Omg.
We just got one of those fancy espresso machines. It cost me an arm and a leg, and I’ve been fiddling with it for a while now. This morning my wife complained that it takes me forever to make a cup of coffee.
That said, when she finally tried it, she admitted it was quite good. So… yeah. I guess she’s right.
I miss when Animal Crossing Pocket Camp was free
This is why I like taste tests.
They routinely prove that even experts can’t distinguish between $20 wine and $200 wine.
because any methods that are harder and which DON’T have a superior result would not become culturally known
Cold brew espresso might just give you the powers of The Flash.
I’mma just gonna sit over here with my cuppa tea and watch…
Damn right 🫖
Cold brew is good for people who need lower acidity.
Drip coffee. Easy. Coffee is a utility.
Drip is weak as hell, french press is IMO easier and doesn’t include the paper waste. You get to control the strength beyond just adding more to the basket and hoping it trickles down (heh).
I French press for a long time, back when I’d drink four or five cups a day. Believe it or not I ended up with heartburn. I actually took to putting filters (bamboo) in between the screen and the metal spokes to filter my French press, and it actually helped a bit. And apparently French press coffee is super high in cholesterol, and running it through a paper filter can reduce that.
I do drip now though. And it’s fine. I really just drink coffee to wake up in the morning. I put the coffee in, it fills the pot, I pour the pot in my cup and I drink it. They’re both easy, and they’re certainly easier than some of the silly methods I see nowadays.
I’m aware of this myself, and it isn’t the cholesterol in the coffee, but a chemical in the coffee that lowers your liver’s ability to deal with cholesterol from other sources.
If you drink 1-3 cups at most a day and you’re relatively healthy or you never see high cholesterol on lab results then it’s fairly moot, apparently.
I say apparently because I’m a mechanic, not a coffee… doctor? The chemicals I learned about five minutes ago are diterpenes: cafestol and kahweol.
Dyor
My father still drinks drip but I can assure you it is not weak at all. Then it was either not prepared well or the ratio for powder to water must be off.
It’s a drink actually
It’s all fun and games until the day you have your first cup of that coffee made from single farm, small batch, hand washed, sun dried, meticulously roasted and ground, then brewed with the preciseness of a chemical engineering lab, that just hits for you. Suddenly you can never smell the burnt toxic shit Starbucks sells as “coffee” without gagging and you spend way to much time and money chasing that perfect brew.
Bean quality makes all the difference in the world. From there it’s mostly a matter of not fucking it up as far as I’m concerned
But yes, the first time I tasted what coffee is supposed to be, absolutely life changing.
burnt toxic shit Starbucks sells as “coffee”
Yeah they roast way too dark, probably to hide the cheap coffee they use and possibly because their extraction is shit.
I can’t drink coffee anywhere else anymore, since I’m roasting myself, and perfected extraction with a Cafelat Robot (low pressure, which I think works better with lighter roasts).
What’s your method for roasting? I have some green beans that a roaster game be and a Whirley Pop, but I only expect to get something drinkable out of it, not anything that would compete with my specialty-roasted, light roasts.
From what I’ve heard, the best thing to use is an '80s style air popper.
Of course Starbucks roasts dark in part because they’re cheap, but it’s mostly to ensure the flavor is consistent across all their thousands of stores. Roast any bean to the level Starbucks roasts it, and it doesn’t matter what the origin, fermentation method, species, or terroir was, they all come out tasting the same. Granted, most people aren’t going to enjoy that taste by itself, but that’s sort of beside the point. Starbucks coffee isn’t really intended to be enjoyed straight, it’s supposed to be made into milk drinks where the dairy, syrups, and toppings provide most of the flavor, and for that use case, it’s adequate.
I can’t drink coffee anywhere else anymore
That’s an absolute shame, because there’s tons and tons of cool coffee shops absolutely all over the place doing really cool, interesting, imaginative, and downright tasty things with coffee that you’re missing out on.
That’s an absolute shame, because there’s tons and tons of cool coffee shops absolutely all over the place doing really cool, interesting, imaginative, and downright tasty things with coffee that you’re missing out on.
Maybe not around here (it’s not the biggest city though), I think I tasted every worthwhile coffee in the city so far. Some are ok, but nothing that really stands out. It’s also more meant figuratively (though there’s still some truth… after habituation on good coffee, previously ok-coffee is now bad… so I got really picky over the time of my coffee-nerd-career)
Starbucks coffee isn’t really intended to be enjoyed straight, it’s supposed to be made into milk drinks where the dairy, syrups, and toppings provide most of the flavor, and for that use case, it’s adequate.
Yeah it’s americans perversion of coffee. It’s more like soft-drinks with coffee-taste or something like that…
My hometown used to have a roaster and fresh roast days the coffee was friggin amazing, place was my first coffee shop. Been chasing that dragon 20 years
What flavour notes did the coffee have?
Man I was like 17, I just remember having coffee that didn’t taste like normal coffee, but almost sweet and nutty
Yes, the best coffee is Caffeine free via supercritical CO2 extraction, then espresso at exactly 92℃, 900KPa into 66℃ heated, but flat milk.
(I mostly drink Nescafe with UHT milk and unfiltered tap water from the work urn)
Mere childs play. The best coffee is a 2L bottle of pepsi evaporated under a rotary boiler that is then super cooled to concentrate to extract the caramel out of the caffeine, filtered through sheeps wool into a cup. Then add goats milk.
Cold brew is easy. You just leave the thing to steep overnight.
Tastes really good even when you have bad/stale coffee. Much better than iced coffee.
Freshly roasted (7-30 days after roast) becomes alive when brewed hot. It’s like tasting higher resolution coffee (when compared to cold brew)
I think I’ll have another cup… tomorrow I guess.
I was gonna make this same comment.
Cold drip though? That’s some finicky shit. Not worth the effort in my opinion (but is fun!)
This is why I have a hard time with hobbyist forums/communities. I get the idea of wanting to hone your end result or what have you, but it always seems to veer off into obsession while getting results which are debatably any better than keeping it simple.
I weigh my coffee/water to keep the brew ratio the same, and that is fine-tuned enough for me.
You will enjoy this 30s documentary.
I read that as (19)30s documentary at first and was slightly confused until I clicked it! 😁
Spot on though! Especially about the made up lingo and the rituals to maximize his “throat velocity!”
Again, I won’t shame you if you do all that stuff and really enjoy it, but you should be self aware enough to know your level of fanaticism isn’t the norm.
obsession while getting results which are debatably any better than keeping it simple
It’s why I waited longer than I should’ve to shave with a safety razor. The wet shave or whatever communities had all these guidelines like you can’t shave against the grain, or you need to moisten your skin in 42º C water for exactly 37.6 minutes, or you need a hogbrush to apply horse oil infused soap. Failure to follow any of the rules would mean your skin turns into Leatherface permanently.
Turns out you can use a safety razor exactly like one from Schaunlickette, with the bonus being you can buy blades for life for the cost of a single pack of 27-blade razor heads, or however many they’re up to now
Got tired of paying high prices on razor blades, using disposables was wasteful, and the exponentially increasing number of blades wouldn’t get under my nose.
Switched to an old school Gillette Tech safety. Switched to Barbasol instead of the thicker stuff. Shaves better, cheaper, just as fast. No stupid rituals required. No shaving soap, mug, bristle brush or horseshit required. (I do recommend starting with one of the combo packs of razors to find the one you like).
I even shave my balls with it.
My son has his own tech, and has never tried any of the goofy ‘modern’ crap.
This was a solved problem nearly 100 years ago. Funny how marketing works.
The Tech is my favorite also! I have a couple handles, and the Tech may have been the last one because it seemed liked everyone was always calling it “too mild” or that our clogged too fast because the gap was too small.
It is the smoothest, most gentle, and least fussy handle I’ve got.
I had been so excited to get a Slim Adjustable, the most expensive of my collection, and that thing shreds me on any setting. 😮💨
The boar brush was nice when I shaved my whole beard, I liked the sensation, but it is fussy.
That is another great example. I bought a few used razors, but never spent more than $20.on any of them, and I bought a few blade sample packs and swapped a bunch for even more on a forum blade exchange so I probably had at least 40 kinds.
My beard grows every which way, so I shave whichever direction actually gets the hair off, and the blade differences are so miniscule. There were maybe 3 that tore me up for some reason, but the rest I probably couldn’t pick out blind.
So much hocus pocus there about something pretty dead simple. It is somewhat cute to see all the guys talking about soap scents and such, but one static article can easily cover all one ever needs to know about wet shaving.
Ignore all the chit chat and just enjoy cheap shaves.
I don’t have a problem with people who are willing to do things in a complex way or experiment around. But hobbies are often an excuse for consumerism and elitism and that’s kind of gross.
Like coffee is a great example: someone will talk about a $20 pour over or French press with pre ground coffee from a local roaster, which is a setup that will give you vastly superior coffee to most people and chain options like starbucks or dunkin. They’ll get roasted (lol) because they’re not grinding at home (at minimum $1-200 for a decent grinder). And then when you dive into those people you’ll see they have some wild ass setup with like an $8000 espresso machine, $3000 grinder, the $200 coffee scale that coffee nerds have a boner for because a $10-30 scale with almost the same exact feature set is lame and coffee nerds are just audiophiles in a different hat. They have that same desperation in trying to justify their excessive consumerism that has led to their kitchen counter holding a handful of appliances dedicated to a single task that have cost them the value of a very solid used car.
But like the person that double blind tests various preparation methods? That experiments with data recording to better understand what happens during various brewing methods? That tries unconventional approaches to extraction? That person is cool
Heck ya, some solid experimenting to me is way cooler than someone dropping massive cash on something. That’s kiiiinda interesting sometimes to see what’s new and experimental, but I’ll never spend that on it, so there’s limited use to me. But the fart sniffing stuff of overpriced scales and stuff like that, I can live without that type of content completely.
I agree with you that hobbies often enshittify. However, coffee has a special place in my heart because you can make really, really tasty coffee with simple tools.
My setup is a plastic cone, a set of filter papers, a plastic kettle, a thermometer, a dispersion screen, and a scale.
As to grinding coffee, you’re right that a grinder is expensive. There’s no way around that. However, you can do what my partner and I did for months: our local coffee shop ground our coffee each week.
Why am I saying all of this?
In part because I agree with you. I actually approach coffee deliberately with an 80/20 mindset: I’ll get 80% of the coffee goodness for 20% of the effort. I do this because I don’t want to get sucked into the deep end.
And I think you could get a lot of coffee goodness for very little effort. Coffee ratios are a great way to start. You take just a few steps so that you can play around with temperature, grind size, and pouring technique. In my mind, that’s the 20% that gets me 80% of coffee goodness.
Of course, it’s possible that you like your current setup and that’s great! I believe the best coffee is the coffee that you like.
Oh, I’m not saying all of it is hooey, just after the things you mention, there are rapidly diminishing returns.
I started with just an Aeropress and experimenting with different grocery store coffees. Then I got a Barratza Encore for my birthday. I switched to the OXO dripper pour over and prefer that cleaner taste, and my wife prefers the Aeropress still. She doesn’t notice the difference between grocery coffee and fresh ground, so she usually gets a flavored coffee, and I get a different single origin from Trade every couple weeks.
I probably spend the most of my friend group on coffee, at least home coffee, but I think it’s better than any coffee I get out, and I think the value ratio is still well in my favor for what I get. A coworker seemed interested in my setup and bought it all, but she seemed to like it when I did the work, and even that level of hands on was too much fuss, and her and her husband went back to using a French press without measuring anything.
I find the setup a bit much to do in the morning when I wake up and am all groggy, so I’ve gone to making it before I go to bed into canning jars, and I vacuum seal it so we can either warm it up or have “iced coffee” in the morning, and we think it tastes as good as fresh.
I weigh my coffee/water to keep the brew ratio the same
Yeah, I developed my current routine by weighing, but because I use literally the same containers every morning I can eyeball the amount of beans or water in those containers and know that I’m basically at the ratio I used to measure. Maybe tomorrow I’ll eyeball it, and then measure, to confirm I’m still calibrated at the right level.
I find some beans to be a bit denser than others, so I don’t try to guess that, but I can hit the desired water target range pretty easily by eyeball these days.
The hardest part of my setup was finding a grinder setting that works for 90+ percent of the coffee I enjoy. I order something new every time, so it gives me a good baseline, and if I want to tweak it, 2 clicks up or down gets me where I want without much fuss.
I feel like that type of place is really prone to worship a particular brand/substituting any knowledge or skill for consumerism.
Lol musician forum are always great for that. There ends up being a lot of work to convince people to just buy this one more new thing and you will have the sound you have always dreamed of. This either leads to people selling their last gear purchase to either buy the same thing in a new package or to rebuy what they sold off to buy their current gear, but now at an inflated vintage gear price. Or you get everyone buying the same thing and now you sound like every other tone chaser in your quest to find originality.
That’s why I love cooking communities. A lot of things really do just boil down to technique, and a substantial amount of the equipment necessary is commodity grade where almost any brand performs the same.
Good point! Even if you make something and it doesn’t turn out in a way you like, you at least have an idea of how you can change what you did that time to get something more like what you do want.
Hey, don’t call me out like that :'(
My fresh beans, burr grinder, espresso machine, scale, and milk frother have proven the facts of science!
40 minute steep in an insulated French press for me.
I can smell my neighbours coffee through the walls in the morning and I hate it. It smells like someone is smoking cigarette.
I think they might be smoking cigarettes then.
Quite possible but if you look on the web, I’m not the only one that can smell cigarettes in coffee. Apparently they share some similar compounds.
I didn’t really check if those links are AI but just look for yourself if they are not satisfactory.
https://brewmelikethat.com/why-does-coffee-smell-like-cigarettes/
https://coffeeplusthree.com/why-does-coffee-taste-like-cigarettes/
Sounds like they’re using those dark, oily, over roasted Starbucks beans…
“through the walls” is insane. Are you sure it is that and not through ventilation or windows?
Reads like an insulation issue
yeah they should issue some insulation…
