1 Fun Thing
2024 is a leap year! A 365 day calendar year is actually a rounded number. It takes Earth 365.242190 days (365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds) to orbit the Sun. Those extra 5h48m56s need to be accounted for which is why we add a day every 4 years. If we didn’t account for this extra time, seasons would begin to drift and over a period of about 700 years our summers, which we’ve come to expect in June in the northern hemisphere, would begin to occur in December!
3 Coffee Facts
The turn of the year has heralded some big specialty coffee acquisitions and business moves. After Chobani’s recent $900 million acquisition of La Colombe at the end of 2023, Italy’s De’Longhi SpA is purchasing a 41.2% stake in the espresso equipment brand La Marzocco for $374 million.
The Gaggia Classic and Classic Pro are some of the most modded espresso machines in the world. The mod is to swap out the stock OPV spring for a 9 bar one so you can brew with an unpressurised basket and get good tasting shots. The ultimate mod is the Gagguino that essentially converts it something like a Decent espresso machine.
An easy way to get better coffee with your grinder is to slow feed the beans. Turn the grinder on and drop in a few beans at a time instead of dumping the whole dose in. This prevents beans from continually being mashed as they wait for the grounds below to exit the burrs, and therefore results in slightly coarser but more evenly ground coffee.