May 10, 2024
by Natasha Nesic
Have you ever been to a high-end culinary store and, even with only the barest skills to butter a slice of toast, slowly felt yourself getting more and more sucked into the glittering gadget world of colanders, spiralizers, and sous-vide vacuum contraptions that promise to make you feel like the angels of Julia Child and Anthony Bourdain are smiling down upon every meal you attempt?
(ItâÂÂs okay to say yes.)
Coffee culture has its place in that. A microcosm of culinary culture, coffee has its own share of interesting devices, instruments, and magical doodads that actually work!
And by work, let's make sure to confirm and define that as work to enhance the coffee-making experience and ultimately add to a more flavorful, smoother, richer, more nuanced cup that fully allows you to enjoy and interpret more aspects of the beans than you would have been able to achieve otherwise.
Because sure, you can take a leaf out of tea's book and brew your coffee grandpa style â but what kind of cup would that make?
(A less-than-awesome one. Trust me, I know from experience.)
That's why I suggest you take a look at the following list and see if any of these tools from Lardera can add to your coffee time pleasure.
You'd think it was super easy to eyeball a teaspoon or four, but if you've ever taken a grade-school science class and had to peer into a cloudy beaker to measure the meniscus of water where it meets the measuring mark. Coffee can be just as hard to track without a little help from technology.
And sometimes, it's more than a little help! Lardera's Coffee Scale and Timer do so much of the good work for you that instead of feeling like one extra step in the coffee-making process, it blends itself seamlessly into the entire ritual with how much it contributes. The scale is so sensitive that it can accurately mark the passage of minutes per brew to the 0.1 second and can pick up the difference in water weight from steeping grounds to the accuracy of 0.1 gram. If only we humans were that good at time management and ratios!
What's the point of grinding one's own coffee, you might ask? It ensures that the aromatic oils of each whole bean are preserved within their fibrous structure until the very moment that you want to taste them. This doesn't happen for pre-ground coffee as soon as those oils are subjected to air, they will begin to degrade, and some coffees can lose their flavor and potency within days, even weeks after being ground.
This guy, though, he'll take care of that for you. The Chestnut C2 Max grinder features 38mm CNC stainless steel conical burrs, hardened HRC burrs, and a double-bearing axis, all of which contribute to its impressive selection of 36- count 'em! 36! grind settings. Whether you enjoy iced coffee, Turkish, or espresso, this device will produce it for you with the greatest ease and can grind up to 30 grams of coffee at a time safely. (And if you prefer hands-free, then try the Wilfa Uniform Grinder for comparison!)
It might be winter right now, but that doesn't mean you're immune to craving cold brew or iced coffee. And even if you don't feel the urge right now during this point in the season, you still might run into those awkward scenarios when you need to store a really good pot of coffee that you made earlier, and you don't want it to get messed up in the fridge.
Luckily for you, and all the members of your coffee-drinking household, this cold brew pitcher is so airtight that it can stand any funky leftovers you might have from last night and keep your coffee smelling fresh for days. When the summer months hit and you're sweating for the cold stuff, you'll be glad you made the investment.
On adagio.com our tea side of things, it's pretty common knowledge that you need different temperatures of water to properly infuse different types of tea. Green teas need under-boiling water, black teas take pure boiling, oolongs need somewhere between the two. Now who's to say that coffee isn't similar, being also a hot-water-and-plant-based drink?
And it certainly is now, with the kettle that takes into account the deeply varied flavor profiles of single-origin beans and allows you to customize your heat settings for ultimate brew precision. (If you listen to it closely, you can hear the sound of the barista awards calling your name. Which might also be a product of the steam, but hey, we can all dream, right?)
For many of us, drip coffee was our gateway to the good stuff. But it's too easy to pick up an ordinary dripper at a dollar store and call it a day, right? Well, now that gateway has upgraded and boasts the perfect stylish look to go with it.
This dripper is a great statement piece in your coffee-brewing collection because it becomes the best thing to take out when you have company over, when you can go⦠Oh, let me make you some drip coffee and proceed to take this out, and with the help of some particularly fruit-forward Lardera beans boggle their minds with the excellent cup it produces.
