Put a Conical Burr Grinder in Your Home

Written by

If you want to make high quality, well extracted coffee in your house there is one thing that you absolutely must do.

What is that?

Buy A Conical Burr Grinder

It actually is as simple as it seems.  Ask any industry professional who deals with specialty coffee, myself included, and they will tell you that the key to making incredible coffee isn’t in how you brew it or what you use to brew – but in what you use to grind the coffee bean.  The right grinder will make coffee beans ‘sing’, the wrong one will simply hack at the bean, chopping it into smaller, mashed up bits that don’t extract any of the subtle nuances the coffee roaster worked so hard to maintain.

At my blog project vvlgar we talk about which grinder’s we like best all the time.  Truth be told, there is a lot less empirical data that goes into the final decision of finding a coffee grinder that meets your needs – and an awful lot of emotional interest as well as personal, hobbyist technique and ‘feel’.

Coffee grinders can’t just be rated on a scale of 1 to 10, they must be appreciated for their abilities, their adjustment mechanisms, as well as what their conical burrs are made out of.

Are they ceramic conical burrs?  Or are they steel?  Learn the difference.

I, personally, love ceramic conical burrs and more often than not when I am adding to my home coffee lab I purchase grinders that have these – they don’t have to be replaced as often and they’re entirely machine washable.  However, the steel conical burrs to grind through coffee faster and more effectively.

Which is better?

Neither.  The final decision is up to you.

A Few Criteria to Get You Started

These are the basic criteria that I stick with when I am shopping for grinders as well as when I am directing new ‘home baristas’ into the trade.

  • What kind of safety features does it have?  Some grinders have automatic shut off systems in place so that if the grinder’s bean hopper is not properly in place it will not grind.  Others don’t.  After years of working coffee both at home and behind the bar, I have learned that having automatic safety options is a really great feature and comes in handy more frequently than I would like to admit.
  • How many adjustment settings does it have?  I like a grinder with over 20 settings so that I can adjust for many brew types.  You may want a grinder with fewer if you’re only grinding for a few different methods – because this will keep it simpler and allow for better overall consistency.
  • How heavy is it?  Heavy grinders are always better in my opinion because they are less likely to skate around the surface of your kitchen counter.  This, however, is not a deal breaker in my opinion but is something to be on the look out for.  Some grinders even have anti-slip pads.  I love these.

You’re all set.  If you have found a grinder that meets these criteria and that you are happy with you are ready to start making phenomenal tasting coffee in your kitchen.

Happy Brewing.

Categories: Accessories

Two Major Ways in Which Hoteliers Get Their Guest Room Mattresses Cleaned

Written by

There are two major ways in which hoteliers get their guest room mattresses cleaned. We will be looking at each of those approaches to hotel mattress cleaning (what each of them involves), as well as the advantages and the disadvantages of each. We are, of course, coming from a background where guest room mattress cleaning tends to be one of the most challenging tasks hoteliers have to deal with.

The fact that the mattresses in the hotel guest rooms have to be used by many people of all types (and in quick succession) means that those are mattresses which need to be cleaned frequently. If guests are given dirty/stale mattresses to sleep on, chances are that they will take note of that fact, and subsequently make a point of not patronizing the particular hotel in the future. Most hoteliers would rather undertake frequent hotel guestroom mattress cleaning, rather than risk losing clients of account of something as petty as this. And in the final analysis, as mentioned earlier, the hoteliers find themselves with two options in terms of ways in which they can get their guestroom mattresses cleaned. Those are:

By deploying their own staff to do the cleaning: some of the bigger hotels actually have some people employed specifically to clean the mattress in the guestrooms, as the need for such cleaning becomes necessary.

There are other hotels where the guestroom mattress cleaning is undertaken by the ordinary cleaning staff – that is, where there are no special mattress cleaning staff members employed. These are hotels which make it clear to the cleaners, at recruitment time, that one of their tasks will be that of cleaning mattresses. The arrangement is usually one where they have a roster, on the basis of which they undertake mattress cleaning for certain rooms on certain days. They then move onto certain other rooms on certain other days… till all mattresses in the establishment are cleaned, and the cycle repeats itself.

Many of these hotels have mattress cleaning machines, meaning that the task is not so involving at a physical level. Therefore the ordinary cleaning staff members in question only need to make some time for it, and get it done as per the schedule.

The advantage with this approach to hotel guestroom mattress cleaning is in the fact that it is typically very cost-effective, as no third party service providers are brought it to undertake mattress cleaning.

The disadvantage with this approach to hotel guestroom mattress cleaning is in the fact that it can overwhelm the in-house hotel cleaners, leading to extremely staff high turnover rates. That would be especially the case if no investment in mattress cleaning machines is made, and the task therefore has to be done manually.

By engaging firms which specialize in mattress cleaning: this is where, in the spirit of outsourcing, the hoteliers bring in third party mattress cleaning service providers, to be cleaning the mattresses in the hotel guest rooms as need arises.

The advantage with this approach is in the fact that the mattress cleaning ends up being done very thoroughly, seeing that in this case, it is done by ‘professionals’ who specialize in that sort of thing. This approach can also turn out to be more cost-effective than hiring extra staff on a permanent basis to be cleaning the mattresses as need arises.

The disadvantage with this approach is in the fact that the services provided by third party mattress cleaning service providers can often turn out to be very expensive. Furthermore, some hoteliers are reluctant to let ‘outsiders’ so deep into what essentially turn out to their core business operations.

Categories: Beds

Selecting Ideal Door Welcome Mats for Office Use

Written by

Selecting ideal door mats for office use is never easy. Of course, this is consistent with the ‘bigger picture’ where selection of various items (furniture, stationery, electronics and so on) for office use is never easy. Yet in the final analysis, every office administrator has to make up his or her own mind, with regard to the right type of door mats to use in that particular office. Thankfully, there are some guidelines one can use when selecting these sorts of items, in order to make the task somewhat easier. We now venture to look at some of the things you need to keep in mind when selecting ideal door mats for office use. Those include:

Color: simply put, there are some colors that are considered ideal in a welcome mat meant for domestic use, and other colors that are considered ideal on mats meant for office use. Generally, mats for office use should be in understated colors. Loud colors are better used at home, or in entertainment spots: not in offices.

But this issue has to be looked at whilst also keeping in mind that some organizations tend to have their own organizational colors: colors with which they desire to be associated. In case you find yourself looking to buy office door mats for one such organization, the ‘color dilemma’ would be more or less resolved for you. That is the case because you’d only need to buy mats in the said ‘organizational colors.’

It is therefore people buying mats for smaller organizations without well-defined ‘organizational colors’ who tend to face challenges when making decisions on the right color of mats to buy for the organizations. And those are the ones who find it safer to go with understated ‘business-like’ colors: in pretty much the same way they’d go about buying personal attire for office use.

Quality of the mats’ base material(s): in a nutshell, we can say that office door mats (just like all other office items) should be ‘impressive-looking.’ Thus the mats bought need to be those that are made out of high quality, expensive-looking materials – if the office where they are deployed is to look proper. You have to keep it in mind that the people visiting the office in question will be using items like these to make decisions on the type of organization they are dealing with. Even where you are looking at charity-funded organizations, which have to look modest in their operational/furniture purchases, the need for ‘office propriety’ still remains.

Cleaning considerations: the office door mats should ideally be those of a variety that doesn’t get dirty easily, and also those of a variety that is easy to clean when it eventually gets dirty. We certainly have door mats which meet that meet that specification in the market, and those are the ones you should ideally go for.

Durability: the mats bought for office use should be of a durable variety – especially keeping in mind that they are meant for deployment in high human traffic facilities, where they are likely to be trampled upon by numerous people, countless times every given day.

Branding: if you can afford it, you should consider having the office door mats branded. This can, for instance, be done by having them emblazoned with the organization’s logo — and as mentioned earlier, rendered in the organization’s official colors, if the organization has such ‘official colors.’ This will be helpful in the organization’s internal branding and identity consolidation efforts.

Categories: Accessories

« Previous Page
Next Page »