Coffee Science

This Christmas tree in Clapham overlooks the busy roads near the common:

We were almost out of coffee beans, so we headed over to Monmouth to decide what to buy. Normally, we wouldn't have to think about our choice; we'd just get our usual favourite. Sadly, that crop is finished and Monmouth hopes to get more in "sometime soon," which sounds like a rather vague hope. Since you can have your coffee made with any of their beans, we tried two different ones in our drinks today, but still couldn't make up our mind: neither seemed as good as our beloved usual. The staff member who served us kindly offered to let us sample two other choices in an attempt to make up our minds. That offer is truly the sign of a good coffee shop, and we've been lucky to do such sampling in the past (which led to us choosing our now-absent favourite). Since Monmouth's espresso blend uses some of our favourite beans, Bob wanted to try it, but prepared without the espresso machine, to mimic how it would taste for us at home. The staff warned us that it would be very strong, but agreed to make it in the crazy way that Bob wanted. Our other sample was a Kenyan bean.

In the end, I still couldn't pick and Bob decided that he wanted to get the espresso and mix it with the small amount of remaining coffee we had at home to up the ratio of our favourite beans, so that's our temporary soution. As we wandered toward home, we passed a furniture shop window whose display reminded me of Vienna's Nameless Library monument.

Just before we decided to get on a bus, we walked past another bit of Christmas-y light: