Reid Burke

coffee

  • The Invention of the AeroPress

    Zachary Crockett at Priceonomics brings us the story of Alen Alder’s company Aerobie and how a toy manufacturer started making coffee makers.

    The AeroPress was conceived at Alan Adler’s dinner table. The company was having a team meal, when the wife of Aerobie’s sales manager posed a question: “What do you guys do when you just want one cup of coffee?”

    A long-time coffee enthusiast and self-proclaimed “one cup kinda guy,” Adler had wondered this many times himself. He’d grown increasingly frustrated with his coffee maker, which yielded 6-8 cups per brew. In typical Adler fashion, he didn’t let the problem bother him long: he set out to invent a better way to brew single cup of coffee.

    I love my AeroPress. It really does make a great cup.

  • Placebo-philes

    Robert McGinley Myers:

    For me it started with a simple search for better headphones. I think I typed “best headphones under $50” into Google, and what came back was a series of lists, like this one or this one, ranking the best headphones at a series of price ranges. I settled on a pair pretty quickly, and when they arrived I loved them, but those lists had planted their hooks in my brain. How much better would my music sound if I were willing to spend just a little bit more?

    A fantastic read on the placebo effect on everything from sound gear to wine to alternative medicine. Via Marco.org, who wrote this week about his own search for better coffee and headphones.