Sure, why don’t we just drink in the shop? Out of a porcelain cup or a glass? It doesn’t get more sustainable than that, and Zeit Online (unfortunately paywalled) called it pretty much the only proper way to go about it. What they ignore, however, is that this doesn’t match the reality of people rushing to nursery, work or university – and that coffee to go isn’t simply a yes or no question.

Anyone who wants to drink decent coffee knows the downsides of takeaway coffee.

It’s not just the cup that’s rubbish. The taste is different, the temperature doesn’t hold as long. You accept all of that as a compromise to have a coffee that’s still better than what comes out of the office filter machine – the one that’s been sitting on the hotplate for hours, getting more bitter by the minute. A consumption problem, no doubt. But for me, as for many others, it’s a way of treating yourself. The little luxury you need in the day and the cup of good coffee that helps you start things on a calmer note.

Let’s set aside for a moment the circumstances that might lead people to take their coffee from their own machine or from a barista. Here’s another way to transport your coffee:

The HuskeeCup

This takes a similar approach to Kaffeeform‘s cups, but starts one step earlier: with the coffee husk itself. The cups are made of roughly 50% husk material, but unfortunately also about 50% plastic, specifically polypropylene.
Huskee argues this gives the cups their stability and, from their perspective, they remain recyclable. But it also enables the cup’s design: the ribs on the outside that protect your fingers from the heat.

The design is what made me buy one. The two available colours look premium in their own right. The cup is genuinely sturdy, BPA-free and perfectly dishwasher-safe. A rubber ring, which the Weducer now also has, helps the cup retain its liquid.

Compared directly to the Weducer, the HuskeeCup feels a bit more refined and sturdier. The Weducer has a coarser texture due to its material, while the plastic makes the Huskee smoother. There’s also no material influence on the taste, unlike what I described with the Weducer.

That said, the two cups are pretty evenly matched in quality, with the obvious sustainability bonus going to the Weducer!

In Germany you can get HuskeeCups from Amazon. If you’d rather order directly from the manufacturer, you’ll find the Huskee online shop here.

This post is part of my coffee page.

I started with what I hold in my hand almost every day, my Kindle. Again, Amazon does a few things right that others can’t or don’t do as well. Apart from DRM, not much really bothered me about Amazon’s books until then, and you hardly have to worry about DRM if you stay in the Kindle world. I’ll come back to that another time.

Now I wanted as much contrast as possible. Instead of funding a space phallus, I wanted to put the money I was spending on books to better use. And, surprisingly, the selection of alternative bookshops that spend part of their turnover on charitable causes is not so small.

Most often, buch7 is mentioned as a fair alternative to Amazon. buch7 claims to put 75% of its profits towards supporting social, cultural and environmental projects. Two things about buch7 didn’t quite add up for me, though. I mainly read e-books and their e-book selection is rather limited. And the statement “75% of our profits…” is considered non-transparent by the German Central Institute for Social Issues. Depending on how you calculate your profit, that figure could easily amount to nothing.

fairbuch.de, for example, does it better, donating 2% of the purchase value to Kindernothilfe.

fairbuch.de uses the white-label solution from Libri. This means that the online shop and the logistics behind it come from Libri, and fairbuch.de slaps their own branding on it and handles the marketing. As a customer, this gives me a comprehensive range of e-books, the option of using a Tolino with these e-books and, of course, the physical book catalogue.

By the way, ecobookstore.de does the same thing and is another often-mentioned alternative. Since they’re in the same ecosystem, you can shop at both with a single account. So sometimes I support the rainforest and sometimes Kindernothilfe.

But what about local bookshops? Some of you may be wondering. As I wrote at the beginning, for me it’s about having a good digital experience that matches how I actually use books. The discussion about whether printed books or e-book readers are better is absurd. There’s no single right way to consume a medium – it’s about the content.

But since there are still plenty of cookery books and photography books, like the excellent Hamburg Cityscapes by Milan Horacek, the local bookshop still sees me from time to time.

For anyone interested, Seitenflügel has a great write-up on what it’s like dealing with the book trade as a small publisher, and Kaffeehaussitzer explains why he doesn’t buy books from Amazon (both in German).

This post is part of my reading page.

It can, at least in London, and most likely if you get your coffee from one of the Change Please stalls. They employ formerly homeless people who have been trained as baristas to help them get off the streets. Behind it is The Big Issue homeless magazine, comparable to Germany’s Hinz & Kunzt, but above all Change Please is driven by Cemal Ezel.

I saw him last year at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam, where he rightly won first prize in the Chivas Venture final. I was struck by the metaphors in his talk alone. “Change Please” as a request from a homeless person for spare change, but also as Cemal’s plea to please finally change something, and the to-go coffee cup, which is not uncommonly used for begging. The rest is equally well thought out, as you can see here:

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Change Please coffee is continuously sold at more and more mobile and fixed stations, getting more and more homeless people off the streets and into jobs, and in cooperation with the British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, they sell their own coffee blends. Of course, I had to pick some up on my last visit to the island, instead of Grind.

It was mentioned during his talk that Change Please would expand to other countries. I would love to see that happen. It feels so straightforward and good in so many ways.
Until then, we’ll continue to drink our coffee at home and happily spare a euro when asked, or buy the Hinz & Kunzt magazine (at least in Hamburg).

You can find out more about the project on the Change Please website: changeplease.org

This post is part of my coffee page and my All Things British page.

As with everything, you can become an extreme nerd to get the last bit of flavour out of the bean. For me, I have reached a good enough standard. I leave everything else to shops like Espressolution or Public Coffee Roasters. In my neighbourhood there is also the very interesting Stockholm Espresso Club, and the other day I happened to visit the really good Nord Coast for the first time, which I discovered through the Hamburg Coffee Guide by The Coffeevine.

They’re all a bit bonkers, to be honest, but that’s brilliant! They also all have their own house bean, either from their own roasting or from selected origins. My current favourite is Moonlight from Public Coffee Roasters, along with Saicaf Oro from Espressolution. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try the coffee on the other side of the fence. Recently it was a coffee from the island: Grind.

Grind is a chain of cafés and restaurants that grew out of a music studio in London’s Shoreditch. Their house bean has been resting in my grinder for some time now and feels a little finer in the cup compared to Moonlight. The note becomes fruitier if you have a little too much in the basket, so you need to be careful. If you are, a well-balanced nutty, almost chocolatey aroma will convince you. Less is clearly more and can make the coffee almost syrupy. Absolutely fabulous!

Grind House Blend is available as beans or ground in various sizes in a bag, and the tin is ideal for trying it out. The bag and tin can be ordered online, but the shipping costs are a pain. I’ll definitely be picking up the next pack myself from one of the shops: grind.co.uk

This post is part of my coffee page and my All Things British page.

Someone who is against bad beer infected me with an approach a few years ago: “If you don’t know a beer on the menu, drink it!” Since then, curiosity has guided my orders and rarely disappointed me.

As a result of this curiosity and the range of beers available in various shops, these four beers are practically my favourites at the moment (from left to right):

Tipsy Gypsy

Always bought when guests are expected. But also a good choice beyond that. A full-bodied pilsner that is intense in flavour, yet not overbearing, and demands an “Hm, interesting beer!” from everyone. A good companion for the evening without having to talk about hop varieties or IBUs*. Was available here.

Oedipus Mama

The drinkable pale ale is probably frowned upon by connoisseurs by now, as it is one of the best known from Oedipus (sell-out!). The Amsterdam brewery has produced a very good pale ale. Not too hoppy and with 30 IBUs probably one of the entry-level pale ales. The rest of their range is also worth a sip, e.g. Offline or Gaia.

Stigbergets Amazing Haze

The champagne among my beers. The 0.33l bottle is not cheap at €6, but it really is for a special occasion. You don’t rush this beer like you would an after-work pint; you take a glass and you take your time! For a New England IPA, this is probably still the “hot shit”, to quote Martin, who introduced me to this beer.

ÜberQuell Supadupa

Finally, a decent beer from Hamburg! Supadupa is one of the most interesting German beers I’ve come across recently. Hoppier than any of the previous contenders, but also drinkable and beautifully golden in the glass. Best enjoyed on site at ÜberQuell with pizza.

—
*International Bitterness Unit

Approaches to offering consumers alternatives are becoming more diverse, but often weaken in one place or another. Various deposit systems are not widespread and therefore hardly noticed; they are even more of a regional phenomenon.
In the case of sustainable reusable cups, which are much more widespread, the plastic lid that is often present is questionable. Products from brands of every stripe are often optimised for low-cost production processes, which almost automatically means plasticisers. So even the porcelain cup with a plasticised plastic lid is only well intentioned, not well made.

Forget plastic, drink from coffee

The Kaffeeform ensemble, on the other hand, is quite well made. From the espresso and cappuccino cups to the takeaway cup. It is the logical extension of the Kaffeeform concept.

Kaffeeform has thought about how to make something new out of used coffee grounds. To do this, the grounds are collected from various cafés in Berlin, processed and then shaped. That alone, drinking coffee from coffee, is already brilliant. But their products are also dishwasher-safe, relatively unbreakable, food-safe, free of plasticisers and, above all, resource-friendly.

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I was convinced about drinking coffee from coffee a long time ago when I bought the cappuccino cups. Now, with the Weducer Cup, I find the sustainable approach even more on point. How easy it can be to do without a rubber or plastic lid by using a screw cap and then get a sustainable cup for 15 euros, which is hardly more expensive than all the other wannabe cups. Brilliant!

The only downside is that when the cups are new, they still smell a bit like coffee, and this affects the drink inside. I quite liked it at first, but didn’t miss it when it faded after a few runs through the dishwasher.

Kaffeeform’s cups are not only available online. There are also a few shops, especially in Berlin, that stock them. Go for it!

If you want the right coffee to go with it, you’ll find it at Espressolution (Saicaf Oro), Public Coffee Roasters (Moonlight) and Tork’s Coffee (India Monsooned Malabar).

This post is part of my coffee page.

I read at some point that “the wristwatch” is a feature that says something about character in a handshake. The handshake itself is apparently not enough for the person who wrote this. – The statement was more in the direction of luxury watches, which would make a man in his late 30s look distinguished. I’m in my late 30s now, but I can’t warm to an Omega as a status symbol. Even though I almost fell for the product placement scene in Casino Royale. I’m more attracted to smart watches that go in the direction of the Qlocktwo W or slow!

I think I first heard about slow watches about three years ago and didn’t immediately grasp the idea behind them. Then, by chance, I became aware of slow again at the end of last year and was convinced by the slow hand that needs the whole day for one lap!

Basically, my sense of time is pretty good, but when I’m bored or stressed, I might look at my watch every two minutes. Why is that?

It practically screams at you: this is exactly what this watch was designed for! If you looked at the watch every few minutes, you would quickly notice that nothing was happening. The hand doesn’t move noticeably! “… leave it alone, Olli, there’s no point!”

This should also look good with a slow, and the manufacturers offer an extensive portfolio of around 45 watches for this purpose. The original model, the slow Jo 38, is the square version, later followed by the slow Mo 34. The numbers indicate the width of the model, with ’34’ being designed for narrower wrists.

The slow O followed that year and differs from the Jo and Mo in more than just its round case. The recessed crystal and the dial with its raised elements give the watch its own character and a noticeably more premium appearance.

All the models on offer can be customised with additional straps, so you can easily adapt the existing versions to your own liking.

Initially, I bought the slow Jo 03. The plain black model is made entirely of stainless steel and first had to be adjusted at the watch shop to correct the bracelet length. The fit for my wrist is still not perfect, but what the heck. The watch is also supposed to be water-resistant to 100 metres, which doesn’t bother me at all because I don’t wear a watch when I go swimming.

What’s a minor gripe is the protruding, rounded crystal. As a result, the numbers on the dial are somewhat indistinct when viewed from certain angles. But who cares if you don’t want to read the exact time anyway?

When the slow O came out, I didn’t need any hasty excuses to convince myself to get the O 10. The watch is almost the direct opposite of the Jo. A soft, round case surrounds the dial with raised numerals and markers. The crystal sits flush with the case and the weight is half that of the Jo. The O is also available in a heavier version with a metal bracelet.

I don’t have a preference between the two. It’s really a matter of mood whether or when I wear one. Both have their own merits. Apart from that, there is the possibility of customisation with additional straps.

You don’t commit as much as you would with an Omega, so you’re more likely to have two or three of them lying around, even though one can cost 280 euros.

The reactions when I shake hands have been mixed since I started wearing slow watches. People often ask me what’s wrong with the watch. I often reply that they just couldn’t stretch to a second hand. Now and then some people recognise the watch and are pleasantly surprised. On the whole, though, there is a lack of understanding as to how you can read the time with it… maybe I don’t want to?

Prices start at 230 euros on the slow website.