I don't care for the ritual aspects of it. My purpose is caffeine, yet I do want my coffee to be good. I agree with some others who posit that African coffee is some great stuff. It is. I use a French press, as I don't want to "filter" my coffee too much. If I cannot see the oil in the coffee, I will not drink it. I like my coffee very strong (taste and caffeine), very black, and in bean form before self grinding. The Ethiopian and Kenyan varieties are some great coffees.
Handbrewing Coffee
21–30 of 217 posts
Re: Handbrewing Coffee
#22I 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 coffee. Its at the point I can walk past a coffee shop and say "Yuck they don't sort their beans" just by the smell.
Re: Handbrewing Coffee
#23French 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.
Re: Handbrewing Coffee
#24Got tired of buying coffee makers that always burned out. A drip cone is the easiest to clean, never breaks.
I am a big fan of the steel "drip-o-lator"-style coffee brewers. They are a predecessor of electric coffee makers. It is similar to a pour-over, but you can just dump the hot water in and walk away. Unfortunately, they are no longer in production, but I have purchased several from eBay. One day I would like to design and build my own version with vacuum-insulated walls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg4ncWWqjno
Their layered construction can be described, from top to bottom, as follows:
1. A chamber for hot water. The top is open and has a lid. The bottom of the chamber has a number of very small holes, so that water will slowly drip through the bottom of the chamber.
2. A holder for coffee grounds. There are larger holes in this layer, so that water passes relatively quickly through the grounds during brewing.
3. A chamber to catch the brewed coffee.
Re: Handbrewing Coffee
#25I understand this guy. Five years ago, I calmly could drink americano in a terrible coffee shop. Now I can not imagine my day without aeropress or chemex. My favorite grains are from Kenya and Congo, because sourness is felt in them. If you really love coffee, then you will like the hand-brew.
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…
This feels true to me. I was making coffee with an aeropress in my office, right next to the 3-carafe Bunn automatic coffeemaker. Someone poured a cup of office coffee, while I was pressing my aeropress.
They asked about it - how does it work, why do I do it? I said that I can use my own coffee, it makes the coffee taste better and I can modify the strength and flavor depending on my grind size, brewing times, pressure - it's like experimenting to find the best cup.
They replied, "well I'm not a snob, and I think this [office] coffee tastes pretty good...after all they probably have the same amount of caffeine in them, don't they?"
It was humbling, and although I still make coffee (at my desk now lol) I look at the product I make myself different from coffee as a beverage. Handmaking coffee is an enjoyable ritual with new discoverable outcomes based on modifiable variables. It's a hobby I do, right next to making my own recipes and doing ham radio.
But if I just need caffeine and I'm too lazy to make aeropress, I drink out of the office pot and I don't think of it as an inferior product.
Re: Handbrewing Coffee
#26We're using percolators and fresh ground coffee at home. One large Argentinean clone and a "3 cup" Bialetti. I fill up the Bialetti with coffee for a good punch but the large one (don't know it's capacity actually) only half full maybe for a milder coffee.
Still I'm going for a Chemex to be able to drink something more subtile. Tried Moccamaster but it's still regular coffee to me. A good one though. My dad has a Jura that I really like for such a quick machine but perhaps not what I would like to drink daily.
Going to experiment a bit more with beans as well in the coming months. Just to have a bit more of variety.
Re: Handbrewing Coffee
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chemex is just an expensive, proprietary coffee pot.
Yes, but it looks nice on a shelf in the background of an Instagram photo. Plain old conical drippers have exactly the same effect on the coffee, but they don't make it look like you're performing a science experiment.
Macbooks of coffee.
Re: Handbrewing Coffee
#28French 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.
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 brewing espresso, where the freshness of the grind is integral to the texture of the result, maybe this is less true. But anyone who's taking espresso seriously has a nice grinder anyway, I guess. (And on the opposite, I think French Press is very tolerant)
Re: Handbrewing Coffee
#29I understand this guy. Five years ago, I calmly could drink americano in a terrible coffee shop. Now I can not imagine my day without aeropress or chemex. My favorite grains are from Kenya and Congo, because sourness is felt in them. If you really love coffee, then you will like the hand-brew.
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.
Re: Handbrewing Coffee
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's possible, I think, to appreciate and enjoy (and spend time on) good cooking - or coffee - without the kind of (IMO unhealthy) dependency suggested by "I can not imagine my day without aeropress or chemex". Perhaps that was just hyperbole by Griceraae50100. I hope so.
Of course it was. But also, comfortable middle-class folk get used to lots of comfortable things and can't imagine living without them. Like cars and roads and a warm house and a good grocery store. Unless those things change drastically then wanting and getting good coffee is way, way down on the list of 'unhealthy dependency'.
Much of what we do in the west could fall into the category of unhealthy dependency. I drink 4-6 double espressos daily, plus about 16oz of green tea. I vape. I code. I sort out issues on servers, for which without the caffeine and nicotine would suffer :).
This is life in the west. Being comfortable is no sin. Getting used to "better" is likewise not a bad thing. It's bad if/when you use your "status/wealth/etc" to impugn or degrade others. I feel like I've earned my place in life, as has my wife. We live in a normal house, drive so-so daily drivers (car status means nothing to me), and wear clothes from the outlet stores.
I do, however, not skimp on coffee, tea, meat, or leather boots. These I will gladly spend money on.
Like a lot of guys, I enjoy a fine cigar and a cold expensive lager on the back porch while cooking steaks. All washed down with a healthy measure of espresso and green tea.