CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS
KITCHEN
ARMOURY
THIRD TIME’S A CHARM
Fancy less fuss in the post-coffee clean-up – and a tastier cup too? Of course you do, says Matt Bielby – and for both, this clever swizzle-stick is just the thing What’s your favourite pick-me-up during the day? Me, I have coffee in cafés, but at home I have tea. Me too! Coffee’s much more of a faff to make – don’t you think? – so I don’t mind paying someone else to do it. Adding hot water to a tea bag, however… Well, my dopey old hound could do it. Nah, it’s actually nothing to do with that. It’s more the cleaning up. All those annoying grinds to scrape out of the cafetière with a spoon, and you still have loads left that you eventually have to flush down the sink. Then what you want is this handy little gadget: the Scoof. It’s designed to scoop them all out in a few easy twists, allowing you to then chuck ’em in the food recycling or, if you have one, bung ’em on the compost heap with ease. More advanced Scoofers might even use them as fertiliser, as soil for growing oyster mushrooms, or as a barrier to keep away slugs and snails.
Actually, I was thinking of pressing them into service as a homemade face scrub. Yeah? Looking at you, why bother? Are you being rude? Not at all! (I was a bit.) Moving swiftly on, listen to this: it turns out the Scoof has a secondary use too. You know how you actually get tastier coffee by stirring your cafetière before plunging? No…? Well, you do. And it turns out this thing’s two-headed design means if you swizzle it gently through your brewing coffee you get way more flavour. Inventor Joe Partridge reckons three twists should do it. Who’s he then? A British designer and coffee freak; the Scoof’s his baby. And three, it seems, is his magic number: around 95% of all the used coffee grinds in the average cafetière also come out in three twists, he says. In this case, however you use it, third time really is a charm.
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Scoof is £9.95 and can be bought online; justscoof.com