Coffee

This week I have a pretty classic Colombian from the local joint.

Nice change from last week when I had some wild, anaerobic stuff that was incredibly fruity 😅

And I gotta say - I don't hate it.

Calling most of you from the last post out as drama queens 😄

From left to right: Coffee mug from Highlands Coffee shop in Hanoi; air tight canister holding the original ziplocked coffee bag, RDT spray bottle in a spare mini cup, Fellow Opus grinder (the paper under the catch cup is being used to raise the cup so it fits tightly to the exit of the grinder); Clever Dripper currently holding 430g water and 27g of beans sitting on top of the scale, and a super cheap stainless steel electric kettle.

I have a kitchen thermometer (not shown) that is used to measure the water temp in the kettle after it has been allowed to cool slightly. I target 93C.

I use a water first method. Put the water in, pour the grounds on top of the water. Let it sit like that for 3 minutes. Then gently stir the floating grounds so that they drop (also scrape down any grounds that might be stuck above the water level). Let sit for another minute then put on the coffee mug to drain.

Done.

Arabica Typica beans grown in Vietnam and roasted in Hanoi. Light roast. Natural processed. Quite tasty. I am looking forward to enjoying these for the next couple of weeks.

Does anyone have experience with these two grinders? I’ve narrowed my search down to these two but I’m very undecided. I know the 64 is the better grinder but I don’t know if it’s worth the extra $200 CAD.

Trying different things Today homemade chocolate ice cream affogado

Hi!

After lurking for a while, and asking for advice here a couple times, I finally bought a grinder.

It's a Timemore C2S, I know it's not the best out there, but I'm coming from an old blade grinder (see pic below).

I got it yesterday and tried it immediately. Of course I made 2 cups to compare with coffee as I've been drinking it so far, and the difference is very noticeable.

To sum up the experience very quickly, grinding is pretty fast, pour over is much faster too, clarity is clearly better, and what struck me tastewise was that I could taste the acidity a lot more.

Now I have to try different settings to see what suits me best, but I'm very pleased to so far.

But also I have a question for time more owners: how do you estimate coarseness? The spec mentions "approx 36 levels", but when I count from the screw fully screwed until it comes off, there are more than 60 clicks. Also the notice mentions that we should not grind between 0 and 6 clicks, but then what's the purpose of having those clicks?

Cheers!

Has anyone had any luck dialing in for a v60? I’ve tried their recommendations, I’ve tried the grind calculator from onyx and I’ve tried just randomly picking a number.

But the results are always kind of the same. Good passable coffee with no personality or tasting notes.

I’m using the light roast formula from third wave and at 205f

The coffee I have is https://catandcloud.com/products/sumatra-pantan-musara

If anyone can help it would be hugely helpful

Natural processed Brazil medium roast

In this thread you can share what new coffee, equipment, techniques etc. you have tried this week.

What have you enjoyed and what didn't you like? Have you learned anything new?

Gone on holidays, for once by car so I could bring my gear.

• Flair Pro 2 (for me)
• Aeropress Go (for my wife)
• 1ZPresso J-Max grinder
• a cheap scale
• a DIY WDT tool
• Homeroasted beans:
  • Direct Trade Maragogype from Guatemala (SCA 83)
  • Single Farmer blend from Brazil (SCA 88)

Beats every single espresso I've had so far since we started our trip.

My family and I drink pretty much every style of coffee regularly, but the favorite by far is iced coffee brewed hot into ice using a Hario switch. (James Hoffman's recipe that includes the ice in the recipe). It tastes the best to everyone and it can be made cold in less than 10 minutes (unlike cold brew, which has to be made ahead of time).

The problem I have now is that everyone enjoys it so much that I make a minimum of 6x 500ml batches per week and it's just labor intensive. All I really need is a machine that does immersion brewing and lets me set a "steep time" after pre infusion. I love my regular coffee machine but it has no mechanism to hold the water in.

Does such a thing exist? I can't find anything that is not manual. I've tried a larger French press with a paper filter but that gets messy quickly. Any suggestions?

Thanks ☕

Yesterday i got a used rancilio Silvia with some tools for a good price. I want to convert it with a gaggimate. Someone has done ~something~ with some pid controller which I have not noticed. Had the hand mill for filter coffe already.

Last evening I experimented with cheap storbought decaf, and shock and horror. It was so dark roast and so old, that there were no notes other than "roasted".

This morning I tried some actually good coffee and it was nice for a first try.

Look a "flower"... My late art is lacking.

I have loads to learn and loads to play

I’m looking for inspiration to organize all my coffee equipment and would love to see what the folks here are doing. My current setup is all over the place and I’d like to get it more sorted out, both out of practicality and also aesthetics.

I buy beans here in Hanoi from a specialty roaster named Viet Beans Coffee. They exclusively use beans grown in Vietnam and have a large variety of bean types with washed, honey, or natural processing options being most common from different regions of Vietnam. Some times experimental processing is offered. The roast level is traditional light roast unless otherwise requested. They don't normally do Nordic light, ultra light, or more roasted than medium.

This is the bean I am currently enjoying at work using a Clever Dripper and Fellow Opus grinder.

The flavor notes are pretty much exactly what I am getting in the cup.

How does this community feel about decaf? And are there any really good decaf options at your local roaster or roaster of choice? I’m personally a big fan of decaf for a dessert latte in the evening. Unfortunately I’m still trying to find a really good decaf bean, but this one is good for a really dark roast, which is my preference for espresso.

I like Hoffmann’s stance on decaf personally. His thought is the “death before decaf” folks aren’t really into coffee as much, because they’re admitting they’re just into it for the caffeine, and those who drink decaf are willing to drink often times bad coffee (since most places don’t treat decaf with the same respect as regular) just to have a cup of coffee since they love it so much.

This is Black Acres Roastery’s Colombia Aponte Honey process coffee. Black Acres supplies Trader Joe’s, so it’s easy to find this across much of the US. This bag has a best by date of November 26th and is drinking well right now.

This is a pretty dark roasted coffee, per the bag and visually. V60 brew, ground a bit coarser than usual, 4.0 on an Ode 1 with the upgraded burrs, and started with the water at 85c. I don’t think I could dial it in better, the coffee doesn’t have much more to give. Total drawdown time was three minutes almost on the dot.

This coffee has a lot of natural sweetness. Decent acidity, some overripe fruit (figs, dates, something like that) on the palate. Once it cooled to warm a little almond paper bitterness came out, nothing aggressive. At room temp, more bitterness, more fruit, and finally some cocoa powder. It does not drink like a typical heavy roast.

Trader Joe’s does an incredible job at stocking small selections of good enthusiast product. Their wine selection is staggering and their coffee is solid. It’s also well priced; dollar for dollar this is the best coffee I’ve bought in a long time. Pretty good overall.

I've been trying to figure out how to make latte art using oat milk with my cheap espresso setup for over a year now. This deformed leaf is the best I've been able to achieve, and I couldn't be happier.

The steam wand on my Delonghi Esclusivo EC-702 isn't up to the task, so I bought one of those Nespresso milk frothers, which simultaneously heats and whips one serving of milk. It works great for cappuccino, with the added benefit of being almost completely silent, unlike the screaming banshee steam wand. But for the longest time I couldn't figure out how to get the microfoam needed for latte art. Then I realized that if I used the spout with the lid on to pour into a steaming pitcher it would hold most of the larger foam inside the Nespresso. So if you've been having this same problem, that might be the missing piece.

Post latte art in the comments!

In this thread you can share what new coffee, equipment, techniques etc. you have tried this week.

What have you enjoyed and what didn't you like? Have you learned anything new?

So today was coffee station deep clean day including descaling my coffee maker.

After running the descaling solution through the coffee maker, I wanted to soak the shower head in the solution since it was pretty hard hit with scale and the brief contact with the solution while brewing wasn’t enough to clean it up.

So I dumped the hot descaling solution in a stainless steel bowl with the shower heat and left it to soak.

When I came back to check on it (30-60 minutes) everywhere the bowl was in contact with solution was purple. When I touched the purple tint it turned black (I really regret not having taken a photo at this point). It turned out the purple was just residue but the black underneath was (etched?) into the bowl.

I tried scrubbing with dish soap and water, which helped a bit but the bowl was still dulled and dark where it had been in contact with the solution. I then hit it was barkeepers friend which left me with what you see in the photo.

I guess my question is “what the heck happened?”. My best guess is that the bowl is not actually stainless steel and the solution ate off whatever was giving the bowl its shine? The shower head is also stainless steel and it was unaffected in this way. In fact the solution did successfully remove most of the scale build up on it.

Thoughts?

My go-to recipe, as a general structure, has been as follows:

0:00 (open) - pour up to 3x the coffee weight
0:30 (open) - pour up to 10x the coffee weight
1:00 (closed) - pour up to 16x the coffee weight
1:45 - open valve and drawdown

I’ve been really enjoying the results from this recipe but would like to try some others too. If anyone has a go-to recipe I’d love to hear about it!

Coffee cultivation has quite the ecological impact, specifically on birds as it often entails deforestation for higher yields and destroys habitats. The National Smithsonian has a bird-friendly certification which comes along with a website that helps you learn more and find bird-friendly certified coffees.

I wanted to share my own experience and ask if others had come across this and had recommendations for bird-friendly coffees that taste good.

Living on the east coast I actually really enjoyed:

• Rockin Cat Coffee. It tasted good, delivery times were quick which gave me confidence as to their small-batch roasting methods, and the coffee I got out of the beans was nice. I remember my favorite one being their Honduras Marcala.

Now that I live on the west coast I've been on a search for a roaster closer to me to avoid lengthy delivery times. I've really only tried:

• Thanksgiving Coffee. I can't give them as much praise as Rockin Cat just cause I've not tried all their roasts. I got the Guatemalan SongBird roast and it was ok. It didn't really have all the wonderful complexity and sweetness of some other single-origin non-bird-friendly roasts I've tried.

That's all, wanted to start a conversation, get some suggestions for US West Coast-located bird friendly roasters with really good beans. If it helps, I typically switch between making espresso and pour over for my daily cup.

Are there any double walled cups out there that are actually durable? Or maybe super thick glass cups that have a similar effect. I love the look of espresso in a double walled glass but with cats I’m worried they could break.

I drink my coffee during my morning commute, usually 45-60 mins long. Nearly every travel mug I have is insulated so well that its still scalding hot an hour after I arrive, so I have been using a plastic travel mug instead. This work, it cools to a drinkable temperature after about 10 minutes, but I can taste the plastic. Something is leeching into my coffee and it gets astringent during the last half. Awful. I need something new. Most mugs advertise they keep it hot for 6 hours! I dont want to wait 6 hours to drink my damn coffee!! /rant

Anyone else have this problem and good suggestions? I'm all ears. Thanks!