C'mon in, the Coffee's Fine!

The Brew Lagoon is about more than mixed drinks. This lagoon runs on coffee. Our kitchen counters are dominated by methods to extract caffeinated goodness from the glorious magical bean. In the coming months, we’ll describe some of our favorite coffee makers—from simple pour-overs to complicated espresso machines—sharing with you the discoveries we’ve made.

In the end, the machine doesn’t make the perfect cup—the bean makes all the difference. We all have different tastes, and it’s up to you to decide what kind of bean is best suited to yours. We prefer a dark, oily bean, which means it’s been roasted a bit longer than the lighter beans. Even though lighter beans have more caffeine (and we certainly love caffeine), darker roasts have a much richer, more satisfying, flavor. We’re happy to provide our personal recommendations (and likely will, before we’re done), but we do have a regular favorite. Kicking Horse roasts a number of fantastic beans, but we go for the 454 Horsepower most of the time.

A little about the illustration—first and foremost, it’s an homage to the coffee we love. After that, it’s a callback to old print, which is probably an obvious design conceit to anyone who visits our site. The coffee mug is based on a Tiki mug by the amazing TikiRob on Maui (https://tikirob.com). Why the monkey? That’s easy. Everything’s funnier with monkeys!