Blog ≫ 2023 ≫ Eco-hour is back again
Changed my London day yesterday as Clare had the day off. Took the Hyundai in and parked in my new spot on Romney Avenue. It's free on street parking ina residential area, is a few minutes closer to the station than Three Hills is. Crucially it is this side of the station, and it avoids two sets of traffic lights to get there, so knocks five minutes off my door-to-door-commute time.
Work day in London itself was good, just busy. I did not have the Leather Lane lunch, as I went for a run, so saved myself about eight quid there. Obviously did still have to eat, I took a pasty in I'd bought from the supermarket. Did the same run as last time, from Farringdon down to Southwark and back again, past the familiar sights. I was a bit faster this week as more confident in the route, knowing where it would be busy, knowing I can run in the bus lane and cycle path and so on. Didn't take a towel with me as I know now there are towels available at work. I'm getting very efficient with my commute.
I have not run yet this morning, tired and cold. Will go out at lunch. Still dryanuary runuary day eighteen and all still good.
While I was at work my friend texted to say he had two spare tickets for the football, Crystal Palace vs Manchester United. Man U is T1's team, but we could not have arranged it in time as I was in London and he was at school. If I'd been home we could have, but I wonder how keen he'd be to go to a real match anyway. We will try again soon, though it will not be Man U next time. Maybe Man City?
Octopus Eco-Hour is back, and strangely at 9am today. This is easy, everyone is out, I can turn things off for an hour with no compromises really. I can even hotspot on my phone. The only thing is our usage must always be almost zero at this time, so I won't earn a lot. If I earn a max of two quid turning the energy off around tea-time it will be about 2 pence here. Still, doing my bit. I made a coffee already and put it in my useless trendy thermos1. It looks good, good shape, good size, can drink out of it like a cup, but it doesn't keep the coffee hot and it sometimes leaks.
I tweaked the coffee settings again. Now I'm thinking a) I accidentally affected the pre-infusion and need to sort that and b) this could be a graph!
| date | ⚙️2 | ⏱ 3 | ⚖️4 | ☕️5 | ⏱6 | notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-01-19 | 6 | 10 | 18 | 66 | 27 | Did I break the pre-infusion when I changed the express time? Might reset again tomorrow. |
| 2023-01-19 | 6 | 9 | 15 | 58 | 29 | Grinding even smaller, seems I need to make big not subtle adjustments. |
| 2023-01-17 | 8 | 9 | 16 | 66 | 28 | Grinding even smaller, but still a mega lungo, this is so difficult. Nice though! |
| 2023-01-17 | 10 | 9 | 15 | 61 | 27 | Making the grind smaller and smaller trying to get the pour slower to get the ratio right. |
| 2023-01-16 | 13 | 8 | 15 | 60 | 32 | |
| 2023-01-15 | 14 | 8 | 15 | 60 | 27 | Big old tweak yesterday, increasing express time, made an ultra lungo. Tomorrow grind the coffee smaller. |
| 2023-01-14 | 14 | 8 | 18 | 60 | 30 | Big old tweak but did not analyse the numbers until the next day... |
| 2023-01-13 | 17 | 8 | 20 | 4 | 20 | Good crema again, good coffee. But should I tweak the timer, and if so how?? |
| 2023-01-13 | 17 | 8 | 16 | 48 | 20 | Good crema, back to the safety of the dual wall filter. |
| 2023-01-13 | 17 | 8 | 16 | 53 | 15 | Disaster, single wall filter, weak looking coffee no crema, poured away. |
Ratio heading the right way, coffee still good. I'm grinding even smaller. Ratio between 2:1 + 3:1 is normal espresso, beyond that is a lungo, which is what I'm doing now. Just not on purpose.
Trimming historical results here now just keeping a week's worth of data.
Coffee Gator scales1 for weighing.
I was at an MJ Hibbett gig this day in 2001 (and a Lighting Seeds this day in 1997 and a Skunk Anansie in 1996) and I am hoping to go to another MJ Hibbett gig again soon, though not another Lightning Seeds. It's all down to the wiseness of this decision knowing there will be a rail strike the next morning. I think I should not.
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- grind size
- grind time (seconds)
- ground coffee (grammes)
- espresso expressed (grammes)
- express time (seconds)
dryanuary: Not drinking for the month of January.
runuary: Running at least 5k every day for all of January.