Siliconslave's how to make espresso thread

Not sure what i expected but finally had a Clover brewed coffee at a random Starbucks (i know, strike me down for my sins) somewhere in New Jersey... I literally landed, got a hire car and headed towards a meeting and pulled off somewhere for breakfast.

if you've not seen / heard of it: http://www.chow.com/food-news/54246/you-cant-afford-this-coffee-maker/

Its pretty old news, but the machine is very cool, would love to put some decent beans through it, but as it is the junk i selected - 'reserve' Papua New Guinea Ulya - just tastes like all their other over roasted rubbish, disappointed :(

Its a real shame as it was a really promising machine before SB bought it up and took it off the market
 
might give them a go but tbh this has somewhat put me off:

Any coffee expert will tell you that coffee tastes its absolute best within weeks of roasting. We go to great lengths to ensure our members receive their coffee within 14 days of roasting.
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Hasbean and Squaremile have almost always got the coffee to be within 2-3 days of roasting, non of this 14 day rubbish.
 
with a soak in the puly caff stuff you shouldn't need to try and manually push anything out the holes.

storage wise i got a vacuvin vacuum coffee saver thing years ago, wit works very well, I use it daily and it's still going strong (although it doesn't hold vacuum for more than about a week now, might need a new seal)
 
BennyC said:
Is anyone here been in a similar position recently and if so which method have you settled for?
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the nespresso stuff will certainly be better than instant so that maybe a step up.

I used a hand grinder and clever dripper at work for a few years before i moved company and started working from home (now i use a clever dripper & electric grinder) but an aeropress works nearly as well.

I tried both and from my point of view the Aeropress lost out for a few reasons:
- I found it quite fiddly
- Aeropress took more interaction to brew (with the Clever dripper you load it up, leave it for 4min on your desk then put it on a cup).
- The grind on the Aeropress needs to be finer so takes more effort to grind.

Note that grinding in the office is pretty noisy so better if you can do it in a kitchen / away from everyone, or do it at home before you go in.
 
Dj_Jestar said:
Contrary to Siliconslave, I am going to suggest that the drippers are a little more fiddly than the aeropress, as simply loading them up is not the perfectionists way to brew with them (though you will certainly get a better cup than any instant or nespresso will ever provide). To get the most from them you'll need to workout and maintain a flow rate that works for you by slowly pouring in or stopping/starting.
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HOW VERY DARE YOU ;):p

The dripper, contrary to a V60, is immersion based so you dump pop the filter in, wash the filter with hot water, drop the ground in, add water approx the right level (marker on the side from a weighed amount if your being exact) and start the timer. 3-4 min later and you pop it on the mug and drain the coffee out. Filter and coffee lift out into the bin and rinse the dripper out :)

 
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Flibster said:
Nawfuk... It's ******* atrocious! Almost as bad as London area. When I just used filtered water I was descaling every 3 weeks or so.
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I'm amazed at how hard the water is round here - you can tell when the britta is getting to the end of its life as you start getting scum in the kettle :(

Will be buying a decent inline filter when we (finally) get a house sorted & might have to start buying bottled in the interim
 
we had a nespresso at a place i worked at for 5 years - 3 years of exactly the same tasting coffee was more than enough and i started faffing with the dripper at work. It was just so damn samey regardless of the different types you bought :(

Even now i can tell when a restaurant uses nespresso, yes its very very easy to use, and provides consistent results that are a lot better than untrained barristers, old coffee or instant.

What they have done to change and simplify the delivery of reasonable coffee is nothing short of amazing - BUT like starbucks or instant its limited by design and by its desire to appeal to the mass market, the flavour is stunted by necessity for ruthlessly consistent and the pods are wasteful.
 
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Scottland said:
Has anyone had the Guatamala Finca El Limon from Hasbean recently? We've just opened a bag in the last couple of days and it tastes really funky. At first we thought it just cos we had a cold and couldn't taste anything right - but we tried it on a guinea pig and they thought it was off too.
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Not tried it but if it smells a bit off it could be worth contacting hasbean and sending back - sounds weird but it doesn't smell of potato does it? Tends to be a problem with the African coffees rather than south american though.
 
tamper?:

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i tend to use this: http://www.thelondoncoffeemap.com/ but then it wasn't a bad investment as i'm always in meetings in random bits of london.

You can also pick up a paper version from these guys: http://bluecrowmedia.com/shop?four - most decent coffee shops have it.

Monmouth is ok for their drip coffee but not great otherwise imho. I'd recommend trying to get to:

Purfrock - top notch espresso
Mothers milks - really random little place, but good vibe and friendly staff
Nobel Espresso cart - great little place outside kings cross
Iris & June - a little minimalist inside, but again a great coffee

totally depends where your going to be really...

oh, and a free google map of decent places, not sure how upto date it is though: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewe...n&msa=0&ie=UTF8&mid=zzaFRp1uxKY8.kys4itMVN6a4
 
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The boiling water thing is a weird one - pour over, espresso, cafetiere, aeropress etc generally recommend not using boiling water for that very reason however stove tops, percolators (as if you see them anymore) and Siphon makers all use steam to push through the coffee.

I guess it gives a different profile rather than anything else...
 
end of the day it's like wine, whiskey, tea etc etc - buy what you like, if you like the cheaper stuff that's brilliant :)

Price != quality / taste

I've bought £15 bags square mile and it's been no better than their £9.50 red brick, but then i do love their redbrick.


RE beans vs roasters etc I'd say the beans are actually most of what your paying for... sure the roasters are very very important, but CICO. A good roaster won't fix bad beans (nor would they buy them)

Beans wise different plants have different requirements on how they are grown, some are very very difficult to get a good crop for and require rather extreme conditions to thrive. Some (ie. robusta) are much easier to grow but generally aren't as good. Some (ie blue mountain / civit) have either a reputation or silly (and cruel) processing that bumps up the price without really increasing the quality. All this goes into the base price then the quality, as rated by the SCAA and other orgs. Essentially this is the number and severity of 'bad' beans per 350g green bean sample.

Intermediaries, coops or importers then sell these onto roasters, generally via auction.

Some roasters also build relationships directly with the growers or processors to get a better price and the pick of beans.
 
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nst68 said:
Don't know if it's because the machines extract under pressure that more of the flavour is coming through.
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You will get a different flavour profile from an espresso machine to an AP to pour over, but the AP shouldn't be so bad a illy pod beats it...

The three things to adjust for flavour are the amount of coffee, the brew time and the grind of the coffee - more coffee, longer steeping or finer grind will give you more flavour.

Try upping your brew time to 2 min or making the grind a notch finer.

& enjoy the redbrick :)
 
well thats disappointing - i was just listening to the freakanomics podcast about food and they mentioned that they had a post about the perfect cup of coffee on the blog:

http://freakonomics.com/2011/04/22/how-to-make-the-perfect-cup-of-coffee/

turns out it's basically a link to James Hoffman's blog (via Neil Stephenson and Chris Young - a Fat Duck Chef admittedly) which i'm pretty sure i've already posted somewhere in this thread...
 
Scam said:
Seen as this is the 'main' coffee thread, what are your brew methods for a french press? I've got my aeropress down to a tee, but it's not very suitable for when we have guests.

I've seen one that suggests 20g coffee to 300g water, does that sound about right? I've got a Baratza Encore and hve it dialled in to about 1.5 for my AP, but it goes up to about 30 (courser). Reckon about 20+ would work? :confused:
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check out the link in my post directly above, essentially it loops you to this video here for a near perfect french press method:

http://www.jimseven.com/2008/11/13/french-press-technique/
 
Grimley said:
Well bung the classic on the MM when you're done with it, I may be interested at the right price. ;)
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pretty sure we wouldn't be allowed to list them, although could you argue a PID is a computer?

FS: one control loop feedback mechanism with attached caffeine extraction apparatus

New house and kitchen in the new year so may be able to justify an upgrade, but i'm not using the classic enough to justify it... (plus it needs fixing first, still)
 
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