I’m glad I don’t have to pick! I’m a sucker for variety. I always have natural and washed coffee on hand and I try to have a honey processed coffee whenever possible.

If I had to blindly pick a coffee and it needed to be great, I would pick a washed coffee, probably a “medium” roast. The flavor profile is fairly narrow at that point, but it can still be great coffee. I do (barely) prefer a delicate cup so most of the best cups of coffee I’ve had have been lighter roasted washed coffees.

But my most delightfully surprising cups of coffee, by a mile, have been natural process coffees. It probably wouldn’t be good if a light roasted washed coffee surprised me at this point. Natural processed coffees continue to surprise me in good ways.

For a consumer, if their preferences are equal, I think consistently good coffee is mostly about finding a good roaster. I’ve had plenty of mediocre to bad coffee from each fermentation process, many varieties, and all roast levels. I’ve seldom had a bad bag of coffee from roasters I trust.

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I’ve recently been tutoring a friend to use a Hario Switch. They are uniquely suited to pick pourover up quickly, excellent manual dexterity and related transferable skills, and they’ve still had some struggles. I’d definitely forgotten the learning curve and I think it’s very reasonable to look at brewers like the Hoop to open coffee up to more people.

I’ve tried other flow rate controlled pourover brewers before and not liked the results. I suspect James’ standards are high enough I would find this the best of the bunch. I’d love to try one.

I would modify the skirt on this brewer by melting and reshaping (or just cutting out) a notch. I also often like to brew over a carafe.

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50-60% of my coffee intake is decaf. If I could only drink decaf I would drink pretty much exactly as much coffee as I do now.

I will have a cup tonight with you.

I think this is great advice, not least of all for opening up espresso drinks. Also lowers the risk someone will start off with “bad” coffee. The best places for this around me would be some of the good local roasters.

I’d also consider finding a place to try Vietnamese and Cuban coffee. Maybe Turkish coffee, too.

I’ve worn glasses about sixteen hours a day my entire adult life. Got my first pair around 10. Acclimating took maybe four or five days of minor discomfort. The improved vision was incredible and as a child I had child durability, so I didn’t mind the discomfort. I vividly remember how strange it felt for air to hit my face with glasses on while walking or running.

Every time I get a major prescription update it takes two or three days to feel “right”. Until then I have some disorientation. I would expect an adult who hasn’t consistently worn glasses to feel that more keenly.

If I had continued eye strain after three days of constant and consistent wear, I would call the optometrist. If it lasted a week and the optometrist was blowing me off I’d consider my options. Some prescriptions are better than others. I could tell you exactly when I got my best prescription, it was life changing. I didn’t know people could see like that. I’ve never had a “bad” prescription to the best of my knowledge, every time I’ve updated it has been an improvement.

I don’t have a brand I would recommend, but I can say making your own extracts is extremely easy. Roughly chopping hazelnuts, toasting them, and adding them to a neutral vodka or glycerin would take maybe ten minutes and no special equipment. I went through an extract phase a while back and still have several, including a truly kickass coffee vodka.

Making it yourself isn’t fast, but I share your dislike of how hard it is to find unsweetened, reasonably priced extracts. I don’t want syrups, I like being able to control sugar content separate from additional flavors.

I do wonder how it would taste in comparison. I’ve never tasted hazelnut extract vs flavored coffee, creamer, or syrup, only ever in baked goods.

I suspect it’s just one of those weird cultural foibles. The US isn’t too exceptional among Western countries regarding moderate or binge drinking. It consumes meaningfully less alcohol per capita than Germany, France, Ireland, and the UK among others, on par with Sweden, Finland, and Denmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita. US alcoholism rates are about on par with Sweden, France, and Germany, some 25% lower than Ireland or the UK: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcoholism-by-country

I didn’t thoroughly research those numbers, but they square with my anecdotal experience. Soda is where the serving size really fucks us up.

There is a trend in high end spirit sales in the US to sell 1 or 1.25oz pours, 30 and 38ml respectively. It’s more a cost saving measure, but I do like it. 30ml is enough to try something.

I always knew James Hoffman is the same kind of weird goblin thing as me, but now I have video evidence.

I’m finishing off my bag of Counter Culture Field Trip, which I will miss. It was Aeropress today, I’m out of V60 papers. I have about 20 grams left, great for a lazy morning at home, but maybe I’ll have someone over and share it.

Every frozen and defrosted non-dairy milk I’ve had (mostly almond I think) did end up grainy, but still usable. Freezing it for baking is still reasonable. The time to defrost it would bother me.

If your household drinks a lot of sweet coffee drinks, yes, make a big batch of oat milk syrup to extend the shelf life.

I would personally make a huge batch of congee with a ton of ginger, garlic, shallots, and if you eat meat chicken (chicken arroz caldo). I use coconut milk for rice porridge, but oat milk would be good. I’d portion it into pint containers and freeze them. It’s cheap, freezes well, and could easily use up as much milk as you’d like. To my palate it’s a huge upgrade on chicken noodle soup when I’m sick, so it’s good to have frozen in advance.

If you have occasion in the next few weeks, it would be good for flan or blancmange as a dessert. I’ve never made blancmange with oat milk but it’s usually nut flavored, so I’d expect that to work really well, probably better than dairy milk. It’s a good time in the northern hemisphere for fruit sauces, too, so fresh compotes are on the table, and maybe toasted almonds.

Why would China be desperate?

China offers the cheapest high spec manufacturing in the world. If the US doesn’t buy that manufacturing, that leaves the rest of the world. Of course China wants American money, but it’s not going to devastate their economy in the short term. It’s a reasonable cost for providing China with so many opportunities, which they are aggressively pursuing, to cultivate deep seated international power.

The prevalence of Chinese manufacturing actually is a national problem for the US. While China has its pick of buyers, the US is stuck with one seller. The US should have been working for twenty years with India, Pakistan, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, and maybe even some counties in Africa to create access to alternatives. It didn’t.

Weaning the US off Chinese manufacturing would take decades of elegant economic policy and diplomacy featuring several countries. China knows this is where it actually has power over the US.

A family in that sort of situation has considered many options. Willing the house to the brother is the easiest, the poster and their mother have reasons for opting against it. They are likely good reasons; in the broader sense, willing property to someone who cannot care for it can in many scenarios be a bad idea.

It’s dangerous to assume the brother would be safe from predation if he owned his home; the poster could do a lot worse than just not paying the bills. This person apparently lacks the ability to pay taxes and ensure proper maintenance. Even just to help with that, the poster will need access to their brother’s banking and tax info. If the brother is compliant it would not be difficult for someone to take advantage of that situation.

Alternately, using their legal ownership of the home the brother could potentially shut the poster out and might actively sabotage efforts to maintain and pay for the home. In that case the property could suffer substantial damage, become dangerous/uninhabitable, or even be lost despite the poster’s efforts. Many people have destructive tendencies.

The more certain way to protect the house for the brother would be to place it in a trust, but that’s not a panacea. Setting up an ironclad trust to prevent selling the house is great until the brother can’t get up the stairs, or the whole family decides to move to Canada, or the brother goes into assisted living, or the property value skyrockets. A trust will also have tax implications and potential costs that need to be considered.

I assume and hope the mother has been advised by a decent estate lawyer on their options. There are scenarios where willing a house to a sibling is the best course of action. I wish the poster luck and hope they’ll act in the interest of their brother for their entire lives.

Tools are a good idea. Probably should follow your lead on that…

I’m mostly looking at whether I would have made any medium sized purchases in the next two yearsl. I might buy some little things in bulk, too, but if there’s any one time purchase where the price is going to jump $200, $300, $500, it’s time to make a decision.

For me that mostly means furniture. I already bought a pair of commodity IKEA bookshelves I’d been considering buying vs building. I might still build replacements, but I would still use what I just bought and domestic lumber won’t be directly subject to a tariff. I’m looking at buying a papasan chair and a mattress as well, probably in the next week or two.

I’ve also considered electronics, but there’s nothing I would buy in the next two years short of some PC components that I’m sure I’ll want. I bought a Quest 3 a while back and it’s been a great purchase.

I did go back through some of my online buying this year to see what I used. I’ll probably buy a few pairs of work shoes and some good soap.

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I really appreciate your effort on this forum. I barely thought about Lemmy as a resource for the Olympics until it was too late, which looking back a huge bummer. I also didn’t watch nearly enough…

I am already looking forward to 2026. Going to approach it very differently.