Coffee.

Coffee is as vital to my work as an academic as... books and stuff. I'm sure many others feel the same. So, here is my in-office coffee set up. It works. It's amazing. I make great coffee every day and it fuels my thinking and teaching and research.

I use an Aeropress to make coffee. For better or worse I use both a metal filter and a paper filter at the same time. I'm sure people have thoughts about this - I don't want to hear them. This gives an incredibly smooth coffee. You should definitely try it. 

For water, I use a Dualit goose-neck temperature control kettle that I set on 75° for coffee (85° for tea). This is the most amazing kettle I've ever used in my life, and I realise that kettles are kettles but... honestly. It's amazing. I definitely like coffee at an immediately drinkable temperature. The thing I like about this over other temperature control kettles is that you can set it at whatever you want - there aren't preset temperature buttons, there's just a knob that you twist to increase or decrease.

My most recent addition to the set up is a 6l fridge - this fits a 1l carton of milk and a decent size bag of ground coffee. You could also fit some small snacks or something in there if you wanted to. I like (oat) milk in my coffee, but also it keeps your ground coffee much fresher and as I don't really want to have a grinder in the office (I used to have one, and it just adds another step that I'm not keen on having in the office). 

Finally, I have a Sodastream. This was given to me many, many years ago, and I would never buy one for myself today - they have been on the BDS list and although they did close their factory in the West Bank and relocate to 'Israel proper' it's still not a company I would support. If I were going to buy a water carbonator today I would get either the Philips soda maker or the Aarke version. I drink quite a bit of fizzy water, and really like having a soda maker in the office, thought I totally get it's not everyone's cup of tea (no pun intended!)

Anyway, that's it. That's my in-office coffee set up. And I wrote this while on a half-cup coffee break (that's where you drink half your cup of coffee on the break and half when you're back at work.)

As for coffee itself: I buy freshly ground coffee from Roasting Plant on the Strand (in London). I also buy whole bean coffee from them to take home, where I have an INCREDIBLE Sage Barista Express espresso machine.

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