Heavy Metals

I know I'm late but isn't Marten the one being a coffee snob by judging people on their coffee preferences?

I'm dying! 🤣

Isn't cadmium toxic as hell?

The dialogue in this reminds me of the early comics with all the indie references

Sad to say, but pour over really does taste better, as does cold brew. The secret is to ask for it in a non-snobbish way.

Marrr-ten, how UN-chill of you.

The music snob knows how annoying snobs can be. :)

Thanks Jeph, now I've spent way too much time on Wikipedia and know more than I'll ever need to about Neutron Poisons.

Wasn't this the guy who dressed in Victorian clothes to avert awkward moments? Like...15 years ago?

Aeropress anyone?

Idunno, some of us who love a, say: in-store roasted, light roast, Tanzania Peaberry espresso made with Monmouth IL deep aquifer water and a double shot of love will also happily throw a teaspoon of Nescafe in a cup of hot water and call it good. Also, my facial hair is NOT anachronistic - it's the hats that are anachronistic.

I love using an Astatine tamper, although getting it replaced daily is a bit of a hassle

And no isotopes in my flat white!!!

So Marten uses preground coffee and a percolator? He is really repping the whole slacker bit eh?

Marten, I think it will reduce customer traffic if you require them to read through all those MSDSs before ordering...

This hit a little close to home for me 🙈 But also, why would a coffee shop with a grinder buy preground beans 🤣

Bottom right punchline be like "Marten has worked in the service industry" :-D

Use Beryllium! Then you don't have to call it a heavy metal anyway.

I was so confused that pour-over coffee is considered a ~fancy method of brewing when for me it's more like a quick and dirty cheat method that I use to cut out the time from the drip coffee machine. But then I read the beginning of an article talking about "manipulating flavours" and the way the water travels through the coffee grounds and oh, now I get it. Coffee fanciness isn't in the equipment, it turns out it's a state of mind x3

This is Cubetown. It's literally crawling with lab equipment. I'm surprised Liz hasn't cobbled together half a dozen brewing rigs from spare parts.

Marten needs a roaster; but the rest of his reasoning is sound. Scientific Coffee is rarely tasty. And he should offer aroma sittings. Just my 2¢.

Surely nothing would beat a Cesium tamper? 🤔 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzk0noqkD8o

Marten, take your socks off and you can make cafesinho do Brasil right now :)

I have literally never heard of pour-over coffee before though I have heard of cadmium and why you shouldn't drink it. We were an instant household (I anticipate someone preferring to drink cadmium).

The cadmium tamper was the only thing on the list that was improbable for the pour over nerds - just about

I mean.. I'm not a fancy man. My beard might be anachronistic, but my trouser are very much NOT avant garde and I do love my drip coffee. You don't have to be a pretentious asshole to like good coffee ;) You just have to be able to appreciate the small good things in life.

I mean....Cadmium isn't....THAT bad...it's a little soft, but as long as you weren't powdering it, I imagine it wouldn't translate into the coffee too much being insoluble in water...if we have the whole periodic table to play in, I don't even know if it makes the list....if we're just talking metals...Cesium is still worse XD

Liz’s face in panel 3 is killing me

Marten, buddy, your baggage is showing. If you want to run a coffee shop, you might have to sit down with the mechanics of what might or might not make coffee taste good and get past your prejudices to find out what is and isn't worth your time and money to invest in. If you can't be objective, there's probably a researcher around someplace that can help you set up a double-blind taste testing or three.

I think Marten may be projecting his own buried reservations about music snobbery onto coffee.

Nice crop of Gremlin faces today, especially panels 3 & 4.

The fancy-shamcy pour over setup looks like a chemist's setup. But... Oh, it would be sweet to have one...

For the amount i spent on my grinder and coffee machine (and the upgrades to the coffee machine) and the portafilter and the portafilter baskets and tampers and dosing rings and The Comb. don't get me started on the cleaning materials..what I'm saying is I have 2 cups a day for all of that. And now I have a tea habit.

Wow, going back to the strip's roots with this one lol

I have no idea what effect cadmium would have on coffee, but I trust Liz on this.

Isn't cadmium the chocolate egg people?

Fluorine would be a pretty bad choice. For several reasons.

Cadmium tampers are for babies. Real men use polonium tampers.

Wait--is Marten tricking Liz into taking a part-time job at his coffee shop? If so, that is either the best or worst idea I've ever heard, I can't decide.

Don't for get the alkali cone. Options like plastic or ceramic just don't have the right thermal properties

Marten, if you really want to be fancy, you do pour-under coffee.

Clearly, coffee was not as good pre-cambian tampers. Heck, the plant didn't even exist in the precambrian era.

Man, Marten's decorating aesthetic is rather Spartan.

What about a depleted uranium tamper? Extra heavy, for a solid THWACK on tamping it down.

Now, Marten, how much did you spend on that guitar again?

The Actinides. Ancient enemies of the Romans?

I saw Heavy Metal Coffee and thought chat would be talking about tampers made from Tommi Iommi's Gibson SG. My bad.

So, I feel like making fun of men for having well-manicured facial hair is along the same lines as calling someone "metrosexual" because they moisturize.

Astatine would be bad, too.

Considering that pour-over is probably the absolute cheapest way to brew decent coffee, kinda hard to consider it snobbish. $20 is pretty low entry point. ...of course, you then need to get a $80 blue-tooth enabled set of scales ... and a $120 PID controlled kettle...and then a $280 hand grinder with a heptagonal burr set ... and while you don't HAVE to have the $460 refractometer, how ELSE are you going to know what your extraction yield is? You don't want to be a savage, do you?

Ah, the Lanthanides and the Actinides: two houses, both alike in dignity, at the fair bottom of the periodic table, where we lay our scene...

Arden Weenus approves!

Of course, you haven't had REAL coffee until you've had Mechanicsburgh coffee.

It would be hilarious for Marten to turn into James Hoffman https://youtu.be/G7xGhGtvYIs?si=iiDz3-LlQRFfu-2v

You need a microscopic cell sorter to get really uniform coffee grounds.

Hey, I don't have fussy facial hair.

Would Marten say “Twelve thousand dollars” or “Twelve thousand bucks”?

The fact Martin only has drip filter coffee and not a proper double boiler espresso machine that can pull multiple shots at once, makes me wonder just how serious he is about this Cafe he's running. 🤔🤨

FYI the first h in "headphone" in panel 3 is not italic like the rest of the sentence is

I don't drink coffee so I don't really get this. I had to look it up and... aren't most coffee makers pour over? Ground coffee in basket, hot water runs over it and fills carafe below with coffee? Basically every Mr. Coffee ever made. Am I missing something? (yes, I realize there is other stuff like espresso pulls but that seems on the fancier side of things)

Anachronistic facial hair... you bringing back Will?

Oh no, don't let the Northampton coffee hipsters hybridize with the Cubetown mad scientists. "Ugh, is that espresso tamper made from ordinary baryonic matter? So basic."

Apropos of nothing, are folks here aware of Black Blood of the Earth coffee? No affiliation; heck, I don’t even drink coffee. I just know it exists. :)

hmmm...Marten's been researching this

No radium spoons for light roasts?

Ooh! Ooh! Marten should commission Faye to build him a coffee maker! https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1644

Don't forget the gallium teaspoons!

Why do I picture a coffee snob as the CoolGuy AnthroPC body? https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3540

some of that making fun of indie music energy from Marten. The vibes remind of the old days

love the coffee you're with not the coffee you want

It's so funny to me that pour-over is supposed to be fancy now. It's how I used to make all my coffee when I was younger. I never got a coffee machine because why bother?

Pfffttt. Watta light-weight. Osmium is where it's at for toxic espresso tampers.

Beware the actinides of March!

Okay,... Cadmium tapper? I stand impressed, let me sit down.

I feel targeted here...

Cadmium is toxic

As someone from the PNW, I can honestly say that most of the coffee snobs are probably doing homebrew with imported single origin beans and a flat burr grinder. Marten has nothing to worry about.

A sodium tamper would conform to the puck to provide perfectly even pressure! And extra flavor (chloride feed sold separately)!

Also how do you not have multiple coffee makers and an espresso machine?! Even my mother does this and she’s 80 and generally just drinks Vietnamese coffee!

Potassium grinding wheels, for that “mouthfeel explosion”

The title of this one has freakish timing for me as I fell down the rabbit hole of Heavy Metal (the animated film) for a couple of hours earlier today.

Cadmium?! Pft. Copernicium espresso tamper, or nothing at all!

The toxicity is part of the ✨experience✨

Just remember Marten, coarse ground is better than fine ground. You get a richer flavor and you won't clog up the machine.

Panel 3 Liz is best Liz.

…good job I couldn’t afford that nifty xDuoo-collab preamp on Drop before Drop died. Assuming reality is fluid, I’d actually like to try Marten’s coffee someday.

I can HEAR Martens derogatory voice in panel 3.

I feel like the only thing left for Marten to be a coffee barista expert is wearing black pants.

Everyone knows OSMIUM is the way to go for a tamper

No one likes a coffee snob