Let's have a coffee thread: equipment, types of beans, anything really!

Cafe Society
1

I accidentally fell in love with french press. Tried a new coffee shop near my new house and it’s pretty magical. It tastes like coffee smells. I’ve got a simple Bodum, an electric grinder (for shame, not a burr!) and some insulated glasses. So far I’ve only experimented with 49th parallel (longitude) and various Whole Foods coffees.

Oh, and if you’re going shopping and your WF is like mine (many run the same sales) stay the hell away from “One Village Coffee”, the Artist Blend, on sale this week. I was a sucker for marketing; they hooked me with the tagline “its what Jeff Brides would be if he were a coffee (paraphrased)”. Not remarkable in the slightest.

I’ve been wholly unsatisfied with the various decafs I’ve tried. Anyone have a good one?

At what point does it become necessary to purchase a burr grinder? (Amazon’s proven kind of hard to find a burr grinder under $50 – do they exist.) Is $10-20\pound going to get me decent coffee, or is there a (gulp) magical wonderland out there with $50\lb 100% Kona?

2

We have a Barkley’s Coffee and Tea nearby. Not all coffee beans are equal. I like Barkley’s above Whole Foods or the like.

There is simply nothing like *fresh ground *Columbian Supremo coffee. It is a little cup of Heaven.

3

We order beans from CCM Coffee in Florida. We’ve tried a lot of beans and theirs, as you say, taste the most like coffee smells.

We are on our second super-automatic and we think they are totally worth the price. The first one produced 2-8 lattes every morning for six years before it went totally kaput. That erases the burr grinder issue, too.

Lord. Now I want a latte. Off to the kitchen I go…

4

My passion: Espresso. Celebrated most by me in its ristretto form. That is, all the beans, half the liquid! :cool:

Machine: Rancilio Silvia, with a post-manufacture precise temperature control added. It’s about the best home machine I’ve found. I’ve worn out 4 lesser machines in under 10 years with daily use. The next step up would be a commercial unit with two boilers. Not gonna go there.

Beans: Alterra, a local roaster, their whole bean espresso roast. I go through 5 lbs of beans every month or so. At that rate of consumption, the beans stay fresh.

Grinder: Baratza Maestro Plus. It is standing up to heavy use, 5-6 x a day. Only 40 grind settings. If I do upgrade, it’ll probably be to something like the Baratza Precisio or the Rancilio Rocky, with more grind settings and more durable parts.

Tamper: Espro calibrated, it ‘clicks’ at 30 lbs of pressure, but you can feel it build up towards that, and modify the pressure you bring to bear.

Water: From my own well, but softened.

Cups: Bodum canteen, glass double wall, 3 oz. Keeps it hot a looooong time.

Frequency of consumption during the typical workweek: 1 shot at 5:45 AM, another at 4:30 PM, a final one about 6:30 PM.

Frequency of consumption on weekends/days off: Usually not more than 6 a day. :smiley:

Other machine uses: Makes lattes, cappucinos of which the Mrs. consumes at least 2 a day.

About 22-28 seconds of brewing at 215-225 degrees should produce from 1/4 cup of finely ground beans tamped between 20-30 lbs of pressure nearly 1 oz. of ristretto or 1.5 to 2 oz. of espresso.

Key tips:

  1. Grind beans just before brewing.
  2. Grind finer, tamp lighter.
  3. Make sure that not just the machine, but the portafilter is completely warmed up before brewing. The water in the boiler may be at the appropriate temperature, but if the equipment’s not hot also, the brew will be inferior.
  4. Heat the cups that are to receive the brew with water that’s at least 170 degrees, dumping out the water just before brewing.
  5. Look for tiger striping and mottling in the crema. If the crema is fine, the brew is divine!!
5

If you really want to try something fun, look for single origin coffees to really get an idea of how many different flavors a single species of coffee can turn out. It’s all about the growing environment and a little about the processing types. A wet-processed Costa Rican Tarrazu is vibrant and crisp while a dry-processed Ethiopia Yergacheffe is winy and rich and Sumatran coffee tends to be dark and earthy. There are a wide variety of single origin coffees that you should try. Some highlights:

Latin America
[ul]
[li]Costa Rican Tarrazu[/li][li]Guatemala Antigua Shade-Grown[/li][li]Guatemala Bourbon -Finca San Diego Buena Vista (Estate coffee; bourbon cultivar)[/li][li]Mexican Chiapas Shade-Grown[/li][li]Colombia Narino[/li][/ul]

Africa/Arabia
[ul]
[li]Ethiopian Harar[/li][li]Ethiopian Sidamo[/li][li]Ethiopian Yirgacheffe[/li][li]Kenyan AA Estate[/li][li]Tanzania Peaberry[/li][li]Yemen Mocha (my personal favorite)[/li][/ul]

Indonesia/Pacific
[ul]
[li]New Guinea Peaberry[/li][li]Sumatra[/li][li]Sulawesi[/li][/ul]

I’ve grown quite fond of African/Arabia regional coffees for their rich flavor notes ranging from citrus to spice to chocolate. My very favorite is Mocha Java which is Yemeni coffee blended with Javanese coffee. From Indo-Pacific, I like New Guinea Peaberry, but I have yet to try Kopi Luwak because it’s too expensive for me. From Latin America, I like the Guatemalans and Mexican coffees.

6

**Brown Eyed Girl **,

That’s quite a list! Dondra drinks Tschibo Mild which we get from Harry’s Farmer’s Market in Marietta.

Me? I don’t drink coffee. It makes my heart race. So in Winter I drink Morning Thunder and one other Celestial Seasonings tea. I think it’s called Sleepy time.

I was wondering too, if that’s why you have that nickname, because you like coffee so much? :slight_smile:

Thanks

Quasi

7

gulp Whole Latte Love lists “super automatics” between 500 and 3k. Sounds like everyone is pretty serious about coffee here :p. But hey, that’s what a wedding registry is for…right? :wink:

Qadgop, that’s quite an exhaustive list. I will say that Bodum double walled cups are really excellent and that my roommate taught me to fill the cup(s) you’re going to use with water from the kettle to get them warmed up.

Brown Eyed Girl, thank you! Printing the list now. Do you get them from a particular store or roaster that you’d recommend?

8

Haha! I do love coffee and, although I love espresso, I think french press is absolutely the best way to explore flavor profiles. It’s like traveling around the world in a coffee cup. Food pairing makes it even more fun! Once begin to identify flavor notes, you can find foods to accompany the coffee and enhance its flavor. The list is notably shallow on the Indonesian end because I’m not a huge fan of them.

I like teas, too, although I’m not as familiar with them. I used to drink a LOT of Sleepytime way back when, but I’m currently on a chai kick. I also love different types of green tea and on occassion will create a blend of green and lemon mint herbal. Yum!

My screen name is actually a reference to Van Morrison’s song because when I was a little girl, I used to tell people that it was “my song” and beamed with pride whenever it came on the radio. Don’t ask. I was little, self-involved and I have brown eyes. Plus, Van Morrison, ya know? But you are free to associate it with my love of coffee. I do drink a lot! Long ago, I was known to down an average of 8-10 espresso shots per day. Not anymore though; I stick to a cup or two. As an aside, I have a lot of energy but excellent blood pressure. :wink:

9

My experience is that the best type of brewed coffee is also the most impractical for day-to-day cups. It’s the Vacuum Brewer. Vacuum coffee maker - Wikipedia

The basic gist is this. There are two bulbs. In one, you put filtered water. In the other, you put coffee grounds. You seal them together and heat the water to boiling. The vapor pressure will change at boiling such that the water shoots up the tube through the filter into the chamber with coffee. After a few minutes, you take the heat source away, the process reverses and you’re left with a flask full of coffee on the bottom.

It’s annoying to clean and can take forever to get the water to boiling, but damned if it isn’t the best, smoothest cup of coffee I’ve tasted. It’s also neat to trot out at dinner parties. People can watch it during dinner and have coffee with dessert.

10

I try different roasters and I’m no longer in a financial position to order coffee, but Sweet Maria’s has a great selection and AFAIK they are pretty reputable for freshness and quality.

I would recommend sampling different roasters, local and mail order, to find one you’re happiest with. If you live in a big city or an especially active coffee culture, you’ll probably find some great local roasters.

11

I’m no fan of super automatic machines.

To me, making a decent espresso is an art. I enjoy fiddling with the grind settings, the precise amount of beans, the tamp pressures, the water temperatures. Adjusting for the ambient humidity, relative temperature, and phase of the moon makes it fun. All to the end of making the espresso yet a bit better.

Super automatics remove all that from the equation. Espresso at the push of a button. Which never tastes very good to me. Heck, if I want crappy espresso, I can go to Starbuck’s or any other chain and get a poorly extracted bitter crema-less shot.

When I’m not drinking espresso, I really don’t pay the coffee much mind, as long as it’s fresh and fairly strong.

Unless I can get french press coffee. That’s tasty. But that rarely happens in the circles I travel in at present.

12

I want one of these so bad. And an Aeropress, too! If I didn’t already have one, though, I’d spend my money on a burr grinder first. I have the one one from Starbucks and it’s been going strong for over ten years now. You should have a burr grinder once you’ve a) decided to brew coffee any other method than drip, b) start spending good money on fresh, quality whole beans, and c) are tired of overextracted (bitter) or underextracted (weak) coffee. French press requires a coarser uniform grind than blade grinders can produce. If your coffee is not uniform, you will either not extract enough of the flavor from insufficiently ground beans at the top of the grind or you will create a bitter coffee sludge from coffee powder from under the blade that seeps through the filter.

13

I wholeheartedly agree.

14

I bought a new French press but it’s tiny. I think it is technically a 3 cup press, but after three tablespoons of coffee, it only fills one of my coffee cups.

I’m still getting my coffee sent to me every month from Klatch Roasting. It is, by far, the best coffee I have ever tried.

Granted, it was the first coffee I tried outside of a super market but it’s so awesome I don’t think I’m going to try any others in the near future.

15

I’ve got this one from Bed Bath and Beyond. It 's $49.99. Had it almost a year now, satisfied so far.

16

I second everything QtM has to say as far as espresso goes. Except I use a Mazzer Mini grinder.

[hijack]Speaking of espresso and travel, how do you handle feeding your espresso habit when traveling, Doc? I’m used to a perfect little ristretto at 5 or 5:30 in the morning, and it’s rough to have to settle for Starbucks when on the road. And even then, the Starbucks are usually a drive from the hotel.

Hotels nowadays will have a laughable excuse of a coffee bar serving up espresso-like drinks, but they don’t open until 7 or 8 a.m.[/end hijack]

17

My go-to coffee is French-roast Colombian whole beans. Run the beans through a burr mill and a single-cup Melitta cone.

18

I just wanted to contribute that I am in the process of becoming a trained coffee taste panelist for major mass-market coffee company. Assuming I make it all the way through training, I will be part of a “descriptive” panel of people who will taste coffees and assign values for a set of specific flavor attributes. Right now, I’m also serving on a “discrimination” panel, in which we are given sets of three samples of coffee, two of which are the same, and we have to identify the one that’s different in the set.

The descriptive panel work is really, REALLY challenging.

19

I bought the Breville semi-automatic 18 months ago and have been very happy with it. It was only about $500. I make better capuccino than Starbucks or most places, and that’s using Costco Espresso beans.

Looked long and hard at the Silvia. The downsides of the Silvia for *me *are:

  • pretty long warm up time. I’d have to get up 15-30 minutes earlier in the morning
  • my wife probably would not like all the “art” that goes into getting all the different variables right
  • we drink primarily capuccino’s and latte’s. The espresso shot isn’t quite as important as a ristretto
  • it was more expensive and you need a good burr grinder as well

Anyone out there done home bean roasting? I think the house we are building requires a home roasting unit. I’m starting to research and would love to hear feedback.

LindsayBluth - didn’t great espresso gear and exquiste beans come with your upbringing?

20

Electronic timer took care of that for me. It turns on at 5:10 AM, and is hot when I come into the kitchen at 5:45