Camp coffee

We had church camp over the weekend. An interesting time with some important discussions about the future direction of our church – we’re looking at a plant in a new suburb/growth area in Townsville.

That’s all by-the-by. I’ll probably talk about it shortly.

The campsite we were staying at (a Girl Guides site in Bluewater) was powered and had a shared kitchen. Which to me is an opportunity to not suffer through hand grinding beans for the stove top. I brought Sheila* with me. And made a lot of coffees (and hot chocolates).

We went through 42 litres of milk (I think that’s right – by my count it was 14 three litre bottles). Close to 1.5kgs of coffee. And by my very rough estimate made about 150 drinks. Which awesomely justifies my decision to purchase Sheila on “ministry” grounds.**

I had catered on the basis of previous camp experience (and a bit of dinner catering experience) – which left me about half a kilo wrong in my calculations – people drink lots of coffee on camps, especially at morning tea. This meant buying coffee from Woolworths – which is an ethically difficult thing to do if you’re a believer in the superiority of freshly roasted coffee. There’s stuff on the shelves that was roasted in Italy – which surely sits on ships, in warehouses and on pallets in the store before even making it to the back of the shelf. In a word, it’s stale. I am going to, in its very own posts, formulate some sort of scored index of coffee.

I spent so long yanking the portafiller in and out of the machine that I have blisters. Barista blisters.

* My hundred kilo three group Rancilio Coffee Machine – named after the tank from Red vs Blue.

** not the website where I buy my coffee – but on the basis that I’d use the machine “for ministry” it’s how I internally justify every infrastructure splurge…