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Handbrewing Coffee

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Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#201

Post by basch »

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 feel like the least amount of work is to mix the coffee and water and let it sit a day and then add hot water to it. Cold brew concentrate meets Americano. I can either use a filter and a tap (see below) or mix it in a mason jar and pour the sludge through a filter later.

Keep this in the fridge - https://www.kitchenaid.com/countertop-appliances/coffee-prod...

and this on the counter - https://www.cuisinart.com/shopping/appliances/tea_kettles/cp...

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#202

Post by Yetanfou »

bmj wrote: post #37
Yetanfou wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you lost a neutral or even positive while gaining a negative here: lost is the ability to drink a common beverage without feeling bad about being uncultured, gained is a dependency on commercial brands - Aeropress and Chemex - and related niche products - in this case African coffee - as well as a related ritual - 'hand-brewing coffee'. In both cases you satisfied your thirst for caffeine, the differen…

The case for bad coffee: https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/10/the-case-for-bad-coffee....

Yes, that is what I meant. It puts my mind back to the best take-out Chinese (food, not person) I ever had. While the take-out itself might have been a run-off-the-mill nasi goreng [1] it was the setting which made it memorable. I was on my first long solo cycling trip (where 'long' means about three weeks), about 16 years old and intent on finding a well-hidden spot to pitch my tent for the night [2]. I cycled past that take-away, thought 'why not' and got the food only to continue on my way for a bit. I finally chose a spot next to the river, started the cooker to boil some water for tea and had the nasi while watching the ships go by on the river. It was getting dark, the ships were lit up like Christmas trees, ships and river flowed by and I felt for probably the first time what it really meant to be free, healthy and self-reliant.

[1] I'm Dutch, nasi goreng (which you could translate to "fried rice with yesterday's leftovers", at least that is how I always make it) is a Dutch-but-really-Indonesian staple food

[2] ...which is illegal in the Netherlands, you can only camp in designated camping spots. While this might be the letter of the law it did not keep a local police officer who cycled by (in another place and time) while I was cooking something next to my tent in a totally illegal spot from wishing me a good dinner and continuing on his way.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#203

Post by JoeAltmaier »

webninja wrote: post #115
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey that describes pretty much any food preference? We should all learn to live with terrible cooking too? On that note, I had two total lunch fails last week. Food delivered to the table, that I couldn't eat. Is it the phase of the moon? The political climate? The cold weather?

Did it have olives in it?

Ha! No. One was a 'steak and eggs' at a new diner, where the over-easy eggs were broken (just annoying), the hashed-browned potatoes were a freezer-burned puck of mush, the 'steak' was a pile of fatty gristle that I tried chewing for 2 minutes and didn't get any smaller, and a pointless vegetable was grilled asparagus turned to dry sticks. There was nothing on the plate I wanted to put in my mouth.

The other was a Philly I got at a bar (fancy-food seafood/bar). Except is came as a French Dip (which wasn't on the menu): scant grilled onions/peppers, no cheese(!) and a bowl of brown broth. Which had spilled and saturated the bottom bun - took my whole napkin to try and get the slime off my hands after one attempt to pick it up. So I tipped the top bun off, maybe I could eat the filling - which was bare sliced beef with some gummy white stuff (not cheese) smeared on it? Oh, the top bun had been smeared with some white jizz that had melted the bread into paste. Disgusting top to bottom. I ate the fries and left.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#204

Post by nukeop »

ubermonkey wrote: post #29
nukeop wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chemex is just an expensive, proprietary coffee pot.

Chemex pots are NOT expensive. I don't know where you got that idea. The classic (which is to say, fancier, with the wooden collar) 8-cup model is $37 on Amazon right now. At our house, going to Chemex meant shifting from genuinely expensive drip machines that were hard or impossible to properly clean, and which therefore got replaced every few years. It's a drastically LESS expensive method than most.

Unintentional "let them eat cake" style comedy. $37 isn't expensive only for people drinking designer coffee out of avocados.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#205

Post by JoeAltmaier »

clairity wrote: post #101
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 starbu…

Not what I mean. More coffee flavor. Without tasted scorched.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#206

Post by foobarchu »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #149
lostlogin wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly true, but unlike high end audio, the best coffee can be bought by most people. The best I’ve ever had was $2US.

High end audio isn't expensive, the bullshit is. You can grab some nice drivers, unreasonably high-quality crossover components, and couple sheets of MDF to make yourself some floor-standers for a few hundred. Using any number of popular DIY speaker designs, you'll have something that would easily stand up to anything of a similar format in a blind A/B test. Amplification is dirt cheap now; class-D amps are superlati…

Building your own is not the same as buying, though. What would the cost for that same product be if it came all assembled for you, but the same quality? I'm betting it's pretty expensive.

It's probably also not that expensive to roast your own coffee beans, but it's an extra step that non-hobbyists don't want to deal with.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#207

Post by lostlogin »

troxwalt wrote: post #132
lostlogin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. I’m not suggesting you change what clearly works well, but anyone starting out should consider second hand gear. The best espresso gear ages well, is repairable and is readily available second hand. The machines Rancillio Silva, La Cimbali Junior and the grinders by Mazzer are all readily available and affordable if you are patient. Bought dirty, chipped and not working is best - then the price is lo…

Where would you recommend searching for used espresso gear? ebay?

I use a local equivalent - Trademe.co.nz.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#208

Post by ryanwaggoner »

nightski wrote: post #129
driverdan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Light to medium roasts won't extract oils to the surface and IMO have a much nicer flavor, especially when using good beans. To me a dark roast Ethiopian tastes the same as a dark roast Costa Rican. They taste very different with a lighter roast. You lose the bean's uniqueness when you go darker which is one of the reasons cheap coffee tends to be dark.

I feel like I am the only one but I find that "uniqueness" - sour/fruity taste disgusting and can't stand the lighter roasts. I prefer a dark roast with heavy cream :)

You’re not alone. There are dozens of us!

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#209

Post by bschwindHN »

williamdclt wrote: post #86
dreen wrote: post #83

Has anyone here managed to quit coffee completely after being really into it? I have 1-2 a day, can't imagine starting starting a day without it, but despite really loving the taste I would rather not feel the need to have it.

1-2 cups a day? I don't see that building an addiction (I hope at least, or I'm going to have a hard time)

I have one, sometimes two cups a day, where a cup is roughly 250 g of brewed filter coffee (17 g of beans). I get headaches if I don't have coffee for a day, though I can tolerate it. So yeah as little as one cup a day can get you "addicted" in the sense that you'll feel withdrawal symptoms.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#210

Post by hvidgaard »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #45
hvidgaard wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally the beans are roughly the same size, and what you called burned, I believe is simply because it's roasted darker to compensate for the less than ideal quality of the beans. The fact that WBC finalists are using coffee that the roaster haven't sorted based in size tells a lot. Perhaps the farmer does it to some degree.

Try it before judging! Its definitely a burned taste, and once its gone you would not believe the difference.

I simply cannot explain why they wouldn't do it if it made a difference. A machine that sorts the beans by size is cheaper than the machine that package the coffee, so if it would make a better product, I'm sure the big roasters would do it. It's not like they cannot make great coffee. They can make coffee that's world class, but the market will not pay that much.

But regardless, I have tried coffee that isn't burned. I primarily use lighter roasted beans, and there is zero burned taste.

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