Archive for the 'Personal' Category

Queen City Life

Published on April 28, 2012 by Chris Bean in Cincinnati, Family and Personal.

One of the things we love about living in the Greater Cincinnati Area is our occasional visits to Great American Ballpark to see the Reds play. Regardless of how the team is doing, it’s a fun outing for our family. Thanks to our daughters’ good grades, we got some free tickets for last night’s game against the Astros. Although there was a rally in the 9th with back to back homeruns, the Reds lost to the Astros in this series opener 6-4. But we have a beautiful stadium within 20-minutes of where we live on the eastside of Cincinnati and will certainly enjoy many more MLB games in the future.

Some of the other attractions we love in Cincinnati include: the Cincinnati Zoo, Newport Aquarium, Kings Island, Museum Center & Imax, Freedom Center, along with many great parks, rivers, and trails in the area. If you’re interested in visiting Cincinnati, here’s a great site with all kinds of great destinations in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern KY area.

Of course, the University of Cincinnati is a great destination as well. I hang out at the Edge House mentoring, discipling, and caffeinating college students throughout the week. Whether you want to watch a Bearcat athletic event, take in a production at the College-Conservatory of Music, or just walk around a beautiful campus…UC is another great reason to visit Cincinnati.

 

 

Comments: 0 Comments | Tags:

Coffee Ritual

Published on April 26, 2012 by Chris Bean in Coffee and Third Place, Hospitality and Personal.

My coffee ritual is not quite like the coffee ceremonies of Arab or Ethiopian cultures, but it is a ritual nonetheless.

Rituals add meaning and rhythm to life. Rituals comfort and remind. Rituals provide a sense of identity and community (except when I’m brewing a single cup for myself).

My current coffee “ceremony” involves the hand-blown glass Chemex brewing pot, a buono kettle, and the magic filters which know which particles and oils to hold back.

I’m a big fan of Intelligentsia’s training/instructional videos and standards. Here’s a great one for the Chemex.

I fill the buono kettle about 3/4 full so I’ll have enough water to rinse the filter and warm my mug as well as to brew the coffee.

While the water is coming to a boil, I grind the whole bean coffee in the ceramic hand mill. You’re going for a similar coarseness to a french press setting. I like mine a little more fine than that though. The precision on the mill is not what I would like it to be but again, there’s something about the manual process that improves the ritual. Of course, this is not realistic if you need to grind more than 40-60 grams of coffee.   ;-)

The Intelligentsia standard for coffee/water ratio is 2.1-2.2g per fl. oz of water. Another common standard in the industry is 2 tbsp per 6 oz of water. I like to start with standards like these then adjust to one’s own taste/preferences.

Once the water boils, I measure out the right amount of water for the brewing and then use the rest to wet/rinse the filter and heat up the pot.  I pour that water into my mug to preheat and then re-fill the buono kettle with the exact amount of water I want to brew with.

To brew a delicious clean cup of coffee I begin by wetting the ground coffee with just enough water for the grounds to “bloom.” You don’t want to see much/any dripping at this point. That will deflate (bubble out) in 30-45 sec and then I continue to pour slowly in a circular motion (avoiding the sides) until I’ve evenly extracted about 12 oz of liquid delight.

The whole ritual takes about 10 minutes and it imposes a certain amount of order in an otherwise typically chaotic day.

Here’s another good description of the Chemex brew method which you might find helpful if you have a Chemex and want to fine-tune your brewing.

Is coffee a part of your daily ritual?

What rituals have you found helpful in bringing personal order to chaos?

Comments: 0 Comments | Tags:

12 More Days of Coffee-lessness

Published on March 26, 2012 by Chris Bean in Coffee and Third Place and Personal.

My typical approach to observing Lent is a substantial fast of some sort 1 or 2 weeks before Easter. I usually don’t pick one particular food or activity to abstain from for the entire 40 days of Lent (46 if you fast on Sundays too).

So what possessed me to fast coffee this entire Lent season this year? I’m guessing it was the Holy Spirit (or some kind of spirit) since that is NOT something I EVER fast intentionally.

Well, as difficult as it has been I would have to say that I am learning some things in the process. It took about two weeks of deprivation, but some signs of addiction did finally begin to emerge. First of all, somewhere around day 12 I began to notice a growing tendency towards irritability. For a few days I thought I just had a case of the grumps…but the longer it lasted, the more aware I became of the source.

Another clue came when I realized I was avoiding community…relationships…conversation. That could just be a continuation of the first side effect, but it seems separate to me because I often identify coffee and espresso as something to be enjoyed communally. When I couldn’t enjoy the bean, I couldn’t enjoy being…with others. Sounds pretty lame to confess this publicly, but I’ve never been one to under-share!

During the past couple of weeks I’ve substituted another addiction in order to get some relief: running. Yeah…quite a different kind of addiction but I’ve noticed a desire to run multiple times a day which has probably only happened one other time. That’s the time I realized running/working out could also become an obsession…a means of self-medicating…an escape.

Now I actually don’t believe these addictions are completely problematic. In moderation, both running and coffee have immense benefits in my life. Both bring relief from stress and create certain soothing rituals for daily living and thriving. However, one of the whole points of fasting for me (whether it’s coffee, food, social media, etc) is raising my own awareness of the things I lean on more so than my relationship with God/Christ. I look forward to this Lenten journey each year because it helps me strip away the things I use to insulate myself from God and others. My identity as a coffee guy is well established. The caffeine molecule and I are pretty close. But when my identify is grounded in the truth of God’s redemptive and restorative plan for my life more so than the rituals, comforts, and crutches I prop my self up on, then I can more authentically live out of the correct source and self.

 

Comments: 0 Comments | Tags: