Siliconslave's how to make espresso thread

cymatty said:
1) Making it in a cafetiere
2) 300ml ish
3) 800ml for 3 heaped spoons
4) Pre ground http://www.taylorscoffee.co.uk/products/lifestyle-coffee/hot-lava-java.asp

Leaving it to brew for around 5 minutes before pushing the plunger down, not using boiling water as I heard this burns the beans? It is strong just not as strong as expected.

:)
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Ok then. 800ml means around 48g of coffee as a base line, but could go up to 64g with the same amount of water at the maximum really.

I'd recommend getting a basic set of digital scales *1g accuracy is fine* Start with a ratio of 48g coffee to 800g of water, and a brew time of 4 minutes. It's a good starting point.

Heat up the french press with water from the kettle *let it boil then leave it for ~1minute - boiling water burns coffee and tastes really nasty* Ditch that then add the coffee and the water on top and stir a couple of times to wet all the grounds.

Add the press in and use it to submerge the grounds into the water, don't compress it all the way, just 5mm or so. Ensures that all the grounds are extracted rather than just the ones not floating on the surface.

After 4 mins brewing, press and pour. Don't leave any in there as it will continue to extract. You can decant it into something else if you want to keep it for a few minutes.

manveruppd said:
No I wouldn't try it either, if nothing else a conduction hob might shatter the glass, and if not then definitely leave it blackened underneath! And an induction hob just wouldn't DO anything! :p I think the one in that shop had a flattened bottom for the lower container though, so I suppose you could use it without its stand.
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Wouldn't be my choice tbh. Flat bottomed syphon sounds interesting though.
 
Flibster said:
Ok then. 800ml means around 48g of coffee as a base line, but could go up to 64g with the same amount of water at the maximum really.

I'd recommend getting a basic set of digital scales *1g accuracy is fine* Start with a ratio of 48g coffee to 800g of water, and a brew time of 4 minutes. It's a good starting point.

Heat up the french press with water from the kettle *let it boil then leave it for ~1minute - boiling water burns coffee and tastes really nasty* Ditch that then add the coffee and the water on top and stir a couple of times to wet all the grounds.

Add the press in and use it to submerge the grounds into the water, don't compress it all the way, just 5mm or so. Ensures that all the grounds are extracted rather than just the ones not floating on the surface.

After 4 mins brewing, press and pour. Don't leave any in there as it will continue to extract. You can decant it into something else if you want to keep it for a few minutes.
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Will try that tomorrow as I currently leave the water in with the beans after brewing for my second and third cup.
 
RastaManBob said:
Has it arrived? Very keen to see how you rate it compared to the coffeehit one! :)
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Strangely enough... I'd just been typing this when my net connection went phut.

For those that asked. It works well. It's pretty much the same height as the original alcohol burner and is so much faster.

Filled up the alcohol burner just to compare today - wow... forgotten how slow it was. :D

So here it is - remember you'll need butane as well. I get mine from the local market for £1 for a 250ml can.

http://www.nisbets.co.uk/products/productdetail.asp?productCode=L790

Downsides? Well ideally you will need to lift the syphon up but a 1cm or so as the flame is so much better and needs about 3cm between the top of the burner and the bottom of the lower bowl. I'd add a couple of mm onto the base with some rubber and also get a cheap cork tablemat and cut a hole in it and then put the burner in the hole. Should be about enough.

Only other downside I can think of is the increased caffeine consumption... but is that really a downside? ;)
 
Flibster said:
Strangely enough... I'd just been typing this when my net connection went phut.

For those that asked. It works well. It's pretty much the same height as the original alcohol burner and is so much faster.

Filled up the alcohol burner just to compare today - wow... forgotten how slow it was. :D

So here it is - remember you'll need butane as well. I get mine from the local market for £1 for a 250ml can.

http://www.nisbets.co.uk/products/productdetail.asp?productCode=L790

Downsides? Well ideally you will need to lift the syphon up but a 1cm or so as the flame is so much better and needs about 3cm between the top of the burner and the bottom of the lower bowl. I'd add a couple of mm onto the base with some rubber and also get a cheap cork tablemat and cut a hole in it and then put the burner in the hole. Should be about enough.

Only other downside I can think of is the increased caffeine consumption... but is that really a downside? ;)
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Thanks for the update. So, to confirm, it is better than the alcohol burner... But how does it compare to the Coffee Hit Micro Syphon burner? And on that note, does the Coffee Hit one also require the modifications/extras mentioned in your above post (eg, rubber feet and cork tablemat)?

Thanks!
 
RastaManBob said:
Thanks for the update. So, to confirm, it is better than the alcohol burner... But how does it compare to the Coffee Hit Micro Syphon burner? And on that note, does the Coffee Hit one also require the modifications/extras mentioned in your above post (eg, rubber feet and cork tablemat)?

Thanks!
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It's about the same tbh. Due to the height of the burners and the height of the syphon, it should be done with both. It's just for the optimum usage. I think it's slightly lower for the Rekrow though. The height of the 2 are about the same within a couple of mm too.

My syphon has several rubber feet on the bottom of it that raises it up about 6mm - they were the only rubber feet I had, I just wanted to prevent it from scratching the lovely polished wooden surface of my coffee-station. ;)

Now I've got both and I can't really say that one is better than the other from the playing I've done this morning.
 
Flibster said:
It's about the same tbh. Due to the height of the burners and the height of the syphon, it should be done with both. It's just for the optimum usage. I think it's slightly lower for the Rekrow though. The height of the 2 are about the same within a couple of mm too.

My syphon has several rubber feet on the bottom of it that raises it up about 6mm - they were the only rubber feet I had, I just wanted to prevent it from scratching the lovely polished wooden surface of my coffee-station. ;)

Now I've got both and I can't really say that one is better than the other from the playing I've done this morning.
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Excellent, so the cheapo syphon, burner and a cork mat will be ordered shortly. Seems like a pretty good combo for ~£50 delivered and will be interesting to play with. :) Shame I cannot find any other useful tidbits from nisbets... The postage accounts for a reasonable price of the item (~30% with VAT factored in). It advertises free delivery for orders over £30... Shame the site is such a pain to navigate :p
 
RastaManBob said:
Excellent, so the cheapo syphon, burner and a cork mat will be ordered shortly. Seems like a pretty good combo for ~£50 delivered and will be interesting to play with. :) Shame I cannot find any other useful tidbits from nisbets... The postage accounts for a reasonable price of the item (~30% with VAT factored in). It advertises free delivery for orders over £30... Shame the site is such a pain to navigate :p
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It's not a great site, but you will receive a pretty big box which will have the catalogue in too. I've found a few useful things for me in it... Now to persuade the other half...
 
Flibster said:
It's not a great site, but you will receive a pretty big box which will have the catalogue in too. I've found a few useful things for me in it... Now to persuade the other half...
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Anything coffee related for ~£15ish? For the delivery saving I would not mind Chemex (or equivalent) or dripped (v60 style), etc, [so long as it's a good price and takes me above £30 in total] but it's pretty hard to pin-point anything on their site. I cannot find anything, but if anybody would know I guess it'd be you :p:).
 
So what do you reckon Flibster? What's best, vac pot or Chemex? Or is it too early to tell and you want to wait for the infatuation with the new toy to pass before you can decide dispassionately? :)

cymatty said:
Been looking at a Bialetti Moka Express Espresso Maker to make some espresso but don't want the mess when it explodes. :p
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Do it man! It's my favourite brew method by half! Near-espresso strength brew, but a little gentler on the more delicate flavours of the coffee, which tend to get drowned out by the sheer strength of the shot when brewed as espresso. (And I'm not comparing it to the crappy espresso I make with my crappy machine - a really good espresso bar local to me buys coffee from Hasbean so I've often been able to compare how a particular coffee tastes as both fancy espresso brewed by pros and humble stove-top brewed by moi!:p)

Don't worry about it exploding, that's what the safety valve is there for! When I first bought one years and years ago, and I was young and stupid and over-enthusiastic, I would tamp the grounds to get a stronger brew, which they tell you not to in big capital letters in the instructions, and I STILL didn't manage to get it to explode! :p (Didn't work btw, just made it bitter and overextracted.) Minor suggestion though, don't buy the one that comes with a stand that you plug into the mains and brew it on there. The heating element in that thing is small and takes ages. Just buy a plain stove-top one and use it on your hob. It's cheaper as well.

That reminds me actually, remember when I posted about buying a new rubber gasket for my stove top a month or so ago and I was getting horrible rubbery-flavoured coffee? Well, it took about a week of soaking in bicarbonate of soda, blind brews using just water, ruining several hundred grams of decent coffee, and very very thorough washes with soap, but I finally got it stop. Seems the rubber just needed to dry a bit so that its oils would stop leaking into the coffee.

Asking around it seems other people have had this problem so I'm guessing Bialetti changed the kind of rubber they make those things out of. (Been using that stove top for 8 years and never had this problem before!) But anyway, this is for cymatty's benefit since he was thinking of buying one - soak the gaskets and brew several blind shots before using it for the first time, or you might also get rubbery-tasting coffee. I also suggest that you leave it on the stove a bit longer after you've pulled a blind brew, cause the heat helps dry out the rubber, but be very careful not to leave it too long, or the gasket WILL melt! (I've done that too in the early days of owning one, forgot to switch the hob off... :p )
 
Flibster said:
Strangely enough... I'd just been typing this when my net connection went phut.

For those that asked. It works well. It's pretty much the same height as the original alcohol burner and is so much faster.

Filled up the alcohol burner just to compare today - wow... forgotten how slow it was. :D

So here it is - remember you'll need butane as well. I get mine from the local market for £1 for a 250ml can.

http://www.nisbets.co.uk/products/productdetail.asp?productCode=L790

Downsides? Well ideally you will need to lift the syphon up but a 1cm or so as the flame is so much better and needs about 3cm between the top of the burner and the bottom of the lower bowl. I'd add a couple of mm onto the base with some rubber and also get a cheap cork tablemat and cut a hole in it and then put the burner in the hole. Should be about enough.

Only other downside I can think of is the increased caffeine consumption... but is that really a downside? ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks for updating us on this Flibster :) I've ordered one now!!
 
manveruppd said:
Do it man! It's my favourite brew method by half! Near-espresso strength brew, but a little gentler on the more delicate flavours of the coffee, which tend to get drowned out by the sheer strength of the shot when brewed as espresso. (And I'm not comparing it to the crappy espresso I make with my crappy machine - a really good espresso bar local to me buys coffee from Hasbean so I've often been able to compare how a particular coffee tastes as both fancy espresso brewed by pros and humble stove-top brewed by moi!:p)

Don't worry about it exploding, that's what the safety valve is there for! When I first bought one years and years ago, and I was young and stupid and over-enthusiastic, I would tamp the grounds to get a stronger brew, which they tell you not to in big capital letters in the instructions, and I STILL didn't manage to get it to explode! :p (Didn't work btw, just made it bitter and overextracted.) Minor suggestion though, don't buy the one that comes with a stand that you plug into the mains and brew it on there. The heating element in that thing is small and takes ages. Just buy a plain stove-top one and use it on your hob. It's cheaper as well.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice, for £20 I think it is worth a punt. :D
 
Well I ran out of beans today from has bean (the horror) so popped over to my local Sainsburys to get some of their taste the difference beans as a temporary filler till my order arrives tomorrow. How dissapointed was I when I was expecting to taste some of the flavours described on the packet. There was absolutely no taste to it at all. There was some acidity in there but none of the blackcurrent or lemon flavours described on the packet. I am guessing that because these beans were probably roasted months ago they have lost their flavour.

Maybe it was just a bean that didn't suit the chemex but it is a pack that I will have to work through over the next week so that I can just finish it off. Just have to make sure I never run out of freshly roasted beans in the future. So lesson learned there.
 
davetherave2 said:
Well I ran out of beans today from has bean (the horror) so popped over to my local Sainsburys to get some of their taste the difference beans as a temporary filler till my order arrives tomorrow. How dissapointed was I when I was expecting to taste some of the flavours described on the packet. There was absolutely no taste to it at all. There was some acidity in there but none of the blackcurrent or lemon flavours described on the packet. I am guessing that because these beans were probably roasted months ago they have lost their flavour.

Maybe it was just a bean that didn't suit the chemex but it is a pack that I will have to work through over the next week so that I can just finish it off. Just have to make sure I never run out of freshly roasted beans in the future. So lesson learned there.
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If you want some emergency beans, Nero do a 500g pack for £4.99 and they're not too bad.
 
This is a huge thread so it would take me ages to find my answer to this question.

Do you have any instructions to make an exprsso with a French Press?

Thanks.

edit: Found it, nevermind :P.
 
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