Heirloom tech: the stainless steel vacuum flask.

Image courtesy of Jeff the Gardener

When I was younger, I remember my father loading a vacuum flask in the morning before he made the long drive to school outside Boston.  He'd dump most of a pot of coffee into a tremendous bottle that looked like nothing so much as a gigantic, green-toned mortar shell.

That mortar shell was, of course, the classic Stanley flask.  My father's is still in better shape than this one, but it takes quite a bit of abuse to destroy one of these things.  And note the specification: it'll keep your beverage at temp for 24 hours.

The stainless flask is truly a brilliant device.  It uses no energy to maintain temperatures -- it's just metal, impervious steel, odorless and tasteless.  The liquid space is nestled in an evacuated cavity so the only heat transfer happens through the metal itself.  The metal only connects at the neck of the bottle, which can only transfer heat slowly -- over 24 hours or so.

Glass-lined vacuum flasks (like Thermos) are perhaps even more efficient.  However, they're not as durable, and if you've ever broken a glass vacuum flask, you wouldn't want to do it again.  So it's stainless all the way for me.

Before we go, I'll leave you with a few other high-fliers on the stainless flask scene:

The Thermos Nissan 34 oz.

The Zojirushi Tuff Slim (note detailed temperature performance specs)

Or, if you're cheap like me...Ikea always has one or two very affordable options.

Heirloom Tech: Zassenhaus Coffee Grinder

Move over, Mercedes and BMW: here is German engineering at its finest.  It's an elegant, zombie-proof (as in, will continue to be useful after the zombie apocalypse) method of grinding coffee, from the finest Turkish grind up to a decent size for pour-over, if not quite French Press.

Yes, this is the Zassenhaus Turkish Coffee Mill, one of the finest pieces of coffee kit available for purchase.  Zassenhaus does make some other coffee mills (including the always-in-demand knee mill) but the shiny brass Turkish mill is the sexiest of the bunch.  While the wooden box mills summon images of hardy New Englanders on a chilly winter morning, the Turkish mill seems more suited for a charming square in Greece (or, uh...Turkey.)

But back to the zombie-proof aspect of all this.  Yes, this machine depends on the sweat of your brow to pulverize your coffee into very tiny, even particles (the quality of the grind is as good as you'll get from any powered grinder...probably better, since there is no motor to heat the grinds) but in exchange you'll never have to worry about the power being out.  You can travel with it.  You can have beautiful, even coffee grinds in the woods...or yes, after attacks by zombies or malevolent aliens have taken the power grid offline.  While your cell phones and videogame consoles lay dormant, undone by the lack of electricity and the near-complete breakdown of society, zombie-proof heirloom technology like this hand grinder will soldier on, unbowed.  Even if the breakdown of society has slowed the import of good coffee beans. 

And for that, we salute you, Zassenhaus Turkish Coffee Mill.

Morning coffee

As I was making my coffee this morning the sun caught the bottom of my hand-grinder, which at some point last year sat in water just long enough to begin to oxidize; the sun brought out the hint of green copper. I composed this before I lost the light.

(Photo info: Olympus SP-565UZ, Super Macro, F3.5, 1/400, ISO 64, massaged a bit in the GIMP)

The Zassenhaus is in heavy use these days; I sold my grinder out in California but kept my espresso machine. Luckily, my schedule these days allows me ample time to grind coffee by hand and self-document.

So...this is the first truly legit latte art that I've been able to make...you can see that a few of the bubbles have started to pop there, because instead of drinking it immediately, I ran and grabbed the camera (obviously) and let Brett take a pic (you might be able to tell that too, from the quality of the picture).

Anyway I was pretty jazzed, but I haven't been able to do anything quite this rad since.

I bet Mayer couldn't do that.