Coffee thread

Lavazza Blue or Lavazza Oro. I especially like the latter, get a small packet because preground coffee turns shit RAPIDLY

You have absolutely no reason to buy coffee from Starbucks. Might as well get Aldi's Single Origin like some user posted in the previous thread.

Sometimes I'll grind 2 days worth of beans and leave half in the grinder for the next day. I've noticed that the grounds seem to develop a carmelly richness by the second day. Anyone else experience this?

Also, does anyone have a good recipe for a homemade Pumpkin Spice Latte? Preferably without having to buy meme ingredients.

Post shots

I only ever use Lavazza Oros. I have a Smart Grinder and I put it into a piece of shit Breville Espresso machine that I modified to cook hot.

How should a good coffee be made?
I'm an instant coffee drinking guy. Is there a generally better way to have your coffee?

I'm tired of meme coffees, I drink anything as long as it's all arabica and isn't toasted until it tastes like ass

You can have special coffees without being the asshole who says "meme coffees". Stop running that shit up the flag pole with morons. You just beshit the world.

Sorry I'm just sick of people who lump everything in together with commercialism and shit they might understand but the don't understand really.

You don't know what you're talking about so you say "meme" like a fucking teenage retard.

>You don't know what you're talking about so you say "meme" like a fucking teenage retard.

What webzone do you think your'e on?

All of you garbage people are subject to normal life.

Think again sweaty

re'm postnig

im partial to my french press. every time i try to percolate coffee in the vietnamese style im completely disappointed and drip coffee like you get at timmys or breakfast places is always just so watery

>boil lots of water in kettle
>put grounds in french press
>pour only enough water to make the grounds all wet; give it a quick stir or slosh if needed
>foam should appear
>let the foamy mess stand for a minute or two
>come back and top it off with the rest of the hot water
>put lid+plunger assembly on french press and press it down slowly (a normal 4-6 cup press should take you a full 5 seconds to press down. you should feel it takes some force but use the minimum you can to make the plunger move at all)
>draw plunger up quickly
>plunge down again at about the same speed
>let stand again to cool to a drinkable temperature
>enjoy coffee

chocolate powder is vastly superior when you want a ghetto latte.

same. when i get a coffee in a cafe and it tastes more like a day-old glass of red wine, im tempted to just walk out and not pay (assuming it wasnt paid in advance

at least you dumb cunts have found a place to waste your life.

Lavazza or Segafredo for me

>"oooh try java blue mountain, it's the best cofee of the world"
>tastes like cofee with lemon
I don't even know why more acidity means more quality, people is dildos in the head

Not our fault you don't know how to make coffee.

I still can't for the life of me make proper milk for latte art and I hate myself for it

it's always fairly liquidy for the most part and foamy at the top instead of thick and creamy to make great flat whites or w/e with

whoever can actually do this, what sources did you use to learn the technique? or can I get away with saying it's because of my machine or smth (I have a gaggia classic but no it's not the old italian one it's the newer one since panasonic or whoever bought them)

mix cold 4% milk with half and half and blend it for 2 minutes, it should have a nice microfoam texture.

literally the first time i foamed milk normally in a cafe with a proper steam wand i was able to do the typical leaf pattern every barista does on my first try

dont use a "milk frother" tho, ive done that and it simply does not work and is only appropriate for cappuccinos. you need the steam wand, man

tell us how you modified it, and what you mean by run hot.
t. DeLonghi owner

I am using a steam wand of course
thanks for not really answering my question user, you're really cool

>2 minutes
that's probably my issue, but after a lot less than that it got quite hot so my worry was to not burn it but I'll just try doing it for longer next time and see how that works out; was using cold milk

does it really make a difference if it's half and half or whole or ? I've only used whole milk so far

>Parents doctor told them they need to stop drinking coffee
>Get their ancient espresso maker, was my grandparents before them and makes the best coffee in existence
>Dorm has a Magnetic Induction stove and are nazis about who uses it
>Stove won't heat my new machine
Do the adapters work well or should I just get a little induction or butane stove?

It's aluminum, so it won't work on induction. Only ferric materials will. Adapters work fine.

>no it's not the old italian one it's the newer one since panasonic or whoever bought them)
Why did you do that? Might as well have bought a DeLonghi or a Krups in that case

You can temp surf, i.e turn on the steam for a set number of seconds (you'll be able to find how long for your model on the internet) until the boiler reaches a higher temperature before pressing the brew button.

it's been doing a perfectly good job in the 2 years I've had it
do you have a real comparison between the two versions? when I was looking it up I only saw very vague notices from people buying their first machine regarding the "quality" of various random parts that made no difference to me at the time
and it fit my budget for a first machine and figured I can just get a diff one if it turns out to be so awful
which of course it wasn't
this is just the average Veeky Forums coffee gearfagging, so unless you have any real arguments this is pointless

Shot

considering all other Starbucks coffee tastes completely fucking burnt I'll guess no it isn't.

The reviews I've seen have said that the interfacers are kinda shitty, lots of issues with them. I might just get a hotplate or a butane burner. feelsbad man, this coffee maker is so nice.

Your dorm aint gonna like you having a gas based heating thing.

What is you guys' favorite method of brewing coffee? I've been liking my Aeropress a lot.

This guy breaks it down nicely: "..lack of 3 way solenoid and the addition of a kettle type boiler, not to mention the 9 minute auto switch off and plastic spouts on portafilter, although the biggest issue I found were the plastic shims which are paramount to ensure a nice tight fit against the group head, these shims are not available as a spare part.."

Really it only looks like a GC it's not actually one. The old GC was a semi-professional machine this one is domestic at best

Lol, GC was always domestic at best. Semi pro *starts* with at very least HX machines, and I really wouldn't personally call anything that's not dual boiler "semi pro".

oh it is most definitely domestic, wouldn't ever bother getting something overly professional for use at home
>9 minute auto switch off
don't mind it but I guess it might bother some; I only make coffee for myself on weekends and maybe 1-2 other days in the week
>plastic spouts on portafilter
was aware and indeed it's a minus in terms of aesthetics and probably reliability in the (very) long run
>3 way solenoid valve
was worried when I got it and realized it didn't have on yea; the leftover pressure spouting thing never happened to me and beyond that I never really got the point of it
>plastic shims for the grouphead
not sure what is meant by this; on the outside everything is inox (?), so if it's on the inside, that might be plastic but I haven't opened it yet
but I knew a few parts would be plastic rather than metal in this version and overall lifetime would be lower; I don't expect it to last me a lifetime; if it lives for 4+ years to me it was worth the money

>Everyone drinks dark roast because it "sounds better"
>Light roast makes way the fuck better coffee, period

Why are you all so bad at life?

I can guarantee you put milk and sugar in your coffee.

its true tho. dark roast is for dumb retards who enjoy burnt flavours because it's "strong". personally i enjoy a nice medium roast

t. former part-time barista

you know, the hallmark of an immature palette is high sensitivity to bitterness

i like my coffee like i like my women, strong, black and free trade

user do you not understand nuance? you realize that roasting coffee beans to a burnt crisp does not contribute to the flavour but rather takes away from it? you do understand that only the most shitty leftover beans become dark roast? please tell me you understand user.

you understand that there are flavors OTHER than the ones you enjoy, right?

>groundshit from shitbucks

i mean if you enjoy shit all power to you i guess user.

Do YOU realise there's a difference between burnt and dark roast? Stop acting like a know-it-all just because you spent a summer working part time in Starbucks.

explain to me the roasting process user. what is the second crack?

How do you use it
I feel like a fucking retard using it and the included instructions makes awful coffee

Should I be using espresso grind?

Yes, it needs to be a pretty fine grind

>Do YOU realise there's a difference between burnt and dark roast?

Burnt and dark roast are different, but not really all that different.

I have no problem with bitter.
Bad coffee (dark roasts) are marked by high acidity and low flavor complexity.

Light roasts offer fruit, nuts, and a wide variety of other flavors. The only people who drink dark roasts are people who have both been taught wrong and are too stupid to learn for themselves.

Nah, same shit. Everything past Nordic roast is unacceptable.

I drink about 1L (6 coffee cups) of coffee per day

Dark roast is absolute shit and I find its usually opted for by people that either douse their coffee in cream and sugar or want to signal that they're hardcore coffee drinkers.

At the office I used to work at, there was this guy who would put twice as much coffee as required in the drip coffee maker and it would taste like absolute ass. I asked who made it and he turned and said "Oh haha, I like it STRONG"

And he would pour himself one cup and nobody else touched that pot.

it sounds like you are the one that dislikes coffee and cant handle coffee with actual flavor

What's your usual ratio?
If it's more than 1:15, you don't actually like coffee, you want sludge.

There are many cases of gear-fagging in the embarrassingly named "espresso-world" but unfortunately this isn't one of them.

>9 minute auto switch off
It's a problem because most espresso machines including the Gaggia Classic need at least 10 mins until the boiler and heavy grouphead have reached the right temperature.

>plastic spouts on portafilter
Apart from the fact that plastic is "nasty", the 2015 portafilter has a built in flow-regulator/pressurised basket in the portafilter which is a whole different story. It's a sort of "trick" to froth up your coffee and create the impression of better crema. However this doesn't have to because most people replace it with a bottomless portafilter to try and improve their technique.

>new kettle type boiler
This is important because having the coil inside your boiler spells trouble for scale-build up inside. It's also a much thinner walled boiler meaning it doesn't retain heat as well and isn't as reliable as a thicker walled one.

>3 way solenoid valve
Dries your puck, stops coffee from dribbling down after you've finished brewing and most importantly of all - allows you to back-flush your machine

>plastic shims for the grouphead
AFAIK it's the two black plastic looking semi-circular parts you can see on the inside of the group-head in this photo. If you run your finger on the inside of the rim of the grouphead you should be able to feel them.

The only thing you can *still* do is adjust the pressure down to 8-9 bar by loosening a nut in the new plastic OPV but that's about it.

I'm not trying to be a dick, it just seems that you're interested in the subject and a new GC won't get you far. In your place I'd sell it to someone who doesn't know the difference for about $100 and get a used pre-2015 model for roughly the same money (you can easily find them online for anywhere between $50-$150)

If we draw the semipro line at HX (fair enough) then the old GC is domestic and the new one is a toy. I called it semi-pro because its grouphead is one step below the E61 in professional machines and one step above whatever shit most domestic machines have.

Double-boilers, to me at least, are a professional feature and there's not much point in having one at home unless you live with a thousand people who all want coffee at the same time every day.

>e61
>professional
LO-FUCKING-L. This isn't Italy 35 years ago. No cafe that cares about shot quality would get within 50 miles of an e61. It's all saturated group designs.

The point of a double boiler in the home is premise temperature. HX is guesswork and outdated. It should go the way of the fax machine and die entirely.

>10 mins until the boiler and heavy grouphead have reached the right temperature
I've tried leaving it to warm up to various times, 3 minutes, 5, 9, 9+ and haven't noticed a difference in the result, so either I don't get it or it wouldn't make a difference for my machine

>most people replace it with a bottomless portafilter
I did this first day so I even forgot about it lol, you're right, that was a shitty realization to come to indeed and kinda pissed me off at the time

I am interested in the subject but at the time it was the first one and didn't want to spend a huge amount of money on it before knowing what I'm doing; I mean I lived on coffee pads for two years before this (was a student desu); they're already pricey in my neck of the woods, it was 300 euros, and quite frankly the better option for that money

it'll be at least a year before I "upgrade" to whatever but so far it's doing it's job well enough

gotta read up about that pressure thing, why's it better to be at 9 bar from the default 14 (I think) that all of them are set to?

Oh and yes seems they are indeed plastic, you can see them at the bottom of pic related. I guess they might wear our after some time. That should be a fun thing to realize when the whole thing just starts shaking lol

Kinda weird that they made these out of plastic, wouldn't it be easier to just use the original design without extra parts?

Yeah my point was that you don't need more money to "upgrade", there's Pavonis and old GCs on eBay right now for 100 euros. Anyway, if you're not gonna change machine focus on getting a good grinder if you don't have one already.

Espresso is brewed at 9 bar, 14 bar is too much and doesn't allow for proper extraction, they're made that way to be used with ESE pods. Google OPV adjustment 2015 gaggia classic and there should be some threads on it. You should see a huge difference in results, i did as did most people.

Well pretty much every change that Philips made to the GC in 2015 makes it more cost effective for them to produce it. They basically replaced the inside with the parts from other coffee machines in their Saeco line that meant it was cheaper to produce and got rid of parts that made the machine easier to mod/adjust/service but were pricier for them to produce. There was also some reason given about EU regulations but that only affected the 9min switch of and the buttons AFAIK, which is not a serious change.

so basically the innards of mine are like in this pic imgur.com/s98iLWq

and there's one forum talking about what I want to do but I can't understand shit of what they actually did to adjust the OPV, which I'm assuming is the right-most element with the red and transparent tubes going in
the thing on the top won't come off

and the video mentioned in there doesn't seem to exist anymore *siiigh*
I get a double shot in 20-25 seconds fwiw

thread in question
coffeeforums.co.uk/archive/index.php/t-34790.html
jesus I hate having to look through old forums

First off there's a good chance yours has the right pressure setting as many 2015 owners seem to be reporting 10 bar out of the factory (10bar in a porta-filter attached pressure gauge means 9bar in the basket) so before messing around with it I'd try to get a reading on the pressure with a gauge or at least try and measure the pressure with the the water/volume way (not sure how that's done but google is your friend).

"The plastic OPV was adjusted via the 10 mm brass nut, approx 2.5 turns. It is stuck with thread locker from factory once loosened I used millionth epoxy to bond the nut so it's fixed and to stop leaks."

Found this, hope it helps. Looks like that brass nut that you can see just before the black L-shaped piece where the plastic tube attaches is what you need to loosen.

ah figured as much, but I didn't want to pull too hard on that thing
I'll leave it as it is unless I get incredibly bored next weekend and decide to break my coffee machine lol
should also stock up on the epoxy stuff to prevent the post operation leakage

well at least I learned something new today

>just discovered chicory coffee
It's like the Dark Chocolate of Coffee.

lol that's wartime cofee

but bretty gud for sweets and shit

cofee is roasted to get more aroma from the oils, idort

more roast (but not burnt) = more flavor

Not like chicory as a substitute for coffee, but coffee with chicory mixed in. It's a whole different kind of bitterness that really is like dark chocolate type bitterness instead of coffee bitterness.

See if anyone you know has a pressure gauge portafilter or just order one of the internet I got mine for about $10. It's good to have one and it's really quite hard to know what pressure you machine came dialed in. I've been reading all sorts of different pressures on the internet after you I opened the link you posted.

I haven't tried out the other fancier ways because im a poor student but how i do it is
>take grounds, put them in a cup
>put boiling water in the cup
>let the cup sit for 15 minutes
>separate out the coffee solid particles with a strainer
>drink

Are you from Mars?

No? What made you think so?

Is this overkill for home-use? Got a good deal on it. Supposed to be a good but unsophisticated, commercial 2 group. Same company as Wega and CMA.

They're asking for $100 (no portafilters but I can get those easily), so it's worth the money. Just thinking it's too much of a hassle to plumb it in and have an external pump etc in the house. Anyone else have something like this at home?

who here /lunching/ out of coffee cups?

Pretty dreadful m8.

Wasn't too shabby, had a comfy meal

(same person)

I usually start by thinking what I want/need and then looking for stuff that suit those needs

so in your case I'd ask myself what does that thing bring me that other options don't and figuring out if those things are worth the hassle

tl;dr in my case that's extreme overkill and frankly it doesn't look all that great
it is oddly cheap imo but maybe there's good reason for that

>what does that thing bring me that other options don't and figuring out if those things are worth the hassle
Simply put, the inbuilt pressure-gauge/pressurestat and HX (however basic it may be) as well as the huge capacity boiler would all be a clear step-up from my current Gaggia Classic. I suppose if I sold my current machine it wouldn't really cost me anything other than space and the hassle/cost of plumbing it in.

The price is so low because it's been in storage for a year and I assume the guy wants to make a quick sell. He says it worked before storing it but won't guarantee if it works now (always makes me a bit suspicious, but I'm assuming that plumbing it back in to test it might be not be an option for him or too much hassle).

Most of all I'm concerned with the space it takes up and the hassle of plumbing it in. Unfortunately commercial quality HX 1-group machines are far too expensive even in used-condition because they're aimed at "enthusiasts", whereas old 2-groups from shut-down cafes seem to be the cheapest option to get into this level. Decisions, decisions

well my personal take would be that it's too big and the hassle of separate plumbing just for coffee wouldn't be worth it
note that if you want to replace it you're either left with the plumbing or have to commit to that kind of setup
so for me something smaller and easier to maintain is better

>tfw coldbrew and hotbrew taste the same to me
at least i will still coldbrew to have coffee in advance when im too lazy to make some in the morning.

I think you're right, I'm going to pass on it. Found a Isomac Millenium with an electrical fault for $70 so I think I'll go for that one. Whatever the problem it won't be that bad cost-wise as long as it's *just* the electrics.

If you're using good beans that shouldn't be the case. Coldbrew is definitely worth it even if it's just for the convenience but also in the summer when it's just the best thing in the world.

i mean. i guess its less bitter but not sure if because of cold brew or because i diluted too much with water.

desu good coffee shouldn't be overly/unpleasantly bitter regardless of the brewing method used. So either the coffee you use isn't that great or your technique is a bit off. Do you like coffee without sugar or milk in places that serve good coffee?

how long should i wait for my cold brew if i already grounded my coffee and its fine?

dont get the royal farms vanilla coffee its poisoned i think
i still have the taste in my mouth from yesterday
only get unflavored coffee guys

African or South American coffee?

My absolute favourite is Cuban, followed by Ethiopian. I love rich, earthy coffee.

In my experience Central American is consistently very good, whereas South American and African can either be dreadful or amazing.

CENTRAL