Check out the explore link for a deeper dive. I got better results when I paid attention to flow rate. The latte art video is pretty good too. Articles devoted to milk:
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I worked some of my happiest years at an espresso bar.
Frothing milk is a lot like learning to use a clutch for a stick shift. You start to get a feel for it based on the sound and feeling of the milk as it is being frothed. Then just gotta experiment with slight tweaks of heat, air pressure, and depth of the wand into the milk.
Start deep and low pressure.
From the second article linked by ripdog:
After that it really depends on what kind of milk texture you want. The rest of that article says ultra fine milk bubbles will universally enhance the flavor of the coffee.
The other tip they point out that I guess is kind of foundational is that you are trying to create the perfect balance of pressure between the heat, milk, and container, so you need a milk vessel thatās not too small or itāll just whirlpool spew out the top.
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Thai roaster with the Japanese candy aisle aesthetic.
She (Bruna Silva) speaks perfect American English. If she did an English coffee Youtube sheād win the internet. ETA: Sheās a Q-grader haha jfc. A fashion model slash Q-grader where do I sign?
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Anyone had any clean coffees with no flavor defects that were easy to brew lately? Not asking for much haha. I am back to being extremely disappointed by most roasters and coffees. Maybe I need to start a Google sheet where we can track and rate roasters for quality and consistency.
Something like this but sourced by multiple of us. I like his reviews but this is single sourced obviously and dunno about potential conflicts of interest. One thing worth pointing out about his reviews is how he changes parameters around to see how it affects the brew trying to find it. Itās very detailed. I think @pvn takes notes like this guy but I tend to remember these things for at least a day or two and never write them down.
FYI Fellow is having a 25% off everything sale today. I just got around to watching part 2 of this tier list ranking. He says both Onyx and B&W went more into the experimental side of processing and demoted both of them. Same thing I was saying in here about B&W and I havenāt ordered from them in a while now. Thereās also more subtle stuff like Sweet Bloom moving to a Loring and he doesnāt like it now.
I will go check my notes but it feels like itās been a while since I had a bag that both dialed in easily and stayed relatively constant.
So I make notes on each cup and on the bag as a whole, and going through my bag notes itās a fucking parade of āinconsistent,ā āfinicky,ā ādifficult,ā and ātrickyā
damn
last one I actually used the word āconsistentā in my notes was a Burundi field blend from Sey roasted in late april, which I opened in early june.
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I did recently get a bag of this stuff from a local roaster:
it wasnāt quite what Iād call āconsistentā but there were some amazing cups in there. This is the first bag Iāve had from this guy and I just picked up another last week which Iāll be opening soon. Heās a relatively recent transplant to the area from Austin and he definitely knows what heās doing.
Right now heās running a popup inside of https://www.boycottcoffee.com/ two days a week, I have gotten some crazy good espresso from him, but itās a bit out of the way for me so I only go down there maybe every other week.
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this guy seems kinda lol. the first roaster he says is great but he puts them in āgoodā because he hasnāt had anything from them recently? OK, if youāre not comfortable, just donāt rate them! The 2nd was even more lol, heās going off āa coupleā of cups he had in their cafe (which personally I think is a terrible way to evaluate a roaster) and ONE bag? idk man, seems pretty iffy.
Yeah same thatās why I stopped taking notes a long time ago. My observation is that coffees tend to be consistent across roasters. Not really in terms of cup profile but whether itās easy to extract an A/A+ cup consistently. Iāve had the Elida natural from several roasters now and itās always great, like basically impossible to extract a bad cup. On the other hand, I stopped ordering from B&W after striking out on nine straight coffees.
Thatās one of the main reasons Iām skeptical of reviews like this. Thereās no way anyone is intimately familiar with dozens of coffee roasters because no one is drinking that much coffee. Some of his observations are on point though like B&W cratering, so I donāt think itās all useless information. This type of data needs to be crowd sourced, but itās more difficult than just posting a Google sheet due to issues such as rater effects, for example.
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yeah if the guy wants to just say āthese are the roasters Iām vibing with latelyā thatās fine
I like SEYās coffee but theyāre expensive relative to, say, Passenger and Iām not a fan of the current price per quantity trends taking over the industry. The 250g model will never be an optimal quantity from a home brewerās perspective for exactly the reasons we were just discussingāinconsistent, finicky, difficult, trickyāunless theyāre only selling absolutely foolproof coffees (those are rare). Hereās the breakdown on a current SEY offering:
| Weight | Price | (Price/lb) |
|---|---|---|
| 250g | $23.75 | $42.09 |
| 2 lbs | $65 | $32.50 |
| 5 lbs | $162.50 | $32.50 |
Good incentive to take the 1 kg / 2 lbs option which is something Iāve been doing more often since 12 oz bags are endangered and 16 oz bags are virtually extinct. It may seem like the potential drawback is being stuck with one coffee for too long, but itās only true at the beginning and then obviously not true when the reserves begin to encroach on valuable freezer real estate. The drawback is potentially ordering several pounds of mediocre (or worse) coffee.
Anyway, the point is about my changing approach to buying coffee. In the past, I erroneously overvalued the wide variety of coffees and roasters available. Iād typically order 2-4 coffees at a time and rarely use the same roaster twice in row, but any illusion that a high % of those coffees will be noteworthy vanished long ago. Iād estimate that maybe only 1 out of every 20 coffees I buy is truly remarkable and repeatable, and honestly the vast majority are average at best (relative statement b/c theyāre certainly better than Starbucks or whatever). That may seem nonsensical (āmost of [something] is averageā) but I find coffee to be closer to an all-or-nothing proposition with most of the offerings lumped together in one large boring cluster.
Also I trust your judgement and would order 2 lbs of this Burundi field from SEY but it appears they donāt have it now. The ephemeral existence of many of the offerings is another impediment to buying good coffee in quantity. Many of the great coffees Iāve had āsamplingā 12 oz portions or less were sold out when I went back to order a larger quantity. Iām a firm believer in rotating coffees due to palate fatigue or otherwise Iād just order Elida five pounds at a time and never give a second thought to any of this.
this is both correct and completely insane at the same time
like, watching that dude rating roasters in that youtube was kind of enlightening
like, saying B&W is āmediocreā or whatever tier that dude put them in is literally insane. Any random bag you get from them is better than 99.9999% of all coffee I ever drank before, say, 2010. Yeah, I get theyāre doing more experimental stuff now, that doesnāt make their āregularā stuff worse, just ā¦ donāt by the weird process shit you donāt like? IDK that dude really put me on monkeytilt.
But yeah, I get it.
And yes, 250g is an insane amount of coffee to sell. And some roasters sell their really special micro-lots in 100g bags! Itās basically useless. And by the time I get the bag, rest it, open it and figure out itās great, the roaster is out. So itās impossible.
Spent a days and a half in DC last week for a conference, made a few stops:
- Swingās Coffee - seems to have quite a few locations, coffee was OK, seems popular with the public sector mover and shaker crowd, wasnāt thrilled with the presentation
- Emissary - seemed highly regarded, barista was clearly overworked, shot was subpar but dude was literally drowning in orders and working alone, there were a lot of asshole customers in here
- Bourbon coffee - barely remember anything here, shot must have been OK
- Cupa Cupa Cafe - advertised as āEthiopian Styleā (seemed like just a really, really long shot with coarsely ground beans?). Pretty good, very friendly, and this place is also a weird and tiny bookstore and they are also a games workshop dealer. my kind of place.
- The Coffee Bar - A+++++++++++++ this is the place, great baristas, excellent shot, perfect presentation
- slipstream - seemed a bit trendy but competent shots with good presentation. guy seemed a little offput because I walked in at 7:59 and they donāt open until 8:00, whatever dude
amazing woodworking exhibit upstairs at the Renwick btw, some absolutely insane pieces
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Itās been almost two years of pour over practice and I still donāt have it down. I might be the worst scientist on the planet. So many variables to contend with
I recently discovered the long bloom. I was filling to about 20% and allowing a 10 second bloom with very mixed results. Then quite by accident, I got distracted in the middle of blooming and found a longer bloom smoothed out the flavor and bitterness. I looked it up and found some do a 1 minute bloom! So I started doing that with much better results
So my adjustments from my start two years ago are: A more finer grind. Lower water temperature. 1:16 ratio from 1:15. And a longer bloom time. Iāve also adjusted the speed of my pour to an aprox rate of 20g in 10 seconds finishing the pour at about 1:40 and between 2:15-2:30 complete drain
I havenāt been using gourmet beans. My current bag is Kirkland brand medium roast whole beans for $15 lmao! You can laugh, but itās still miles better than any store brand in a standard brewer. That said, I do need to try a bag of good beans. But then itās back to the drawing board for recipe
Happy brewing all!
I upgraded my espresso maker to this:
Makes a proper double shot and the Americanos Iām drinking are very satisfying and every cup is perfect.
Took ~5 (maybe a few more) cups to dial in the pico and get used to dealing with the ultra fine grind, but worth it in the end. If youāre looking for easy and consistent, try the pico. Amazon will give you a month to try it and you can send it back if you donāt like it. Bonus that your 1Zpresso grinder is up to the task for ultra fine grinding.
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Bought some Yemeni coffee beans from a booth at a coffee festival in Prague (link below). They were quite expensive (150 grams^ for 500 koruna*) but man you can taste the difference. Only made it via aeropress so far and itād be sinful to mix milk or sugar in there. Has an apple aroma and taste to it. About to make it via pour over now.
*23 koruna ~ 1 US dollar
^28.3 grams ~1 ounce