This morning while reading a Casual Photophil article about the ALPA 10d 35mm Swiss-made legacy film camera, which according to eBay listings would cost over $1000 for a body and another $1000 for a lens, and which is no longer in production, it occurred to me that the purchase of expensive ALPA and Leica cameras and lenses would be worth it if I could rent them to get a return on the investment. I envisioned a sort of Lensrentals type arrangement but strictly for legacy film cameras and lenses. But then I did some searching on the web using the keyword rent vintage cameras and realised that the idea was not new. The very first link in the results was for Film Objektiv.
We rent some of the best tools in a minimum of two-week increments — a timeframe that makes it a fraction of the price of either buying or even renting the gear from a local shop, not to mention that a lot of this gear is impossible to find at a rental shop, to begin with.
We take the shipping and return time into consideration when determining our rental prices. Cameras end up costing less than $2 per day on the low end to about $30 per day on the high end.
I spent hours looking through their catalogue of available kit to rent.
A few years ago, I experimented with various coffee brewing methods and purchased and "reviewed" coffee from roasters all over the country. I haven't written any coffee reviews since December of the last year. I'm bored and running out of things to do to break up the monotony of daily life so I may revisit.
This week I am brewing Lake Kivu (Rwanda) - Natural Processed coffee beans from Sakrid Coffee Roasters, a Princeton based roaster that I have only recently discovered. The earliest Yelp review is from 9/11/2019, so I will assume the roaster is new.
The Nyamyumba, Rwanda beans were brewed in my Chemex using the method I used for the Ebb cloth filter but substituting the Chemex paper filter for the Ebb. I am not skilled at coffee tastings, so take my tasting notes with a hefty dose of salt. What's written below is what my brain decided is the truth. YMMV. I do add milk or creamer etc. to my coffee but will occasionally add one packet of Monk Fruit in the Raw.
You can read more on these beans on the Sakrid Coffee website.
| Coffee Name | Lake Kivu (Rwanda) - Natural Processed |
| Roaster | Sakrid Coffee Roasters |
| Roast | Light |
| Category | Organic |
| Region | Nyamyumba, Rwanda |
| Nuance | smooth, subtle, mild caramel-apple |
| Weight | 13oz |
| Cost | $18.00 |
| Shipping | $7.64 |
I ended my day with a session of No Place For Literature by The Referend Bier Blendery. This spontaneous fermented wild ale is a collaboration with Kelly Green Brewing Co., Troon Brewing, and The Seed: A Living Beer Project.
Brewer's notes:
No Place for Literature is our collaboratively brewed and fermented beer of exclusively New Jersey origins.
We brewed this wort in April 2017 with NJ grown pilsner malt, raw wheat, and old whole leaf hops from @rabbit_hill_malthouse as well as NJ hay and hand-harvested NJ organic spelt. The wort itself was brewed as an antiquated saison, with a thick step mash and extended boil before cooling overnight in the coolship with an open exchange with the air around us.
The following day, after racking into French oak Pinot Noir barrels from @albavineyard one barrel each was pitched with the house mixed cultures from @troonbrewing @theseedbeer & @kellygreenbrewingco while a fourth barrel-fermented fully spontaneously.
"No Place for Literature" was excellent ale to drink while listening to Bono's 60 Songs That Saved My Life playlist. I know most of the songs in the playlist but I think Bono has expertly arranged the order of the songs. I think this will be part of my regular rotation.
Bono is turning 60 years old, and to mark the occasion he’s created a playlist of the most important songs in his life. It spans generations and genres, from Frank Sinatra to Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish to Angélique Kidjo, and all points in between. But we’ll let the U2 icon explain it himself:
These are some of the songs that saved my life—the ones I couldn’t have lived without, the ones that got me from there to here, zero to 60 through all the scrapes, all manner of a nuisance. From the serious to the silly and the joy—mostly joy. I wanted to thank the artists and everyone who helped make them. They were doing the same for me.
Also available on Spotify.
Submitted as part of the 100DaysToOffload project.
