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  The Encore, much as I love mine, is not suited to espresso. There's a Vario on the way to take over.
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Jun 11, 2015 02:07
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Niice! Is that the breville double boiler one? How do you like it?
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Jun 11, 2015 02:26
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Ask me when I know what the gently caress I'm doing  It's indeed the Breville BES920XL. So far, I'm pretty impressed with the machine itself. It's not hewn from solid brass, and it probably won't survive being dropped out of a plane, but it's also about $500-$1000 less expensive than the next-most-affordable dual-boiler machines I could find. Breville offers a two-year warranty on it, and I've heard good things about their customer service, so I'm fairly hopeful about its long-term durability. As for actually pulling shots with it, I'll say it has potential. Between the lack of fine-tuning on the grinder side, and my amateur tamping technique, I've been making more of a mess than coffee. I've gotten more than a few gushers with a light-roasted espresso blend from the local shop, and some really short shots with my own darker-roasted beans. The short shots are obviously way too strong, but they still taste quite good, so once I have a more adjustable grinder and a better feel for tamping, I expect great things. I dialed the Encore down to a 3 this morning with the lighter beans, tamped the poo poo out of them, and managed to pull a nearly-proper double, so part of it is just learning. Dosing by weight has helped a lot, too. As for steaming milk, I'm still fumbling around, but it has more than enough power to quickly foam enough for a single drink, which is all I really need. Overall, I think it's a very solid value for ~$1200, as long as it lasts. There's not much else in the same price range with this feature set. TheJeffers fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jun 11, 2015 |
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Jun 11, 2015 17:57
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Any chance I could get some help troubleshooting my coffee? For a long time I've been making French press with preground beans with varying levels of success. Recently I switched to the CCD but haven't gotten the hang of it. I also picked up a capresso infinity and some of the goon roasted coffee. I'm a little bad at describing what's off about the brew. It's just... not very flavorful. Maybe watery? It just doesn't taste anything like the good coffee shops with pourover that I've been to. I'm following the CCD recs of 22g beans and 360g water. I've tried messing with time (up to 5.5 minutes) and grind fineness (through most of the very fine and fine settings). But since I only try this once a day for my morning cup it's hard to keep track of what's working on not. Does anyone have recommendations for the infinity grind setting I should use or how to adjust other things?
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Jun 11, 2015 20:26
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Try a 14:1 ratio
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Jun 11, 2015 21:04
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Amara posted:I'm a little bad at describing what's off about the brew. It's just... not very flavorful. Maybe watery? It just doesn't taste anything like the good coffee shops with pourover that I've been to. I'm following the CCD recs of 22g beans and 360g water. I've tried messing with time (up to 5.5 minutes) and grind fineness (through most of the very fine and fine settings). But since I only try this once a day for my morning cup it's hard to keep track of what's working on not.
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Jun 11, 2015 21:06
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porktree posted:What temperature is your water? Go just off boiling. Everything you've said indicates under extraction; since you've got the proportions correct, and your grind is "fine" - temperature is what's left. I have a Capresso too, but I use a moka pot to brew. My coffee is flavorful, but using a medium dark, just ground coffee, the liquid coffee comes out rather watery, not rich and dark. Again, it tastes good, though. Should I preheat my water?
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Jun 11, 2015 23:10
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Reinanigans posted:I have a Capresso too, but I use a moka pot to brew. My coffee is flavorful, but using a medium dark, just ground coffee, the liquid coffee comes out rather watery, not rich and dark. Again, it tastes good, though. Should I preheat my water? I would try it. I preheat my vac pot water which works on a somewhat similar concept.
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Jun 11, 2015 23:16
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There's a good handful of variables but in general a lighter roast will be more demanding of a consistent grind, and also want a finer grind than a darker bean out of the exact same lot. Lighter roasts are simply denser and less likely to cooperate with the lower end of grinders. If you're making moka pots or espresso at home on lower-tier grinders you might be best off seeking out darker roasts than the cutting-edge of specialty coffee.
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Jun 11, 2015 23:34
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So I heated up my water, used a fair amount more ground coffee (probably too much because it started leaking out some) and used a slightly less fine a grind and my coffee came out excellent. I think next time I will use just a bit less ground coffee, but otherwise keep things the same. I think the main problem before was that I was trying to use the very finest setting on my grinder and, as Sextro said, a darker roast doesn't require something that fine. Thanks y'all!
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Jun 12, 2015 02:50
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Tried hotter water and 14:1. Better, still not quite right. I'll try to get a darker roast next time.
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Jun 12, 2015 11:29
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 I got myself a Hario Skerton grinder and screwed up the first batch I made terribly. An online guide said to adjust the fineness about seven notches from zero to get a coarse grind for a french press. I interpreted this as seven notches on the screw rather than on the wheel.  The result was a batch of coffee that was pretty much what you would get from crushing beans between your fingers.
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Jun 12, 2015 16:03
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Skerton tip: You should get in the habit of loosening the top thumbscrew a bit after you grind a batch of beans. If you let it sit, it'll eventually get so tight that you'll need pliers to get it off in order to make adjustments to the grind level.
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Jun 12, 2015 20:48
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Also the Skerton sucks rear end the shape sucks and adjusting sucks. Get the mini mill.
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Jun 13, 2015 03:39
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Mu Zeta posted:Also the Skerton sucks rear end the shape sucks and adjusting sucks. Get the mini mill.
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Jun 13, 2015 18:26
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I'm selling my Gaggia Classic and including all the crap I've bought for it. I hate to see it go, but need to pay bills. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3725661
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Jun 14, 2015 00:18
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luvs2Bgraded posted:The mini mill isn't bad as long as you don't get a defective one where the top of the shaft where the handle connects gets stripped after a few months of use. This happened to mine, I was wondering why it wasn't mentioned in reviews I read. I guess it doesn't happen to all of them? Edit: It hasn't stripped completely, it still works but it's dug a groove into the metal of the bolt and the handle gets stuck on. HappyHippo fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Jun 14, 2015 |
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Jun 14, 2015 04:26
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My Hario Skerton does a great job. Of grinding spices since I got an Infinity.
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Jun 14, 2015 08:09
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People looking to cold brew: Container store has 1.5L glass jars. They easily work for 800g water / 200g coffee where 1L will fall short. I still need a better way to increase yields. 800g of water is lucky to be 470g of concentrate with squeezing the hell out of the filter bag. Then I've got to filter again because there's a ton of silt. I think realistically with my poor yields you could save ~40% vs just going to Stumptown and getting a growler of cold brew.
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Jun 14, 2015 18:14
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sellouts posted:People looking to cold brew: Container store has 1.5L glass jars. They easily work for 800g water / 200g coffee where 1L will fall short. dik-dik and I had a conversation going about this last year. 470g is lower than I was getting, but not terribly so. I've quoted the post where I measured my yield. becoming posted:Are you starting with 800mL water? The ratio of water-to-grounds will play a part too, as obviously more grounds will soak up more water. I haven't measured my yields lately, but I did way back when I first started cold brewing, and I never lost 75% of my water. I'll do another batch today and weigh the yield. If I had to guess, I'm thinking 4:1 ratio nets me about 600-650mL concentrate. To the kitchen I go!
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Jun 15, 2015 05:29
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becoming posted:Second edit - 800mL water, 200g grounds, twelve hours steeping, 534.4ml yield concentrate, which would equate to about 2,130mL coffee. Normally you'd expect to get that with about 148g of beans, so this is definitely less efficient than, say, pour-over. On the plus side, this is a good way to make something worthwhile out of stale beans that you were going to toss anyway. I'll measure yields from a few other methods and see how this compares. At something like 5.3% TDS (typical for 4:1 immersion) it would actually be more like the equivalent yield of 128g prepared with a pourover/drip method at the same extraction. How are you filtering that? Your water loss is pretty low. High strength immersion brewing is always going to be horribly inefficient because you lose so much of your yield to the full strength brewed coffee retained in the grounds. I have a really hard time justifying using twice as much coffee for the same result as the drip tower, but it is so much less hands-on. You're never going to get pourover efficiency, but I think you could get more out of the grounds with some sort of vacuum filtration setup. 
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Jun 15, 2015 22:45
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Bob_McBob posted:At something like 5.3% TDS (typical for 4:1 immersion) it would actually be more like the equivalent yield of 128g prepared with a pourover/drip method at the same extraction. How are you filtering that? Your water loss is pretty low. I haven't the equipment to measure TDS, so what I'm extracting will remain a mystery for now. That measurement was filtering through a Melitta 10-cup cone and a regular #6 filter. I carefully poured the jar of cold brew & grounds into the filter, then let it sit for about ten minutes while I did other things. Came back, put jar on scale, tare'd it out, poured concentrate in, recorded weight. I cold brew with free beans that have gotten a little old, so I've never been particularly concerned about its efficiency. I wouldn't splurge on Intelligentsia or Royal Mile only to crack the bag and immediately cold brew it. That stuff is too good out of a V60 or Wave...
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Jun 16, 2015 00:09
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So it turns out cold brew iced coffee is incredible, especially now that Dallas decided to flip the switch to turn out summer heat and humidity. It's the room temperature hot coffee thrown into a glass with some ice that I don't like.
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Jun 19, 2015 04:58
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Democratic Pirate posted:So it turns out cold brew iced coffee is incredible, especially now that Dallas decided to flip the switch to turn out summer heat and humidity. It's the room temperature hot coffee thrown into a glass with some ice that I don't like. Recommend you try the Japanese-style iced coffee as well, as you might like it even better. Here is a post that I wrote about it, including a pretty easy-to-follow recipe.
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Jun 19, 2015 05:13
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I might have to switch to Japanese-style cold brew because I love sharing my cold-brew coffee but it's getting kind of expensive to share when it takes an absolute fuckoff amount of beans for what feels like barely any concentrate. Do I dare switch to poo poo Starbucks coffee to try and save money? I'd roast my own beans but my landlord got super bitchy the last time I did that.
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Jun 19, 2015 08:25
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I find cold brew to be a bit more forgiving on bean quality than hot coffee.
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Jun 19, 2015 14:24
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Casull posted:I might have to switch to Japanese-style cold brew because I love sharing my cold-brew coffee but it's getting kind of expensive to share when it takes an absolute fuckoff amount of beans for what feels like barely any concentrate. For actual cold brew, sure. For Japanese-style iced coffee (which is not cold brew), I would use good beans. I cold brew with Starbucks beans all the time (Kenya has been decent for me, and Brezza last summer was pretty loving good), since I have a close relative that works there and I get their weekly mark-out. Some of the lighter roasts have been pretty decent - still would be darker than anything I'd roast myself, but certainly not charred to poo poo like their "dark" roasts.
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Jun 19, 2015 18:25
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P. cool video of coffee roasting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk9Jzt8pk7M
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Jun 19, 2015 19:26
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Casull posted:I might have to switch to Japanese-style cold brew because I love sharing my cold-brew coffee but it's getting kind of expensive to share when it takes an absolute fuckoff amount of beans for what feels like barely any concentrate. If you use the typical method, you immerse 3 oz of beans in a pint of water, but I use a liter of water instead, which is roughly comparable to hot brewing coffee (2.5 oz coffee per liter). It seems to get more extraction, and I don't notice the taste suffering.
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Jun 19, 2015 19:58
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withak posted:P. cool video of coffee roasting: Stupid question probably: Can you roast more than a handful of beans in a toaster oven? Is it practical? How big of a mess are we talking?
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Jun 19, 2015 20:34
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What's the goon-approved electric kettle? Is in the Bonavita gooseneck or this Cuisinart: http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-CPK...electric+kettle ?
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Jun 19, 2015 21:22
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Residency Evil posted:What's the goon-approved electric kettle? Is in the Bonavita gooseneck or this Cuisinart: http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-CPK...electric+kettle ? Bonavita gooseneck for pour-over, but the Cuisinart is outstanding for applications where you don't need the control over your pour.
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Jun 19, 2015 21:31
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You've been good to me...           ...and it's hard to let you go, but bills must be paid. Would anyone like to take this beauty off my hands? It includes the High Quality Espresso Parts baskets and the blank flush basket (for when cleaning) from Espresso Parts as well.
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Jun 20, 2015 04:11
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Steve Yun posted:If you use the typical method, you immerse 3 oz of beans in a pint of water, but I use a liter of water instead, which is roughly comparable to hot brewing coffee (2.5 oz coffee per liter). It seems to get more extraction, and I don't notice the taste suffering. Interesting. Do you still end up diluting the solution given the ratio?
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Jun 20, 2015 05:49
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I put a liter of water in, I get 3/4 of a liter out. Then I just top it off to a liter again.
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Jun 20, 2015 19:31
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As we're talking about iced coffee, the coffee chain I work for has decided that this summer, every coffee drink we do can also be made as an iced coffee, using cocktail shakers. Iced lattes, iced cappuccino, even iced espresso apparently. I understand that taste is subjective, but is there anyone who actually drinks an iced espresso?
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Jun 20, 2015 19:57
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TheDarkFlame posted:As we're talking about iced coffee, the coffee chain I work for has decided that this summer, every coffee drink we do can also be made as an iced coffee, using cocktail shakers. Iced lattes, iced cappuccino, even iced espresso apparently. I understand that taste is subjective, but is there anyone who actually drinks an iced espresso? I prefer it to an iced americano for whatever that's worth And frequently it can be better than some places iced coffee when they either just do it poorly or used flavored coffees that ruin all of their equipment and make everything taste like lovely fake hazelnut forever But no if I were at a legit shop that was actually trying I wouldn't order one
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Jun 20, 2015 20:18
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Try a shakerato instead: slightly long espresso and simple syrup, shaken hard enough with ice to crack the ice and get a bit of water in it. Actually super refreshing - even if it does work better with more typical Italian espressos, with chocolate and toffee notes, than with a super-acidic kenyan or the like. Oh, and in other news, new barista loaded double the coffee into our 5gal toddy when making cold brew last night. Note: the toddy filters do not maintain structural integrity when lifting out a double weight of wet grinds twelve hours later. Close was fun today.
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Jun 21, 2015 02:19
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I'm looking to dive deeper into the rabbit hole and start roasting my own beans. I live in an apartment with a poo poo oven fan and no access to a deck. How bad is the smoke with a whirley pop or HGDB? Is it bad enough that I'm better off going all in on a Behmor? Is the consensus that the upgraded control panel on the Behmor is poo poo?
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Jun 21, 2015 15:53
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biopanda posted:You've been good to me... guys, this + a PID from Auber Instruments (http://www.auberins.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=228) + a decent grinder = ROARRRR!!! if you are looking for some rocket juice on an (espresso) budget, get the Gaggia classic! yardblog posted:I'm looking to dive deeper into the rabbit hole and start roasting my own beans. I live in an apartment with a poo poo oven fan and no access to a deck. How bad is the smoke with a whirley pop or HGDB? Is it bad enough that I'm better off going all in on a Behmor? Is the consensus that the upgraded control panel on the Behmor is poo poo? You'll need to roast outside if you don't have a fan if you want darker roasts, even with the Behmor. I have the new Behmor and use it as a sample roaster, I find that its perfect for home roasting, as you can drive it to do whatever you want, as long as you have half a brain. Its not as good for testing different profiles for pro roasting, but thats not the intent of the unit. dhrusis fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jun 21, 2015 |
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Jun 21, 2015 16:19
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