Otto

Also watch the first few seconds through a bottomless portafilter if you have one. Sprays and jets tell you where the fault is instantly.

The booking site let you buy it because it is selling you two unrelated products, not a journey. Minimum connection times only exist within a single ticket, and even those are published per airport and are frequently optimistic.

If you are ever doing this deliberately, hand luggage only changes the maths enormously. Same airport, domestic to domestic, no bag to collect, and 55 minutes is tight but survivable. Your case is the other one.

Also check the countries you transit through, not just the destination. A layover that involves clearing immigration puts you under that country's entry rules too, and people plan around the destination and get stopped in the middle.

I have definitely been filling the cone in two big pours to save time in the morning. That would do it.

Never occurred to me that I was brewing with yesterday's setting. Will purge from now on.

Holds vary by programme and some quietly stopped offering them, so check rather than assume. But when they exist they remove this whole failure mode.

Once you get to the other end of the curve, the tell is different. Stale coffee does not gush, it goes flat and papery, and the bloom barely rises at all. Around week five in a sealed bag for me, faster once opened.

At that point I would rather brew a filter coffee directly, but for anyone who likes the immersion flavour with a clean finish it is a genuine option.

If you can wait two months and save another 150, the used market opens up considerably. Not the answer you asked for, but at this specific budget the jump from 400 to 550 buys a disproportionate amount.

Practical detail for the two base version: check whether the day trip city has luggage storage at the station and what time it closes. Also check the last train back and then plan to take the one before it, because missing the last one turns a cheap day out into a taxi you will remember for years.

Timing note from my own experience: many issuers will refund the fee if you change the product within roughly 30 days of it posting, so if you miss the deadline it is often not fatal. Do not rely on that as a plan though, and check your own issuer, policies vary and change.

For the rural days specifically, take enough for those days out with you before you leave the city, in small notes. Village bakeries, buses, small guesthouses and market stalls are exactly where cards fail, and a single cash machine in a small town can be out of service for the whole weekend.