Academic Equipment: Coffee at the Office
For the latest installment of the occasional academic equipment series, let’s talk coffee.
How is coffee done in your department? Is it every-coffee-drinker-for-themselves? Is there a communal coffee-making device of some sort?
If there is an office coffee machine, what is it? What do you (realistically) wish it was? Why? Who pays for the coffee? Which coffee do you use (and who gets to decide)? Who cleans and maintains the machines?
That is: what is your department’s coffee practice? What would a good departmental coffee practice be? Should there even be a communal coffee machine? And what about the tea drinkers?
If it is every-coffee-drinker-for-themselves in your department, do you bring your own—and if so, in what?—or do you actually brew your own in your office—and if so, how?
For what it’s worth, our department recently acquired a Keurig machine, and people who want to use it provide their own pods (like these). I, however, am still in the habit of bringing my own coffee in this. And when I want to treat myself, I order coffee from here.
You?
(Previous installments in the series are here.)
Ah, the Keurig. I sympathize. Truly. But in our department, we’ve managed to transcend the tyranny of pods.
We have a La Marzocco Linea Mini in the lounge. A small consortium of faculty (myself included) insisted on this in the last round of “equipment” funding – we were arguing that morale and intellectual productivity are surely tethered to crema quality (the head of college agreed).
The beans? Single-origin, rotated monthly, chosen by a rotating “coffee czar” (a role we take as seriously as any committee chairmanship). Currently it’s a natural-processed Ethiopian roasted by a tiny Copenhagen outfit you wouldn’t have heard of unless you still buy vinyl. The beans are purchased with a modest departmental slush fund, supplemented by voluntary donations.
As for cleaning and maintenance — A technician comes in quarterly. Day-to-day care falls to our PhD students, though many of them treat it less as a chore than a rite of passage: learning how to purge the group head, steam milk properly, and pull a shot that doesn’t disgrace the department’s reputation. I like to think of it as professional training—one should know how to talk about Wittgenstein and wet-process fermentation in the same breath 🙂
I looked up the La Marzocco Linea Mini and it’s 5000 dollars. I don’t understand how any department would justify this much, given that you could hire part time teaching assistants for this? Also, coffee is coffee – philosophers drink it for the caffeine, which is why at our department we just have the big tubs of instant, the fanciest of which is Nescafe Gold instant. Heat up some water and there you go – hundreds of cups of the stuff will cost no more than about five bucks. if you want to care about ‘crema’ or whatever that is, it sounds like the kind of thing one might enjoy on their own time, like the opera. but when you’re at work, I think it makes most sense to just drink instant coffee and get on with life!
Wow that’s a lot of money
Is this satire?
I hope not
Ideally, the most junior faculty member buys coffee for the senior faculty every morning and receives derisive comments if they get the order wrong.
Actually, this is already a common norm at elite US universities. But I don’t think it is widely practiced elsewhere.
My previous place of employment used to have truly abhorrent coffee provided (for free to employees) by some contractor in a large vending machine. Famously, they ran a survey at some point throughout the contract to see how things were going and people scored it very low for taste, about 3/10. It just tasted bitter, sour, and watery all at the same time. The nifty contractor simply replied that people in the survey differed on whether the coffee was too strong or too weak so nothing could be done…
In that situation, I made coffee in a small, simple french press. That went quite well. At some point, I brought a simple grinder and some good beans as well. I’d always go back to that if the other options were bad or I really wanted great coffee. Sure, the cleaning is a little annoying, but the device is small and it’s an easy thing to do.
At my current employer, we share a small bean-to-cup machine with a couple of people. One person collects money and buys beans. It works quite well and the coffee is decent.
We had a standard Mr. Coffee and someone (I think the dean) would buy decent coffee for it. There was the standard collection cup but I know it didn’t cover costs. Not great but drinkable. Then some genius unilaterally took it upon himself to replace that with a Keurig, which of course raises all sorts of issues of authority and legitimacy. And of course the coffee now sucks. Long term I think I’m just gonna get a kettle and one of those near indestructible little metal Bodum French presses or maybe switch to tea. I had a colleague I really liked in English who had a little tea set in his office and would offer students who came by office hours a cup. That always seemed a very nice little thing.
Finally, a truly controversial topic!
Has anyone considered a ban on coffee in the office? Just a thought.
Normally I’m absolutist about free speech, but this crosses a line. What’s the email address of your university president?
I concur with David Wallace. This fascist Delon should be no-platformed forthwith. Though free-speech on this and other venues is of course essential, this does not mean that Daily Nous should provide a platform for this kind of hateful caffeine-exclusive and caffeine-phobic rhetoric which clearly discriminates again the many downtrodden philosophers who precisely because of the oppressive social structures of late-capitalist society have become hopelessly addicted to coffee (a caffeine habit which is anyway a legitimate life-style choice in dealing with the ongoing traumas that they daily experience in the neo-liberal university). As Marcuse has argued “the realization of the objective of tolerance” (the full and free development of each individual in a classless society) requires “intolerance toward … policies, attitudes, opinions” that discriminate against the disadvantaged (such as coffee-drinking philosophers). By enabling Delon to spout his inherently discriminatory opinions, Daily Nous provides a particularly egregious example of repressive tolerance. I will be starting a petition or perhaps and open letter to demand that Justin henceforth prevents him from commenting on this blog. If Delon were allowed continue and if the disgusting policy that he so shamelessly advocates were to be implemented, the resulting ‘deaths of despair’ would lie at Justin’s door.
But consider this:
– Coffee is addictive, causes insomnia and hypertension, and can make some people sick. The public health considerations clearly support a ban.
– Coffee is a performance-enhancing drug. The fairness considerations are obvious.
– Employer-sponsored coffee consumption is exploitative, it keeps workers artificially alert and productive instead of reducing their work hours.
– Coffee production is exploitative, relying on unfair labor practices. Coffee drinkers offload the costs of their ‘thinking’ on the back of farmers.
– The environmental footprint of coffee is just mind-boggling—deforestation, biodiversity loss, water use, and I guess climate something. I mean, come on. Meat is okay, but coffee?!
Therefore there is no way to make coffee in sustainable and equitable ways. Therefore it should be banned.
Nice. But consider this:
– Printed books are addictive. People stay up all night reading them, neglecting sleep, relationships, and basic hygiene. The public health implications are obvious.
– Books are performance-enhancing. They boost vocabulary, critical thinking, and empathy. How is that fair to the naturally uninformed?
– Employer-sponsored literacy is exploitative. Instead of reducing workloads, companies expect workers to “skill up” by reading manuals, memos, and onboarding packets. It’s intellectual wage theft.
– Book production is a nightmare. Deforestation, water-intensive paper mills, toxic inks, and exploitative publishing contracts. Every page turned is a tree mourned.
– The cultural footprint of books is staggering. They spread dangerous ideas, challenge authority, and encourage people to think for themselves. Honestly, who needs that kind of chaos?
Therefore, there is no way to make printed books sustainable or equitable. Therefore, they should be banned.
I agree. The case for a ban on books is overdetermined.
The APA must issue a statement.
I have to admit that it is mind bogging to me that some departments cannot afford unlimited coffee, and more so that some cannot afford a machine. I won’t name names, though this is of course no secret. I will just say that I have been to departments where this is not the case.
An utter failure of budgeting!?
If your departmental office is using a Keurig machine, it’s time to take matters in your own hands. Assuming your office has a kettle and you have at least a corner of a desk available, you can bring an Aeropress to your office and a decent hand grinder
Before the pandemic, a student decided to start making the department office cold brew with a plastic juice pitcher, a cloth bag he brought from home, and excess cheap coffee from the campus foodshare. He’d put up a paper sign with scratch paper “cold brew in progress” during the day, and I was always excited in the mornings to see if he’d put the “cold brew ready” sign up.
It was an amazing semester.
If there’s space for it, the Yama cold brew tower is a beautiful item and produces great coffee, and doesn’t require as much fiddling as anything involving cloth bags: https://www.espressoparts.com/products/6-8-cup-cold-drip-coffee-maker-straight-black-wood-frame-32oz
Notre Dame boasts the Daniel Nolan espresso machine. I believe it is a Terra Kaffe super-automatic. Please remember to return the drip-cup!
Where I work there is some sort of pod machine in the tiny “kitchen” on our floor, but I avoid that. (I guess pods are provided, but I’m not sure.) I have my own pour through cone that I use and just bring in my own ground coffee. In the past I had a little electric kettle in my office, but now I mostly just use the filtered water tap that gives boiling water, and that works well. I’d used my own french press some times in the past, but the pour through cone w/ paper filters is much easier to deal with/clean, so I do that. Australia likes to pride itself on its coffee – often without any reason to do so – so it’s amusing to me that they think the cone is some weird, distinctly American way to make coffee.
I bring coffee-based energy drinks which I’m told aren’t real coffee.
I fear that the coffee situation in my department (free bad/mediocre ground coffee and a basic drip brewer with a run down espresso machine that no one dares use) does not compare to the elites in this thread.
Will this affect my job prospects?
We’re cutting back on expenses, but for the past several years, our department stocked Cometeer in the freezer. It’s very good coffee and very convenient. I’m not sure what we’ll switch to.
I also serve a fair bit of coffee out of my office coffee shop (Normative Grounds).
Nice, John! Is your underground coffee bar on DoorDash? 😉
I’ve joked with some colleagues about starting a coffee cart. Someday maybe!
This is awesome. Do I spy on your shelf a set of Umeshiso spoons? And what’s the grinder you have there?
Good eye on the spoons. The grinder is a Kafatek Monolith Flat Max. This photo is a little old. That machine has been sold and it’s now a Decent DE1 and there is a second grinder for darker roasts.
My first thought when I saw this DN headline was “Someone needs to tag John Basl!”
amazing
This is inspiring. I may bring my Decent into the office. Did you build the table to accommodate a knock box?
Another Boston-area Decent owner! Yes, I cut the table to incorporate the knock box, pitcher rinser and faucet. These run off a small marine pump under the table that is fed from a 5 gallon plastic carboy. The Decent is fed by the catering kit. I haven’t gotten around to countersinking the machine.
I will never forget John Basl’s coffee.
It is, basically, the only cup of coffee I have ever noticed — aesthetically — in my life.
I went from protesting “I shouldn’t take a cup. It will only be wasted on me” to “Oh, wow. Gosh.” in one sip.
Well, this made me smile! Thanks, Georgi!
I like my coffee like my players—strong.
In my old department, many of the faculty just had a small little $15 drip machine in their office. I would also carry around an Aeropress Go in my backpack. This usually meant that someone could share a cup of coffee with you at just about any time, albeit of varying quality. Other than that, many of us also frequented the food-services licensed Tim Hortons on the first floor, also of quite poor quality.
I’m not trying to start an argument but I’m a little surprised by the last bit. I’ve found the bagged Tim Horton’s pretty solid. It’s not the best coffee in the world but I find it quite good for the price point. Honestly my wife and I get it as our day to day coffee a lot (For the price a local shop Norfolk Cofffee and Tea have the best coffee in the region but their hours are nuts so we often settle for TH.) I’ve heard Canadians gripe that there’s a big variety in the quality of stores though and pretty much anything on campus will be several ticks below the locations off campus so maybe that’s it?
Moccamaster is the best drip pot I’ve tried, but is pretty expensive and the build may be a bit light for office use.
Bonavita drips make coffee that is almost as good, and may be better built for office use, The insulated pots are an advantage re breakage, and also for avoiding the stewed sludge that is the bane of break rooms.
IME, very hard to beat pour over for taste, and a set up, including the electric teapot for heating, is comparatively cheap. Messy at the office, though, and a headache to scale up.
Don’t tell anyone, but I like Keurig just fine, esp. if the pods are Peets, both at work and home.
I had a Nespresso machine in my campus office, but never really warmed to the style of coffee, before the machine broke.
For those concerned with coffee and blood pressure: google scholar “coffee hypertension metaanalysis.” The evidence is not completely unmixed, but in general it has not proved easy to find the association. (I am not a medical professional; make your own assessment in consultation with your physician.)
I considered posting anonymously because I am expecting my inbox to explode with hate mail. I use Medaglia d’Oro instant espresso rather than the (seemingly entirely disused) industrial drip coffee maker in our coffee station.
What even is the point of coffee? Caffeine pills have the same effect, plus they’re cheaper and more convenient. Anything else is for posers.
Equally, you could eschew cocktails and just slug vodka from the bottle.
I still fondly remember the 10AM Mr. Donut coffee breaks on my first paint crew. I’d not previously considered that possibility that jobsites around the world are populated by posers.
Even those dismissive of gustatory pleasure, companionship, and ritual might want to note that there are probably numerous beneficial compounds in coffee, besides caffeine.
I used to take caffeine pills for the reasons you mention as an undergrad, but at that time I was starved for both time and money. Now that I am not, I drink coffee and never take caffeine pills. Caffeine pills do make sense in many situations, including possibly yours.
We have a communal French press, which recently replaced the regular old drip coffee maker (which was aged, and also too large for the small countertop), with an affordable local brand of coffee purchased by the department.
I like French press coffee and usually make that at home, but would think it’s not a great idea in a work setting, given that they are a bit of a pain to clean, (*), don’t keep coffee warm if you’re making a larger amount that can be shared, and tend to break fairly easily (**). That’s why I personally moved to the pour through cone with paper filter – easier for individual use and much easier to clean up.
(*) At home it’s just part of my morning cleaning process to clean out the french press, but I am sure htat at work I’d end up having to clean up for others if I wanted to use it, and even when I had one for my own use at work it was a pain to clean.
(*)(*) The french press I have at home is fairly large, and also metal, so it won’t break and stays warm for a fair amount of time, but still not all that long, and such things are a lot more expensive than the more typical glass ones.
Can we please do one of these on other drugs? Drugs people take to help them in various ways