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

So Amazon have come up with a new service called Amazon Prime Now, which can now deliver things to you within an hour.  The things they provide through this service are generally things which there is very little to say about indeed, but fear not because below is a lesson on how to review items from Amazon Prime Now.

​First up is a product they call "Bread":

The next one is just called "Milk":

And finally, "Cheese":

I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon.  I pay for the stuff, the sellers gets the money, and they send me the stuff.  Transaction complete.  

But then the next thing I know I'm being asked to write a review about the stuff.  And putting aside the aforementioned "transaction complete", there are some things that there just isn't much to say about.

So here's some of the reviews I've given to Amazon products which there is nothing to say about.

​First up it's an iPhone sock I bought, which is a sock that you put your iPhone in.

Next up is an Amazon gift card I bought for someone, which is ... well read on...

My iPhone cable was broken so I bought a generic Amazon one which had exactly the same features.

Last up is a coffee bean grinder which does literally one thing.

I will post up more of these as I buy them.  In the mean time, if you like this kind of thing then go to the top right of the page and do what it says to get more of them.

​Richard

My first instructional video

I was wandering along the high street in Royal Tunbridge Wells, drinking a lovely coffee from Fine Grind (which coincidentally is the same coffee company who didn't sponsor this article), and I noticed this rather shiny watch.  Now if you know me well, you'll know that I like things that are shiny, so I thought that it was a lovely thing.  But when I noticed the price of over £26k, I realised that my price to shininess threshold did have its limits.  

One shiny thing for £26k is quite a lot, and I'm pretty sure that I could find at least 1000 shiny things for this same amount.  Or maybe 26 really good shiny things.  Maybe 26 Apple Watches, and unlike this watch, Apple Watches have more than just the one app called "clock".  Also imagine the happiness on the face of the Apple Store employee if you bought 26 Apple Watches!  They're happy enough if you go in and just say you're browsing.  It would be like all 26 of their Christmases had come all at once.  

Anyway, I digress.  Back to the £26K watch.  Seeing a watch for £26K, it make me wonder what features a watch would have to have for me to shell out £26K for it.  And I'd say that the only way I'd spend that much on a watch would be if it had the ability to control time, i.e. go forward and backward in time.  And then I'd buy the watch, and use it to go back in time to before I wasted £26K on a watch.