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Handbrewing Coffee

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Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#101

Post by clairity »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #22

I got ruined for regular coffee when I found a local shop that roasts its beans sorted by size . So it doesn't taste scorched. Apparently most commercial coffee makers roast them in arbitrary batches, which means by the time the big ones are roasted the small ones are burned. I know there's a lot more that can be done with roasting. But that one small change means you can have strong coffee without having burned coff…

> ..."you can have strong coffee without having burned coffee"

just noting that when people say strong coffee, they usually mean "more caffeine", not "darker roast". and coffee people generally know that darker roasts have less caffeine.

i actually like darker roast too, when i want a caramelly coffee (by adding cream and sugar). my theory is that not only does a dark roast better hide lower quality beans, but starbucks knows that most people put cream and sugar in their coffee and darker roasts are better for that, which is why it's so popular.

but when i want straight brewed coffee, i seem to prefer a medium roast.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#102

Post by TurboHaskal »

dnhz wrote: post #66

> My standard recipe is 15 grams of coffee to 250 grams of water. Hmm I use 18 g of coffee for 340 g of water. It's what my grinder dispenses, and I use 12 oz of water. 13% more water per gram. Is that wrong?

It's up to you. My go-to recipe for the Aeropress is 30g coffee for 240g of water.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#103

Post by peterwwillis »

> while waiting for the way-too-slow kettle to boil the water

How is it Americans still don't use electric water kettles? Everyone else on the planet that has electricity has one. It's faster, more convenient, kinda-sorta safer. And you can find ones with digital temperature control on Amazon for like $25.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=goose+neck+electric+water+kettle+...

Look at these things, there's hundreds of 'em. I picked the cheapest one and it works great. I can set the temperature to exactly 205F and the gooseneck works for pourover, or I can bring the temp down to 170 for green tea. (If you make big batches of tea, a non-gooseneck pours much faster)

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#104

Post by falcolas »

nukeop wrote: post #23
alistairSH wrote: post #17

French press for me. I buy my beans weekly from a local roaster and grind them at purchase. I think I get mot of the upside of 100% fresh ground and pour-over with a bit less work. And I start cooking breakfast while the water boils, so no time lost. At work, it's generic machine coffee. It doesn't taste great, but it keeps me going.

French press also extracts and preserves all the oils present in coffee beans, whereas drip/chemex filters them out. As a sidenote, french press is also great for brewing tea, but keep your coffee and tea presses separated.

If you use a metal filter with the drip/chemex devices, you can get the volatile oils in your coffee as well. Same for the Aeropress (which does have a metal filter option as well).

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#105

Post by alistairSH »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #32
alistairSH wrote: post #17

French press for me. I buy my beans weekly from a local roaster and grind them at purchase. I think I get mot of the upside of 100% fresh ground and pour-over with a bit less work. And I start cooking breakfast while the water boils, so no time lost. At work, it's generic machine coffee. It doesn't taste great, but it keeps me going.

I use a French Press abut 90% of the time. But the different methods are better at extracting certain kinds of flavors, so it really depends on what kind of coffee I'm using. For most coffee, the FP is great at extracting deep, earthy flavors (and the oil, obviously). So that's always my go-to coffee in the morning. For brighter, more citrus-y coffee (Intelligentsia brand excels at these lighter ones), I favor the po…

Hmmm, hadn't thought about the oil part of the equation - I just assumed the oils would pass through a filter as well as through the mesh on the press. I'll have to try pour-over sometime to see if I notice a difference. Generally I prefer a rich, chocolatey, nutty flavor - I guess that's what you describe as earthy?

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#106

Post by briankirby »

Tarks wrote: post #95

For anyone interested I did a fair bit of research into how I could step into the passable home espresso / coffee game as I WFH a lot. Given that : - I make at most 3 coffees a day, usually 1. - I prefer espresso I found the traditional options lacking. I'd need: - a machine costing about £600 - a solid quality grinder. - machine needs 20 minutes warmup minimum before you can pour a consistent shot (or you need to le…

I went through a similar search for a cheap homemade espresso and ended up landing on the 3-cup Moka pot. It's not exactly espresso, but I find it's good enough for me, especially if I put it into a cappuccino or something else.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#107

Post by GreaterFool »

In one of the companies I worked for we had this really nice semi-automatic espresso machine. The type where you have to unscrew the handle, put the grounds in. I loved making coffee in it! A little break from coding, some manual task to do. Make the coffee, steam the milk, clean up. It was a nice little break.

Then some part broke and instead of fixing it the company bought the fully automatic machine. It was downright terrible (and crazy expensive!). The coffee tasted terrible and more importantly the ritual of making it was gone :(

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#108

Post by mongol »

Tarks wrote: post #95

For anyone interested I did a fair bit of research into how I could step into the passable home espresso / coffee game as I WFH a lot. Given that : - I make at most 3 coffees a day, usually 1. - I prefer espresso I found the traditional options lacking. I'd need: - a machine costing about £600 - a solid quality grinder. - machine needs 20 minutes warmup minimum before you can pour a consistent shot (or you need to le…

Intruiging. How long time does it take you to make a cup? How long time for the grinding?

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#109

Post by falcolas »

elhudy wrote: post #54
cmurphycode wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some evidence that grinding with an extremely high quality grinder will give better results for at least a few days than on-demand grind with a "bad" (i.e. less than few hundred dollar burr grinders, not to mention any blade grinder) grinder. This is one such "study" - https://prima-coffee.com/learn/article/grinder-basics/it-alw... So, I think you're doing fine unless you want to spend more money :) If you're…

I don't buy the article's "study" whatsoever. From the pictures, they are testing the "flavor" using a drip method and don't control for the temperature. Using a drip method the ground should be fine. Fine is fine. .05mm coffee grains should mechanistically speaking soak through just as well as .08mm coffee grains. It also strikes me as odd that each of the grinders was exactly consistent across an entire week for it…

Low quality grinders will result in unequal sized grains of coffee. Given that the flavor of coffee is largely based on the degree of extraction, having an even sized grounds will improve the consistency of the produced coffee.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#110

Post by clairity »

dnhz wrote: post #66

> My standard recipe is 15 grams of coffee to 250 grams of water. Hmm I use 18 g of coffee for 340 g of water. It's what my grinder dispenses, and I use 12 oz of water. 13% more water per gram. Is that wrong?

i'm not super diligent about consistency, but i use 24-25g coffee for 440-450g water, so that's somewhere in-between.
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