Casio MRW-200 (analogue clarity with a rotating bezel)

I knew it would be vexing, but I bought it anyway ... because I had to know ...

As far as a watch goes it ticks all my boxes for an analogue watch:

• clear and easy to read (clearly differentiable hands)
• day, date complication
• bi-directional rotating bezel
• water resistant and rugged
• light
• accurate

I'm a big fan of bi-directional bezel because you can time lots of small things (that are perhaps 5 or 10 minutes) and then just rotate a little to "restart the timer". Its about here that the "Dive Watch" wankers will squeal about how it could cost me my life if I was diving. To which I would say "grow up and go do some diving (because I bet you haven't). Nobody relies on a watch like they did in the 1970's we all use a dive computer now. I totally DGAF about the ISO standard for Dive Watches because if you're a serious recreational or professional diver you'll actually be using a dive computer anyway...

ISO 6425: The Definitive Standard for Dive Watch Construction

Requirement	Detailed Specification
Water Resistance	Minimum 100 meters depth rating; tested at 125% of rated depth
Bezel	Unidirectional rotating bezel (only counterclockwise) to prevent accidental time extension
Legibility	Readable at 25cm in complete darkness; luminous hands and markers
Durability Tests	- Magnetic resistance (4,800 amperes across three axes)
	- Shock resistance
	- Thermal shock resistance
	- Salt water resistance (24-hour saline solution test)
Strap/Bracelet	Must withstand 200 newtons of force in each direction
Marking	Officially marked with "DIVER'S" when ISO tested

Mostly fussed about by people (incels) who don't dive and have never dived.

Anyway, as you can see I've put it on a strap (which was a NATO but had the useless flap removed as I've done for years now) and its pretty straightforward to fit (a nice standard 18mm lug width and good quality spring bars)

Watch thickness is about normal for this sort of thing (meaning too fucking thick).

for reasons I don't get modern watch buyers think things like this should be bricks on a strap, yet other  watches I have which are quarts and divers and have bezels and are made of steel are thinner, such as the bottom one here:

I don't know what's wrong with people today ... 

If you do go with a NATO then make sure its as thin as possible because its quite a tight fit in behind the spring bars. Naturally this also means that the watch isn't sat up as much with this insignificant extra thickness.

but it is what it is ...

the other Casio in my watch box is the lovely F-91W, which is pretty much my preference for my daily wear (you can call it a beater if you're into that sort of thing) and it ticks most my boxes (day, date and time, no bezel, but it does have a Chronograph {aka stopwatch}).

They're both light (clearly one is 30% lighter but its not an issue), the 200 is instantly telling me the time in all sorts of adverse condition (lume sucks about as hard as it gets, but the 91W backlight is legendary in its own right). However the 91 disappears into the wrist when wearing ...

...while I end up bashing the 200 on things a lot due to its bulk. 

Conclusion

I happen to like both, and I wear the 200 on those occasions where I value legibility higher than slimness (like I can glance at my arm and instantly see/recognise the time while riding my motorbike and I can't even see the digits on the 91W), as well its nice to be able to see the timer you've set/started  as well as the time (something the little digital can't do).

If I need to time something to the fraction of a minute then I'll use the F-91W with its chrono, but if I just want to know to within a minute how long it takes me to ride to (say, Stanthorpe) I'll wear the 200. I can just spin the bezel and go.

Both are tool watches that cost less than most tools spend on a watch (like a Rolex Explorer is a watch for a tool). Both have overlaps and both have strengths. 

Speaking of strengths the "hourly chime" on the 91W is not to be undervalued as a nice little reminder when writing ... "fuck, have I been here an hour?"

Its a great watch, so if you're even faintly inclined buy one; its only cost me about a weeks petrol.

measuring coffee extraction from beans

I wanted to know how much of what's coffee is extracted from the beans. There is lots written on this,  I didn't feel it gave sufficient details and so I decided to have my own go at this. I thought I'd start with the same thing and go two different ways.

the coffee

Methodologies

Method  one was to take the puck, weigh it first (in the basket/groupset tamped), extract the coffee and then dry it and weigh it after. 

Method two was to take the coffee I'd made, then remove the water (drying it) and weigh the remainder.

I did both.

Baseline:

I thought I'd ask an AI for a summary of things (I mean its what they do and it was a simple question):

Which felt like two different answers (and probably was).

Method 1

I weighed the basket (the group head steel basket), then added my usual amount of coffee (my grinder has a memory and produces pretty similar deliveries of grinds), then weighed the combined (tamped) basket and coffee, subtracted the basket and had 17.93g of coffee grinds. (side note: I also use this to work out my ratio for making a flat white as I do)

I banged out the puck (biscuit) and put it in the oven in a plastic bowl (11.7g) for drying at about 47C.

I kept inspecting and weighing and breaking the puck up and stirring with a fork, until eventually it became nice and dry

Method 1 working

So ultimately I seemed to lose 1.8g from the puck. Interestingly this result gave about 1g of loss per 10g of coffee, as identified in the first AI answer.

Concerns

I was thinking while doing this (the iterative stirring, checking and replacing) that I had no idea when was "Dry" and what the actual state of the water content of the beans was before I ground them. Because I knew that would be about 3% and how would I know what the water content of my drying was?

This was vexing and so I decided to approach it from the other end: what could be found by removing the water from the espresso.

Method 2

This method was similar but less measurement intensive. I would pull a shot, into the above demitasse and then weight would tell me how much coffee I had to start with (57.3g) (from 17.45g of beans) which is a bit more than I pull into my mug (I don't weigh, I use volumetric on the mug and judge that by taste then use the time for a pull to make it a bit more consistent)

I soon saw that it would take too long to dry that coffee out, so I tipped it into a shallow small dish that would allow faster drying (because surface area to volume ratio) and put both the cup (with some tiny amount of coffee in it) and the saucer into the oven for drying. I dried till it looked like freshly applied paint (but didn't touch it); not moving around at all (as liquids do) when inspected.

this gave a different result 4.68g (interestingly similar to the second AI answer). However what I don't know is what amount of "fines" came through (to add to that mass of coffee) and how much of water may remain bound to those coffee remains (its very hard to remove the water from a solution).

Conclusions

So now I have two answers of my own making and in some ways have not got just one answer. Reflection on this has led me to wonder if the best approach is to repeat method 1, but add in a "control" where I have ground coffee of the same mass and only put one through the espresso extraction process ,but both through the oven. This would mean that I could track the weight of the "control" grinds against the espressed grinds. Any loss of weight of the control sample could then be further subtracted from the final weight of the espressed grinds and I'd have an answer.

The only question at hand now is DIGAF

best yet pour over filter coffee system

I've been a keen coffee nut for some 40 years (so since I was young) and over time I've been through a few different methods of making coffee. Two methods have stuck:

1. Espresso 
2. Pour over

I've had brief forays into Plunger (the fancy folk call it French press) and naturally when camping use the Pot Immersion (and sedimentation) style that was with us for centuries. In the workplace I've tried Nespresso pods but fallen back always onto a plastic V60 style of "on the cup" filter because its compatible with the office kitchen, its quick and I can pick the coffee beans I like. I first encountered these in Japan in the year 2001 and they were pretty common in the Hyaku-yen shops for about 100yen. However I always lamented the loss of the oils (absorbed by the paper, which could be tasted in plunger style) but favoured the clean taste without the inevitable grind "fines" that you get with a plunger (esp in the second cup). 

I've read of filters which relied on fine metal mesh (even as early as the 1990's) but there were rare and expensive. However I recently discovered this stainless steel one from China (via Ali and eBay)

This has a fine metal mesh on the inside and has some holes in the steel to allow some sort of bypass on the outside, however in reality while some might make its way down the outside and into the cup it would seem that the water passes between the mesh and the steel ... dunno. The mesh is a fine weave that's for sure.

looking from the outside we can see through the holes in the steel to the size of the mesh. My phone has a pretty good microscope which shows this clearly.

Its amazingly fine.

So now I get excellent pour over which has almost no "fines" (or sludge) in the bottom of the cup, a great mouth feel and taste and has renewed my coffee drinking methods.

Price was also amazingly good at AU$12 (including postage), but even at $20 I would not hesitate.

Its surprisingly tolerant of grind size, so as long as its anything in the ballpark of "Supermarket" ground coffee (for those who grind their own, I go a bit coarser), but still I tested it today on my usual espresso grind and that worked quite well (although a bit slow) and still no fines!

Its win win and the only thing against it is that you need to spend a bit more time "washing it" than if you just pull out a paper and dump it. Filter papers are king for convenience there!

If you haven't tried one, give it a go.

Tool Watch (Casio F-91W)

To be clear, watches can be tools or they can be adornments. If they are going to be adornments then they are jewellery. Nothing wrong with that if that's your thing. But I see a lot of hard lube free KingWanging going on over on Reddit (yeah, what else would you expect right?)

Anyway, while back I bought the Casio F-91W, which is the embodiment of the following:

• accurate
• functional
• rugged
• feature laden (compared to an uncomplicated plain watch; it has day and date complication as well as chronograph, hourly chime and alarm, display in 12h or 24h times)

Compared to a Rolex like this:

The Casio  

1. is more accurate (seconds per month not seconds per day)
2. is more rugged
3. has a day date (and the date is actually a perpetual unlike 90% of automatic watches)
4. has a chronograph
5. has an alarm
6. is lighter (mine weighs 27.3g including the strap the Rolex will be over 130g on the strap)

Without a doubt the Casio (cost $20) is a mere fraction of the cost of a Rolex and I'm unafraid to wear it when working on stuff (like my motorcycles or other things). I know a few old watch makers and they tell me that back in the 1970's workers (welders, mechanics, boiler makers, fishermen) would still buy a Rolex because it could withstand punishment. Now they are more like $10,000

Lets be honest here, do you see Rolex's on workers wrists to tell the time (or help time a task) or do you see them on finely dressed wankers who are trying to signal their wealth (either real or faked).

One of these is worn by a tool, the other is being worn as a tool.

The Quartz revolution nearly drove expensive mechanical watches extinct, indeed the Swiss were really unable to beat brands like Seiko, Orient and Casio and indeed were only able to survive (after some dreadful and laughable failures) by appealing to wankers with too much money who wanted to be special on their Yacht or in their Armani Suite who were buying Swiss mechanical watches for exclusivity.

 So I put it to you that if you want a "tool watch" then you want a Casio, and probably one of these amazing little F-91W's

If you think that the influencers telling you that an IWC or an Omega, or a Rolex is really a "tool watch" then I'm afraid that the tool is wearing the watch.

I don't wear my little Casio all the time, as I have a couple of other watches (quartz and mechanical) which I enjoy wearing (sometimes for ornamentation, sometimes comfort, other times for functionality) but its only the Quartz watches that can sit in the watch box for weeks and come out and just be fine, indeed its only the Casio because its digital that nothing needs changing (you know, like the date).

BTW, I put the NATO on the Casio with but a little effort, I bought a $15 one (so yeah, nearly overcapitalised) because I just didn't really like the original straps. Fitting the NATO took a little fiddling but there's plenty of videos on YouTube about that. I initially put a strong crease in the strap and used a typical watch springbar tool to guide the pin when I was inserting it so as to guide the pin back into where it will click in.

Then when one side was in, I could lay it over and see exactly where the other side needed to be "creased" so that it would fit in and sit nicely.

Naturally I cut off the useless flap (which is only there for military watches which have fixed bars and the watch might slide off without that flap).

Casio F-91W = best value watch on the market.