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Covered_Ears

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  2. Coffee Drinkers? (or other hot beverages)

    in Food and Drink

    Posted

    The Hario V60 is definitely a mainstay; if you go to basically any 3rd wave coffee bar. chances are their pour-overs are with that. Here are the brewers I own:

    • V60: it has a good chance of being fairly close to what the roaster would serve in one of their cafes. Said to bring out acidity and sweetness, but the V60 is so widespread that I consider it the "default" for comparison
    • Tornado: more consistent. A bit less pointed of a profile than the V60
    • CAFEC Deep: emphasizes brightness without acidity, but can make things a bit more bitter if you're not careful.

    In general, I think if you already have a Chemex, the V60 seems different enough to give a try. Also, it's not at all a challenge to alter the taste slightly by changing filter papers, technique, etc.

    • Like 2

  4. Coffee Drinkers? (or other hot beverages)

    in Food and Drink

    Posted

    ^^^ this as well. This family of shots can reduce bitterness; I'd say the Slayer recipe tends to require finer grinds but definitely decide on the recipe before dialing in the grind setting:

    Blooming espresso: preinfuse to 4 bars then stop; wait for 30 seconds; slowly ramp up to brewing pressure of 7-9 bars

    Slayer machine-type preinfusion: 15s of 2.5-4 bar, then ramp up to brewing pressure

    Londinium: fast preinfusion (I'd imagine you'd be pushing notably faster in this case on the Flair 58) to 3 bars, hold at 3 for 10s, then ramp up to brewing pressure (in this case, 8 bars); allow the brewing pressure to fall at about 1 bar/10s. Not sure how feasible this is on a springless manual.

     

  5. Coffee Drinkers? (or other hot beverages)

    in Food and Drink

    Posted

    11 minutes ago, Augsburger said:

    OK, starting to dial in the Flair 58 and running into two learning curve issues.

    First, when pulling shots it is taking way too long 1.3 minutes and way too much force 10psi, to pull a full shot. I think I need to work on the grind setting, perhaps the setting is dialed in too fine. I am trying to figure out the settings as I move the Niche back and forth between pour over and espresso.

    Second, once I have finished the shot, I still have a puddle of water on the top of the 54mm portafilter's screen. Oddly enough the puck seems to be relatively solid so it must mean I am getting most of the water through the grounds.  

    Any suggestions? 

    I've definitely heard from people who know more about espresso than me not to worry about the spent puck.

    It does however seem like you're going too fine -- I forget whether the Flair 58 has a bottomless portafilter stock but even if it comes with a spout, you can still tell that there's major channeling if the flow stops and starts. Ultimately when there's channeling it manifests as bitterness in the finished shot. Assuming good distribution, most of the time your espresso tastes too bitter, it's due to grinding too finely.

    Now, it sounds like the grind is too fine regardless of distribution but I would recommend looking into that a bit. A common "go-to" response would be WDT (Weiss Distribution Technique) plus an appropriately sized funnel -- I have the Levercraft WDT tool and that works like a charm. I do think that if you can get a Weber Blind Shaker (works with the 58mm baskets), that will be quicker than a WDT, which can be a bit inconvenient for morning espresso.

    I'm sure Jacob has some insights regarding the particulars of a Niche -> Flair 58 setup. Good luck!

    • Like 1

  7. Coffee Drinkers? (or other hot beverages)

    in Food and Drink

    Posted

    Mini-review of Colombia Decaf Rainbow by Metric Coffee.

    On the bag they put notes of apple cider, caramel, and citrus. At first blush it seems like "just another Colombian EA decaf" but I think it's in the leading 30% or so.

    As a pour-over you can expect a fairly interesting decaf, with all of those aforementioned flavors. It's not particularly complex but is a very approachable coffee, great for sipping. As an espresso, the most accurate form of apple cider I can think of is those Martinelli's apple ciders -- very apple juice-like, with some spices but definitely mostly the former. If you want shots redolent of apple juice and don't want extra caffeine, this coffee is hard to beat.

    • Like 2

  8. Stax SR-X9000 review

    in Headphones

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Juansan2 said:

    So I’m guessing we should wait for the “S” version in 3 or 4 years to solve the imaging problem……😜. 
     

    It'll be what the 009S was to the 009, but with a bigger price differential! What a steal 🤣

  10. Stax SR-X9000 review

    in Headphones

    Posted

    Many thanks for the review! I learned I'm hardly in a minority of people waiting for this. And I definitely hear you about how you characterize buying STAX; to me it seems like neutrality isn't a priority for them, which is a bummer for me as it is for me.

     

  13. Coffee Drinkers? (or other hot beverages)

    in Food and Drink

    Posted

    Thanks for the reassurance HS. I'll try to keep any comments about tea contextualized by coffee.

    I think pu'er (or other aged teas perhaps) if that's what they were drinking, is the closest thing in tea to coffee. One challenge I experience is going from an espresso in the morning to a high-end green tea in the afternoon. The latter is admittedly something I'm not acclimated to, as I drink espresso or pour-over daily while I drink tea quasi-daily.

    Interesting story about my percussion mentor and his former mailman. My mentor loves coffee and definitely has the palate for it, as he collects and ages some rather fine wines. His mailman at the time loved high end green teas, purportedly dropping hundreds on a purchase of longjing (tl. Dragonwell) one year. My mentor then went, "I wonder how it tastes?" The mailman said "I don't know if you could appreciate it-- you are a coffee drinker after all!" As much as I'm sure the mailman was poking fun at my mentor, there is some merit there. A good espresso is not sharp, but nonetheless strong. A high-end green tea in comparison is always weaker than a well-pulled espresso; even the unusually strong (by green tea standards) "Hunan Gold" I have is no exception. This changes for oolong tea and red tea (black tea in the Anglosphere) which have the necessary strength to be less of a drastic change from espresso; white tea may be somewhere in between.

    Anyway, anyone who wishes can message me or reply here for tea recommendations. Though, I haven't ventured much outside the incredible teas of Red Blossom and Song (both in San Francisco), and they are completely willing to recommend things too. I guess I have used proxy services to acquire certain teas from China's Zhang Yi Yuan though.

    • Like 2

  14. Coffee Drinkers? (or other hot beverages)

    in Food and Drink

    Posted

    5 minutes ago, Augsburger said:

    I looked at the Baratza line because they are in Washington where my youngest is going to school. So that makes a good reason to start, yes? From what little I could gather the Baratza line tends to do one thing i.e. espresso or pour over well and the other so so. The Sette 270WI was on the short list but lost it's place to the Niche. 

    As for the Lagom P110/P64, as I told Jacob, when they have a 50% off sale I will be all over that.

    Yeah, I'd say that's pretty accurate! The Vario+ and Vario W+ (and the Forte AP) are supposed to be all-rounders, but the Encore/Virtuoso/Forte BG/Sette 270 are all what I'd consider specialists (with all but the final one being best for manual brewing). Incidentally, when I got my Sette 270 it had a shim installed to make all the settings correspond to finer grinds, and the coarsest setting would be still a bit too fine for my average pour-over, I think.

     

    And yeah, the main thing holding me back from the P110 is its price. Even if I had the funding for it to not be a silly purchase, I'd still need to really think twice about buying it. Tight tolerances in the machining sounds good though.

  15. Coffee Drinkers? (or other hot beverages)

    in Food and Drink

    Posted

    I'm actually curious whether there would be any interest in a separate tea thread, since there's a significant overlap between discerning coffee drinkers and discerning tea drinkers (just look at all the renowned roaster-cafes serving Song Tea, which in Sey Coffee's words is "just as intentionally sourced as our coffees are"). Anyone have thoughts on this? I think another consideration would be that some people drink tea exclusively due to its milder effects.

    4 hours ago, EdipisReks1 said:

    I pulled a Rao blooming, or as best I can without a Decent or the SEP. I ground too fine, the shot never really came together (it peaked fast and I had to ramp down) and it pulled both short and long (1:1.8 in 40 seconds, not including the bloom). I took a sip just to calibrate, expecting to toss the shot down the sink and start over. 

    It’s… not bad. Acidic, but I drink light roast espresso; I find it rather pleasant. It’s not what I would call “sour.” Nippy, but also chocolate covered pickled limes. Really nice texture. Apples? Not a hint of bitterness. It was under-extracted of course  

    It’s not what I was going for, but it was interesting and not unpleasant. Certainly different flavors than I’ve had from this bean before. 

    Yeah, I'm always curious about how the grind fineness' sweet spot changes with blooming espresso. I used to pull Slayer shots on my Nomad, which would be 2.5-4 bars for 15 seconds before actually brewing without a gap (unlike the blooming espresso); this almost always necessitated a finer grind. I'm inferring that a finer grind is also necessary for the blooming espresso, though maybe not as much of a difference -- blooming by definition releases some CO2 and that'd likely reduce the resistance it causes. Not that I want to try dialing in something without the blooming recipe, as it's something of a correction for my setup not being top-notch.

  16. Coffee Drinkers? (or other hot beverages)

    in Food and Drink

    Posted

    I'm tempted to say "Augsburger, buy a Lagom P100". But I know that's mostly because I want one, not because I think that's the best grinder for this case. I definitely think Jacob is happy with his Niche, so there's one option.

    Another option is getting a grinder for pour-over and another grinder for espresso (if you have the space, mainly). A Baratza Encore or Virtuoso plus a Sette 270 is affordable enough; I have an Encore M2 mod plus a Sette 270 and if nothing else they've been reliable while getting the job done. I'm not sure if this is a boon in your use case, but having dedicated grinders means you don't need to purge anything (even if your grinders retain grinds).

    And yeah, I'd say be careful with which type of burrs you're getting if you can choose. For the SSP 64mm, unimodal apparently suits longer ratio espresso and pour-over, whereas high uniformity suits shorter ratio espresso (only if I'm remembering correctly here; going off what I think Hoffman said). Burrs are such a rabbithole -- I was telling Jacob a while ago that SSP sells tungsten carbide burrs, which are rated for 20,000 pounds of coffee. AKA "are you sure this grinder isn't going to be a family heirloom at that point?"

     

    • Like 4

  17. Coffee Drinkers? (or other hot beverages)

    in Food and Drink

    Posted

    1 hour ago, HemiSam said:

    At the risk of bringing up K-cups, I have a bunch of Nespresso pods in a shopping cart as I work through the old inventory.  BUT...I did find a compostable K-cup from San Francisco Bay Coffee.  A friend at work generously gifted me a couple and they were pretty tasty as far as this stuff goes.

    My dad actually has a pretty different coffee habit from mine, and since we live in the SF Bay Area, the most recent bag he bought was French Roast from San Francisco Bay Coffee. I think someone from the conservatory I went to also recommended it. AFAIK, they're one of the second-wave craft roasters. Not going to find a lot of particularly forward thinking coffee there, but, often quite good all the same.

    • Like 3

  19. Coffee Drinkers? (or other hot beverages)

    in Food and Drink

    Posted

    On 1/18/2022 at 7:08 PM, Augsburger said:

    I bought the VST as well but it is sitting next to the Flair while this Mignon grinder debacle is getting sorted out.

    Sorry to hear that; like Jacob said, espresso is already a pain, so this type of issue is salt in the wound. I've heard the others talking about this issue (albeit for the Oro single dose. Perhaps the same design flaw since they're both from the Oro Mignon lineup? the comments seem split between "well mine is working perfectly fine" and "yeah I'm getting the same issue") -- of course, no excuses for Clive there regardless. If this is an issue with the new Oro Mignon lineup, Clive probably knows about it but wants to discourage you from returning it. Which is worrisome to say the least.

    • Like 2

  22. Coffee Drinkers? (or other hot beverages)

    in Food and Drink

    Posted

    2 hours ago, crappyjones123 said:

    45g water, wait 45 seconds for bloom

    45g water, wait 30 seconds after every pour

    Ode at 1.5 with the above recipe has produced the best cup so far.

     

    Ah, are you doing 4:6 or something like that (seems like you're doing 5 pours)?

    There are definitely people who have gotten good results from changing up the recipe. Try something in this family (said family defined more or less by the use of manual agitation like swirling or stirring). One issue you may run into is it seems your Ode is grinding very coarsely -- the sweet spot for 4:6 is usually coarser, and you may not be able to grind fine enough for other recipes like this.

    Any thoughts on calibration, Ode owners? It seems like 1.5 for a good 4:6 means the grinder isn't calibrated fine enough.

     

    • Like 1

  24. Coffee Drinkers? (or other hot beverages)

    in Food and Drink

    Posted

    15 minutes ago, crappyjones123 said:

    I've gotten into coffee again and so far have been maintaining a healthy relationship with it this time around. Primarily, I've been cold brewing with coffee ground at 10 on the Fellow Ode in one of these. Over the past few months, I've gotten to the point where I can agree with the tasting notes for the most part and taste the stuff I ought to be tasting. With a V60, however, it all tastes the same regardless of what adjustments I make. Varied grind size from 0 to 6 on the Ode. Varied  water temperature on a Fellow Stagg EKG kettle. Maybe on a random occasion I might get distant hints of something familiar but I feel it's likely because I want it to be there instead of actually tasting it. 

    Any thoughts from the brewmasters? 

    I wonder how much the grind size varies on the particular Ode you have -- there's the general guideline of going finer and finer until you get bitterness, then going back to the setting right coarser than that. In my experience that's where the biggest changes in flavor occur from adjusting grind setting; if you're coarser than that by too much, adjusting the grind does less and less.

    Another thought is ratio -- how many grams of water are you using for each gram ground coffee? If this number is too high it would totally make sense to not notice changes as much (as the strength of the coffee simply isn't high enough for extraction changes to do much).

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