I’m part of a small team that is part of a larger team which in turn, is co-parts of a sub-small team and is divided between the two teams. In any case, there are three of us and we have to share pager duty.

One of the joys of pager duty is being called at 4am on Sundays so that we can identify that we should in fact not have been called, and who in fact, should have been called.

The other joy is that when on pager duty, it is your responsibility to provide coffee on Friday morning. This usually consists of a box of coffee from either Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts, and sometimes involves some type of baked good, like banana bread, muffins or donuts.

In my recent plight recently to spend less money, I brought in an extra coffee maker and finally got around to trying it out this Friday. I brought in some Starbucks grinds and a pint of half and half. We have a store of sweeteners, cups and stirrers from all the previous Fridays. I brewed up a pot, and here were the results.

It came out tasting like Starbucks coffee! Yay me!

I did have several technical issues though. Starbucks needs to brew strong, they call for two tablespoons of grind per “cup.” This is twice the amount of most other coffees. The filter basket is just not meant to hold that much - so I either make less coffee, or risk grind overflow. I risked it - made a full 12 cups.

So, had a good sludge of grinds at the bottom of the pot. Everyone had to make a comment on it of course, at least most of the comments were after I had my caffeine. My friend made use of the goo and fed it to his plant. He asked if I wanted it for my plant, which has been dead for quite a time, and I didn’t think it would help.

Later in the day I made a second pot just to prove that it was so much cheaper to do it yourself that I could do it twice a day. This time I cut it down to 10 cups, but the grinds were still pretty close to the top of the filter - still had the same issue. Next time I’ll cut it down to 8 and see how it does. Alternatively, we could use a different brand of coffee with normal measurement requirements.