Oh magnanimous ruler, your people need you to lead them through the troubled times ahead. Hailing from the beautiful lands of [INSERT HOMETOWN HERE] , you lead a country young in age but strong in passion. A passion for cultivating the land, expanding their sphere of influence, and selling blue jeans and rap music across the globe. What great perils await your people? What great challenges have you yet to face to reach a new dawn? Do you have what it takes to carry your infant civilization into this dangerous world, full of atomic bombs, marauding barbarians, and cultu- GOD DAMNIT PACAL STOP SENDING SO MANY MISSIONARIES. GET – GET OUT OF HERE, I’M TRYING TO RECORD MY INTRO. NO, NO I DON’T WANT YOUR RELIGION. Yeah, that way. Out. Please. Thank you I GUESS. So… where was I… ah yes. Do you have what it takes to make a civilization that will withsta – HEY I SEE YOU PACAL. STOP SNEAKING IN, I SWEAR TO…
Although my wife has played her fair share of Civilization V, I have sunk more hours into it than I care to admit. There are plenty of other games I still need to play through and other possibly more useful things I could be spending my time doing, but the game is just too much fun for me to set aside. The way each game is different, between the civ you pick, the neighbors you deal with, and the landscape you have to contend with, makes it so easy to start up another game and see what adventures await. If I have room here to show off, I’ve even beaten the game on Deity, the hardest difficulty, a handful of times now. Honestly, playing on the hardest difficulty isn’t as fun to me as the lower difficulties because there is very little room for non-optimal strategies, but it’s a fun test of what I’ve learned over my time playing. If you haven’t played any civilization games, I highly suggest giving it a try. Be sure to pick up the two expansions as well!
As a supportive husband, I always try to help in any way I can with this food blog. Victoria is far and away a better cook than I, so my assistance usually comes in the form of chopping up some veggies or doing the dishes. On occasion, Victoria’s recipes call for something that I’ve grown to love and Victoria doesn’t care much for, so I’ve gladly helped whenever that lovely ingredient comes up: coffee! Granted, if you ever need coffee for one of the recipes on this site (or just to sit down and enjoy) there are a lot of ways to prepare it. However, Civilization V’s inclusion of coffee comes from the Austrian unique building, the Coffee House. It just doesn’t feel right settling with instant coffee when you can really go the extra mile and make a cup worth sitting down and enjoying. I personally use a Chemex for brewing coffee and highly recommend it if you have the time to spare and would love to share the recipe I’ve grown to love.
Required Equipment: Chemex, Chemex paper filter, Scale, Coffee Grinder (optional)
Results: 1 cup of coffee
Ingredients:
27g Coffee Beans
415g Hot Water (~208 F)
This first step could be skipped if you so choose, but you’ll get a fresher cup if you grind your own beans. I use a Baratza Encore Burr Grinder but I’d suggest anything with a burr grinder. Measure roughly 27g of coffee beans and grind them to something similar to kosher salt size.
Take your paper filter and crease it on the side where it overlaps itself. Place the filter in the chemex with the crease facing the spout and pour in a little bit of your hot water to wet the filter. Swirl the water in the chemex a bit to prewarm it a bit. Pour out the water while keeping a hand on the filter to keep it in place.
Add your coffee grounds to the chemex and shake it a bit to let the grounds settle. Reset your scale, start a timer and pour in twice as much water as you added as grounds, or round to 50g. You only want to add enough water to wet all of the grounds.
When your timer shows 40 seconds, start your first pour of water. Pour slowly in the middle of the grounds and slowly rotate outward without pouring water down the sides of the filter. With the 50g of water already added, aim to add another 100g of water in this manner.
Wait until the grounds start to get exposed and pour another 100g of water in the same way. After waiting again, pour in about 100g of water a third time. I typically end up with 360g of water in total. The goal is to reach this point with most of the water through the grounds in about three and a half minutes. If you ran out of water earlier, try grinding your beans finer, or coarser if the process took too long.
Pour in a mug and enjoy!
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