I figure this is the thread to ask, as there's plenty of knowledge. Please bear with the history, and excuse all of the 'mistakes' I've made:
Up until a few years ago, I was mostly a tea drinker with the occasional 'instant' coffee (and I always preferred white wine over red). Then, my tastes seemed to change and I started preferring coffee over tea (and red wine over white).
However, until recently I didn't realise that I'd never actually had 'decent' coffee - I'm still not sure I have, but I'm realising a lot more than I ever new, mostly thanks to this thread and the investigations it has triggered.
Woohoo! Another one.
Don't worry, we've all made mistakes.
My current 'experience' is French Press at the parents - generally Machu Picchu hailed as being the best thing ever and brewed for between 5 and 10 minutes
- with a poor attempt by myself, a couple of moka pot attempts (badly burnt I suspect) and more recently borrowing a Nespresso machine from a friend. I've obviously consumed some Starbucks coffees at times, and had some filter 'drip' at work (which has seriously awful quality water).
Ooooh, 5 minutes is too long. 10 minutes is WAY too long.
French press - 4 minutes is normal, and then decanting into something else to stop the brewing at that point.
I realise I'm not doing this right, and I'm determined to set the record straight, but I'm not sure where to go next...
Excellent.
I'm definitely going to get some fresh ground from hasbean (with the intention of moving on to beans and hand-grinding them in a few months) and I think I want to start with the 'filter' style - I like French Press the most from everything I've had, but don't like the 'mud'.
Filter coffee is one of the easiest methods. Depending on the filters used, normally there's no sludge, minimal oils and a cheap way in. It's also surprisingly cheap to get started with. £3 for a plastic filter cone, £2 for filters and £5 for a bag of coffee - thats about as cheap as you can get.
It does go up from there. I wouldn't recommend a plastic filter cone due to the way plastic can taint the coffee and it doesn't hold the heat too well. So £7ish for a ceramic filter cone instead. Still not ridiculously expensive.
I've said it before, but I think that french press is one of the hardest methods to get consistently right.
With that in mind, I was considering a Clever Coffee Dripper, or a Chemex - the CCD seems to be perfect but there seems much less talk about it than the Chemex.
Clever is a very interesting way to brew coffee, very much like french press, but without the sludge.
Chemex is a very clean method of brewing coffee, filters are really thick and take a lot of washing to get the paper taste out. But the coffee it can produce is superb.
I dislike the 'espresso' that the Nespresso gives out - it tasted pretty 'wooly' (I'm terrible with describing tastes) and so I don't know whether I like espresso or not - if anyone can recommend anywhere that can pull a decent shot in Plymouth I'll try that - and my normal drink is a 'mug', either black or with soya milk (which goes very odd in instant, so not often used at the moment)...
I'd happily go for a decent espresso machine if I like 'the real thing' and/or people think a double-shot long-black is a better option than a chemex/etc brew overall, but I need to be sure what I actually enjoy most.
Nespresso and the other types are very muted coffees - as the coffee is very stale.
Don't know of anywhere in Plymouth that does good espresso, so won't even give any recommendations. Try hasforum or coffee forums uk - someone will probably know somewhere nearby.
Oh, soya milk is just very odd full stop. Doesn't matter what it's in.
Depends what people mean by a long black - if they just run the espresso for longer, then thats bad as it over extracts the coffee. It they are drawing some hot water first then adding the espresso to that, then thats better.
If you normally have a mug load - filter of some sort may well be better for you.
I'll probably be ordering some Jailbreak from hasbean to try in the French Press, and am looking to get a more 'clean' brew as soon as possible, but all help and suggestions are welcomed.
Thanks.
(I'd planned to post this on the hasbean forum, and may still do if anyone thinks it will help)
Go for it. It's a great place for questions.
Depending on what flavours you like in coffee depends on whats recommended. Jailbreak is a very good blend. Meant for espresso but I've found that it works really well in other methods too.
Check out
www.brewmethods.com for various tutorials and methods.
Clean brew methods for me - Aeropress, chemex, filter cone, v60, clever dripper, syphon.
