such as rings through the nose, or those big round things pushed into their earlobes.  The technical reason why this is necessary is far too complex for me to explain to you, but the short version is that it makes the beans happy.
• If you order a coffee that is not one of the main ones (flat white, latte, cappuccino etc), then the eyes of the person behind the counter must light up at least 45%.  This is especially the case if it means that they have to use a different device to make the coffee such as a pour over or Aeropress.  If the eyes light up any less or any more, then the coffee will either be overwhelmed or underwhelmed which has a negative effect on their photons, and therefore their taste.
• There must be at least one choice of coffee which is made on a small farm in a third world country, preferably with the name of the specific farmer, and preferably called Pedro.  Scientifically, coffee works better if it's made by someone who is happy, and who could be happier than someone with a name as great as Pedro?  That last question was rhetorical, don't even bother trying to answer it.

I know what you're thinking, you're thinking it so loudly that I can hear it.  You're thinking "Richard, this is way too much for a normal person to take on, stop showing off your expert skills, and take off that stupid propeller hat."  Seriously though, take the time and effort to learn the above three tips.  It would be ridiculous to try to master them all at once, so maybe try one a year for the next three years.  And then maybe one day, you will enjoy the abundant life of a coffee hunting demigod mage aficionado.  Maybe.  

Richard Lindesay

* There is no guarantee that any of this will extend your lifespan

I've finally decided it's time I gave away my secret:

Richard Lindesay

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