Nate has been roasting all of our coffee from home for the past couple of years. Here he is preparing to roast a batch of organic Mexican in his brand new Sweet Maria's T-shirt! Sweet Maria's is a website devoted to home coffee roasting - where we order all of our green coffee beans.
Luckily we have a patio so that we don't set off the smoke detectors.
I primarily use a French press, although we have two different stove-top espresso makers and a porcelain cone filter holder for manual drip. If it's cold coffee we're craving, or just want something different, we have a Toddy system as well. I like having the variety, but end up reaching for the French press 95% of the time. So easy, so good.
A friend of mine has been pushing the Aeropress for a while. I've had it in my Amazon cart for months, but haven't been able to go through with the purchase. Do you have any experience with it?
Do you primarily use the espresso machine, or do you have a regular cup of joe every now and then?
I have read a lot about the Aeropress on the coffee blogs. Some people seem to love it, and some don't care for it at all. It does not seem like a gimmick (which is good) but I sort of doubt that it would be any better than a standard French Press. I am with you - that is an easy and great way to go.
I have not made infusion coffee is quite a while. But we have two vacuum pots (Have you ever used one of those? I will break one out the next time you are here. They are spectacular to watch, and the coffee is good), and a couple of French Presses as well. When we travel we like the stove top espresso machines. I think they make a good cup.
The main reason I keep getting lured back to the Aeropress is that you can grind the beans as fine as you want. I'm pretty sure I'll end up buying one at some point.
A few years ago Mark gave Domi and me a vacuum pot that they weren't using. It made a good cup of coffee, but it died after only a handful of uses (it was a Starbuck's brand so we weren't too surprised). I've checked out a few models on Amazon, but they're a little more expensive than the manual methods so I haven't pulled the trigger.
I made the transition from coffee user to coffee fiend during my summer internship in DC. I frequented a market nearby my apartment mainly for a coffee stand operated by a freelance journalist. He roasted all of his beans in a large grill he converted into a drum roaster. He was friendly and willing to share his roasting experiences, but most importantly, his coffee was delicious. He gave me an old air popcorn popper he had outfitted for coffee roasting. He strongly urged me to ditch the blade grinder and pushed the Rancilio Rocky. $300 was a little more than I was willing to spend, but I decided that I needed a burr grinder. I shopped around, talked to fellow coffee friends, and ended up going with a Capresso Infinity I found on sale at a local shop in Madison. As it stands now, it is hands down the most used appliance in the kitchen (and the only one of my coffee toys I'm allowed to leave out on the counter). When the need for a second/replacement grinder comes, I will jump at a Rancilio, but the Capresso has been great. So great, in fact, that I got one for each of my parents for Christmas a few years back.
If I remember correctly, you had a Rancilio on your counter, right?
I hate to say it, but the Rocky is my backup grinder. I use a Macap M4 stepless as my day to day grinder. I have multiple redundancies in our coffee production. I have a La Pavoni lever machine as my backup espresso maker.
I also have two vacuum pots - one is that starbucks machine (it still works, and it makes pretty good coffee) as well as an old Bodum glass machine (the sort you need to put on the stove - it has a glass rod filter, which is pretty cool.
I don't have a backup for my roaster, though. And it is getting sort of old. I will have to replace it (it is a Hot-top) one of these days, too.
There is nothing like freshly roasted coffee or homemade bread.
First recommendation: Never buy pre-ground coffee (ground coffee has a shelf life of about 2 hours).
2nd: Don't buy roasted coffee in bulk (roasted coffee has a shelf life of about 2 weeks, i.e. buy what you'll finish in 2 weeks i.e. not Costco).
3rd: Don't use autodrip (ideally, your coffee ground should be exposed to water just below boiling for approximately 4 minutes, this is not the case in most autodrip machines).
It should be noted that not all autodrips are bad. Some are manufactured to actually make a proper cup of coffee and yours looks like it might be of that kind of quality. That being said, I still think you'd get a better cup if you used your French press.
4th: Use good, fresh, cold water (coffee is almost entirely water so bad water = bad coffee, cold water has more dissolved oxygen which results in a better coffee flavor).
5th: Only brew what are you going to drink right away (filling up the autodrip with 10 cups of water results in 10 cups of coffee right after it's done, and (10 - whatever you drank initially) cups of garbage water).
6th: Keep your coffee goods clean, but don't use soap. If hot water won't do the trick, vinegar is useful.
That being said, I will donate coffee stuff to you when I deem it unnecessary and/or excessive for my collection. No guarantees that will ever happen, but I'll keep you in mind.
8 comments:
What do y'all use to brew?
I primarily use a French press, although we have two different stove-top espresso makers and a porcelain cone filter holder for manual drip. If it's cold coffee we're craving, or just want something different, we have a Toddy system as well. I like having the variety, but end up reaching for the French press 95% of the time. So easy, so good.
A friend of mine has been pushing the Aeropress for a while. I've had it in my Amazon cart for months, but haven't been able to go through with the purchase. Do you have any experience with it?
Do you primarily use the espresso machine, or do you have a regular cup of joe every now and then?
I have read a lot about the Aeropress on the coffee blogs. Some people seem to love it, and some don't care for it at all. It does not seem like a gimmick (which is good) but I sort of doubt that it would be any better than a standard French Press. I am with you - that is an easy and great way to go.
I have not made infusion coffee is quite a while. But we have two vacuum pots (Have you ever used one of those? I will break one out the next time you are here. They are spectacular to watch, and the coffee is good), and a couple of French Presses as well. When we travel we like the stove top espresso machines. I think they make a good cup.
What do you have for a grinder?
The main reason I keep getting lured back to the Aeropress is that you can grind the beans as fine as you want. I'm pretty sure I'll end up buying one at some point.
A few years ago Mark gave Domi and me a vacuum pot that they weren't using. It made a good cup of coffee, but it died after only a handful of uses (it was a Starbuck's brand so we weren't too surprised). I've checked out a few models on Amazon, but they're a little more expensive than the manual methods so I haven't pulled the trigger.
I made the transition from coffee user to coffee fiend during my summer internship in DC. I frequented a market nearby my apartment mainly for a coffee stand operated by a freelance journalist. He roasted all of his beans in a large grill he converted into a drum roaster. He was friendly and willing to share his roasting experiences, but most importantly, his coffee was delicious. He gave me an old air popcorn popper he had outfitted for coffee roasting. He strongly urged me to ditch the blade grinder and pushed the Rancilio Rocky. $300 was a little more than I was willing to spend, but I decided that I needed a burr grinder. I shopped around, talked to fellow coffee friends, and ended up going with a Capresso Infinity I found on sale at a local shop in Madison. As it stands now, it is hands down the most used appliance in the kitchen (and the only one of my coffee toys I'm allowed to leave out on the counter). When the need for a second/replacement grinder comes, I will jump at a Rancilio, but the Capresso has been great. So great, in fact, that I got one for each of my parents for Christmas a few years back.
If I remember correctly, you had a Rancilio on your counter, right?
I hate to say it, but the Rocky is my backup grinder. I use a Macap M4 stepless as my day to day grinder. I have multiple redundancies in our coffee production. I have a La Pavoni lever machine as my backup espresso maker.
I also have two vacuum pots - one is that starbucks machine (it still works, and it makes pretty good coffee) as well as an old Bodum glass machine (the sort you need to put on the stove - it has a glass rod filter, which is pretty cool.
I don't have a backup for my roaster, though. And it is getting sort of old. I will have to replace it (it is a Hot-top) one of these days, too.
There is nothing like freshly roasted coffee or homemade bread.
If either of you stop using some coffee equipment and feel like donating to the needy, send it my way. My coffee is so bad, I rarely drink it.
Ernie:
First recommendation: Never buy pre-ground coffee (ground coffee has a shelf life of about 2 hours).
2nd: Don't buy roasted coffee in bulk (roasted coffee has a shelf life of about 2 weeks, i.e. buy what you'll finish in 2 weeks i.e. not Costco).
3rd: Don't use autodrip (ideally, your coffee ground should be exposed to water just below boiling for approximately 4 minutes, this is not the case in most autodrip machines).
It should be noted that not all autodrips are bad. Some are manufactured to actually make a proper cup of coffee and yours looks like it might be of that kind of quality. That being said, I still think you'd get a better cup if you used your French press.
4th: Use good, fresh, cold water (coffee is almost entirely water so bad water = bad coffee, cold water has more dissolved oxygen which results in a better coffee flavor).
5th: Only brew what are you going to drink right away (filling up the autodrip with 10 cups of water results in 10 cups of coffee right after it's done, and (10 - whatever you drank initially) cups of garbage water).
6th: Keep your coffee goods clean, but don't use soap. If hot water won't do the trick, vinegar is useful.
That being said, I will donate coffee stuff to you when I deem it unnecessary and/or excessive for my collection. No guarantees that will ever happen, but I'll keep you in mind.
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