Life is too short for bad coffee - The Off Topic thread

Hodors Appletart

Weepsie wrote: »

Have you tried the "hoffman" method linked in other thread. Taking it off heat fairly early, running it under tap and getting something maybe the size of an espresso or maybe a little bigger.

yeah!

cnocbui

Another issue I have with mokas is cleaning the blighters. There is so much to clean and it can be quite painful, sawing your fingers off, trying to jam them down the top bit to rub the bleach around. The dishwasher can do a good job, but you have to prop the top bit in a clever way to keep the lid open and also remove the rubber seal and the risk to the hinge is considerable, on mine.

Cleaning the basket, it's holder and the group head on my espresso machine is all round so much easier and less time consuming than what's involved with a moka, and the resulting coffee is far superior.

Bigbooty

Calender recommend putting an aeropress (rinsed) filter on top of the coffee grounds in a moka pot. I can't say what it's like as I couldn't be bothered cleaning the damn thing to give it a go.

KnicksInSix

I really enjoy the coffee produced by my moka pot, at least a decade old three cup Bialetti, especially if I want something strong. Second or third to last setting on the Svart and Maher's Italian Blend. I let it to three or four gurgles and then run cold water on the base. Makes a half decent latte or cappuccino base too.

sioda

Weepsie wrote: »

I roasted my own with a heat gun a few months ago. Heat gun, pot and a colander. The results were some very drinkable coffee. I've bought worse. Did it outside though as the stuff flew all over the place.

Very noob question but does it pop like popcorn? Or is it just messy

cnocbui

This is the state of my thinking on moka pots and stove top coffee making:

caviardreams

Hodors Appletart wrote: »

Yeah it's weird to me to see a roast specified in that manner

Usually those "espresso" "pour over" "French Press" refer to the grind size

Roast is usually Dark, Medium, Light

Me too but you *have* to choose a brew method even when you select wholebean so who knows!

Krusty_Clown

sioda wrote: »

Very noob question but does it pop like popcorn? Or is it just messy

The beans crack, rather then popping (but sounds similar). The mess comes from the chaff released from the green beans (light paper-like skin from the beans), though I gotta say the popcorn popper lid does a good job of firing this into a container.

Brewed my first cup yesterday from the popcorn popper roasted beans. Very tasty cup, but got a slight vegetal taste from it, which I think might come from roasting too quickly (outside of the beans may have roasted ahead of the inside of the beans). Will taste again today and see if it has improved. Will try and roast another batch over the weekend and slow it down a little.

cnocbui

Slow roast in the oven at a low temp then finish in the popcorn maker?

alec76

Roasting beans at home could be quite challenging AFAIK , especially if you want consistency.
I’ve read people using small roasting coffee machines for Home , still weren’t satisfied with the consistency. Owen or popcorn maker hardly ever fit for the purpose IMO.

Krusty_Clown

cnocbui wrote: »

Slow roast in the oven at a low temp then finish in the popcorn maker?

The benefit of the popcorn popper is that the beans are consistently in motion, I reckon at a low temperature in the oven, you're more likely to dry out the beans and make the roast slightly more uneven, unless you're moving them constantly.

Actually, the flavour of my original roast improved greatly after a couple of days and while the specific notes that I was hoping for from a natural processed coffee (Ethiopian Nensebo Refissa beans) were not evident, it made for a really nice cup. This is where the €10K roaster and years of experience comes in! Have roasted two further batches since and slowed down the roast by hitting the off switch after two minutes, gave a far more even roast and some really great results. It takes 10 minutes per batch (80g green beans), from setup to clean-up and I gotta say I'm really happy with the results. I actually ran out of coffee this morning (no roasted or green beans) and had to nip-out for a €10 bag of roasted beans. Really looking forward to when my 3kg of green beans arrives (damn you Brexit!), and I get to experiment with different roast profiles for the three types of beans (at closer to €4.50/250g). In hindsight, I should have ordered the green beans from CoffeeMojo in Wicklow (€15 - €17/kg green) and I'd probably have them already, while supporting local.

cnocbui

Krusty_Clown wrote: »

The benefit of the popcorn popper is that the beans are consistently in motion, I reckon at a low temperature in the oven, you're more likely to dry out the beans and make the roast slightly more uneven, unless you're moving them constantly.

Actually, the flavour of my original roast improved greatly after a couple of days and while the specific notes that I was hoping for from a natural processed coffee (Ethiopian Nensebo Refissa beans) were not evident, it made for a really nice cup. This is where the €10K roaster and years of experience comes in! Have roasted two further batches since and slowed down the roast by hitting the off switch after two minutes, gave a far more even roast and some really great results. It takes 10 minutes per batch (80g green beans), from setup to clean-up and I gotta say I'm really happy with the results. I actually ran out of coffee this morning (no roasted or green beans) and had to nip-out for a €10 bag of roasted beans. Really looking forward to when my 3kg of green beans arrives (damn you Brexit!), and I get to experiment with different roast profiles for the three types of beans (at closer to €4.50/250g). In hindsight, I should have ordered the green beans from CoffeeMojo in Wicklow (€15 - €17/kg green) and I'd probably have them already, while supporting local.

I admire your enterprise. I might give it a go myself via the oven or wok.

I have 3 kg on order from Germany. It's coming in at an average of €7.27 per 250g for the three varieties I orderd - Indian Pearl Mountain (Ratnaguri Estate), Linden Kaffee from the Bugisu region of Mount Elgon in Uganda, and a Peruvian bio.

A fan forced oven would roast static beans quite evenly, I believe. As with a popcorn maker, adjustment of settings and method would likely be required, but I doubt desication is an absolute given. Opening the oven and agitating the beans a couple of times wouldn't be an impossible chore, if necessary. A quick look and there's a wikihow on the method, so it's likely it works. What did people do in the 400+ years of coffee history before coffee roasting machines and electricity? I'm sure there is more than one way to skin this cat.

My most frequent supplier (non-local) has 9 different raw coffees from €9.90 to €14.90 a Kg. I think I know where you can get 68 Kg sacks with the contents costing about €2.80 per kg, no Idea about shipping, but an incredible range to choose from.

Open a sack and shovel it into bags for a 600% markup. Money for jam.

The Nal

caviardreams wrote: »

I tried the lidl brown bag ones too - the zambia one is grand if stuck. Nothing amazing but drinkable as alec says.

Picked up a bag today. More than drinkable! Really like it.

KnicksInSix

Anyone know if you can buy Badger and Dodo off the shelf in Dublin? Northside would be great!

mad m

Talguetler wrote: »

Anyone know if you can buy Badger and Dodo off the shelf in Dublin? Northside would be great!

Not Northside but Farmer Browns in Rathmines sell 1kg of Blackwater

KnicksInSix

mad m wrote: »

Not Northside but Farmer Browns in Rathmines sell 1kg of Blackwater

Cheers mad m. I will be close enough tomorrow at work so I'll swing by.

fits

Aldi selling insulated glasses and tumblers next week.

Hodors Appletart

Any Roasters have a deal on an Aero or Clever at the moment? I need a new Aero

KnicksInSix

Bewleys have the Aeropress for €28.95. Noticed it when I was buying some tea earlier this week. Btw their shipping is quite fast, ordered Wednesday and received on Friday.

caviardreams

Hodors Appletart wrote: »

Any Roasters have a deal on an Aero or Clever at the moment? I need a new Aero

Velo have the aero with 2 bags of coffee for 37.0 and free delivery as it's over 35!
https://velocoffee.ie/collections/coffee-equipment/products/aeropress-and-coffee-bundle-1

Hodors Appletart

thanks lads

I'll do the Velo offer I think.

Krusty_Clown

Latest results from my popcorn popper roasting experiment, this time from green beans sourced from Coffeemojo (cheaper and came three weeks earlier than Adam & Russel). Definitely a little trickier to see which is home-roasted and which is commercially roasted:

The one on the right is from the popcorn popper!

Also playing around with different roast levels. From left to right, these are 5:00 minutes, 5:15, and 5:30, so you need to be pretty exact, or slow the process even more. Resulting coffee smells amazing and makes a beautiful espresso, but they're probably a little on the dark roasted side and the finer nuances of the beans are still lost a little. But I have 5kgs of various green beans to play with now and am no longer a slave to the delivery drivers for my freshly roasted beans, so really happy with the outcome.

M00lers

Excellent looking results..must research for myself.

adrian522

Great stuff on the roasting, what was the popcorn machine you were using?

Krusty_Clown

adrian522 wrote: »

Great stuff on the roasting, what was the popcorn machine you were using?

There's a picture here, but the model is Global gourmet by Sensio home. It seems to be a pretty generic Chinese-manufactured item. What's important about the design, is that it be heated from vents in the side wall of the chamber, rather than from vents in the bottom. Bottom heated popcorn poppers can trap the chaff from the green beans and when heated, can easily ignite. The side-wall heating element creates a circular vortex that keeps the beans moving and also blows the chaff out the top.

cnocbui

The €15 machine I got from Lidl had the same side vents at the bottom set up and would happily blow stuff out the top, before it died.

Nice work. Mondo del cafe seem to have quite a selection of raw beans to choose from if you ever feel like finding or trying more varieties and sources.

stuchyg

Anyone here using a sage dose pro or smart pro. Any good?

Looking to move on from my 50 quid Melitta. Budget around 230 or so, won't be used for espresso

stuchyg

Weepsie wrote: »

Got a timemore c2 and can't fault it, particularly at the price point. Going to be testing it against a 1zpresso q2 soon enough too.

Mostly v60, some aeropress and french press too.

30 grams in no time at all

Quietness would help too. Did you buy from aliexpress. Be v60 and possibly a sage precision brewer too in the next few months

Hodors Appletart

Just ordered a Clever Dripper - anyone else using one regularly?

I'm going to start off with the Hoffman technique

15/250, Water first then coffee, 2 mins steep, break crust, 30 second wait, then draw down.

Anyone want to suggest a method to me?

Bigbooty

Hodors Appletart wrote: »

Just ordered a Clever Dripper - anyone else using one regularly?

I'm going to start off with the Hoffman technique

15/250, Water first then coffee, 2 mins steep, break crust, 30 second wait, then draw down.

Anyone want to suggest a method to me?

I've found you need to start the draw down at 3 minutes but if you go finer or coarser then obviously you'd adjust that. Just make sure you add the coffee to the water as the first few times I added water to coffee. Wasn't as nice.

Hoffman's method is fairly spot on though. I've done a separate bloom a few times then added that to the water which was nice but it's probably not worth the hassle. Better just to brew a v60 if you're going to go for that effort.

Usually brew 19/300 with a medium coarse grind. I got one for the other half as it's so easy to use and she loves it. It's kinda hard to make bad coffee with it I must say.