You clearly are a coffee lover, and I assume you must now have a high tolerance for caffeine.
How many mg of caffeine per day do you drink?
Anyone ever seen or heard of this? Someone brought this back from a Korean fair and I thought it was pretty good. Iād like to get some more, but canāt find it
Much easier and faster than my usual morning pour overs
Oh that was spread over like a week at a conference. I usually donāt have more than 3-4 cups/ shots in a day
- Baratza Encore
- Right now I mostly use a subscription service from Peets that is only small batch coffees, changes every month. Seems high quality to me.
- Make 2-3 cups of coffee per day at once every day
- Itās lended towards convenience pretty heavily right now. Typical for me is to grind, use my aero press inverted with a 5-10 minute steep, depending on how much time I got.
Iāll look more on xBloom. Only reason I was aware of this one is I saw some coffee afficiandos being super impressed about it.
As someone who does shift work that is constantly changing (6a-4p, 10p-8a, 12-12, 11-11, 2p-2a are all shifts that I work in a month) and a toddler I can drink any shit coffeeā¦ I just like good black coffee.
Honestly right now my biggest issue is that I have no idea what to grind various coffees at. I kinda guess at it but Iām just not picky enough to dial it in perfectly (and my steep time constantly varies because toddler interferes or whatever). Usually just do fine or whatever, but not ultra fine.
My pick would be Technivorm. Nice build quality, mechanically simple, evergreen since 1968, SCA certified home brewer. Itās a proven design over many decades. Still handmade in the Netherlands.
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Yeah I have a few from Japan. Itās bigger in Asia but there are some options here.
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Are you committed to drinking these dark roasts? That might be one of the few use cases where machines with PID temp control make sense. Itās still overkill because the cheapest Mr Coffee that canāt kick water above 195 F would do just fine for that. Now, if you intend to drink both light and dark roasts then PID is optimal, but that seems like a narrow use case. Itās sort of like buying a specialty cooker that can do the best medium-rare and well-done steak or something.
Itās dark and light roasts I think? Itās different every month. Dark Roast this month. Definitely been light ones before.
This is the coffee this month
I like mixing it up. I use the Peets small batch subscription mostly.
I was looking at āPreviously Featured on Small Batchā and all were dark roasts except for two medium Brazils that Iād bet are actually Agtron dark. Have you ever had anything thatās actually super light aka āNordicā and crazy?
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Definitely not on super light or ānordicā, but would be up for trying it.
Lightest Iāve had is probably something from HappyMug I got awhile ago. Shit at remembering the name but it was super fruity and I liked it.
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Youāve barely scratched the surface then. Fastest way to get there would be order a bunch of 4 oz samplers from legit roasters. The Onyx boxes are the best ones available today afaik. Also look at Peixoto since quality Brazilian coffees almost exist in a league of their own for being ānormalā in terms of flavors North Americans associate with coffee (cacao, nuts, brown sugar, baking spices).
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I outdid myself with this morningās pour over. Iāve been at this for over 2 years now and Iām still tinkering
First, there was grind size where I was going way too coarse. Think I got the right setting now. Then I figured out I wasnāt allowing for a long enough bloom time, so I increased it to 40 seconds. Then I started giving another rest at just over 50% thru the pour where I let it drain down almost fully before starting the pour again. All this seemed to smooth the flavor out
Then today quite by accident, I let it drain completely and it sat for maybe 5 seconds before I started my last pour. Well this had some effect because I wound up with the best tasting coffee yet. Just smooth and rich with no bitter or acidic taste whatsoever
Anyway, itās embarrassing that Iāve been at this for over 2 years and still donāt have my recipe down. I know you guys like experimenting with all the exotic flavors. I like that too once in a while. But all Iāve been really trying to do is come up with a consistently good cup of morning jo. Something strong, rich, but not too bitter or acidic and I think I finally found it!
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@Lawnmower_Man is that even a legit thing to do a 3rd pour like that?
So pour about 13% of water and allow 40 seconds for bloom. Then pour to just over 50% and let drain again for about 30 seconds total. And then final pour finishing at just over the 2 minute mark for just less than a 16:1 ratio and let drain for a total time coming in around 2:30-2:45 for the entire pour
This seems to give the smoothest flavor. Iām on the fence about swirling. Thereās not enough water to swirl for the bloom (but Iāve seen others do it). Iām guessing itās the beans Iām using or the grind setting, or the fact I only use between 40-50g of water. But when I get to the 180g mark, I can definitely swirl if I want to. Same on final pour. My understanding is that swirling evens out the bed, which is ideal. But I think the agitation gives a more bitter (or acidic?) taste, which I prefer not to have
Would appreciate your thoughts
Yeah itās a legit method and you can pour as many times as you want. The tougher part is trying to determine with any certainty what effect(s) multi-pour structures might have compared to single pours. Most of the claims and theories about pouring arenāt backed by quality scientific evidence.
The current thinking by people who might know what theyāre doing is that new pours of sufficient height and flow cause maximum agitation, whereas manual manipulation (swirling) may not cause as much. Thatās why youāll see places such as April doing an agitation pour for the first half of the brew followed by a gentle center pour for the last half. The number of pours x flow rate will also affect how much bypass occurs.
Swirling depends on the coffee for me. Generally I like to swirl to keep a more uniform bed geometry. Not swirling can lead to some whacky and unpredictable beds, and itās hard to imagine that those extracted evenly. Some coffees donāt handle agitation well though and for those I use one slow and gentle pour from low kettle height with no swirling.
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Oh I had a few big island cafe reviews
Waimea Coffee Company: really nice vibe here, great baristas, solid shot (no water or spoon), B.
Kohala Coffee Mill (I think this is owned by the Waimea Coffee Co people): great vibe (really chill patrons etc), shot was a little less than optimal, really great drive to get here, B-.
Coffee Girl (Hilo): very instagram-friendly, didnāt really have this place on my list but it was the closest non-starbux place when going to the Volcanoes National Park, it really seems like someone got their daddy to fund a hobby for them, shot was surprisingly not too bad, very cute little demitasse, kinda shitty location (buried in the back of a grocery store strip mall) but the vibe was OK, a bunch of european teenagers were in here being teenagers, C+.
HiCO (Kona): another place I just sort of ducked into, this time on the way to the airport heading out, great shot, no spoon/water, nice baristas, good vibes, B.
My hotel had a little coffee bar as well, coffee was pretty average but this is the view
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anyway, back at home Iāve been absolutely FIGHTING with this bag
Really thought this might be the worst bag of beans Iāve had this year, just could not get it dialed in, itās inconsistent as hell (two cups made with the same grind/water ratio/pour come out completely different) and Iām down to like 90g left and BOOM I just nailed three yahtzees in a row this morning, went from a total loser to complete champ and honestly I have no idea what I did.
I have this in xBloom pod form on its way to me. Iām really curious to see how my experience with fully automated setup compares to yours.
The xBloom dude said that this coffee started to open up 3 weeks off roast for him and has been its best at 5-6 weeks off roast. So maybe you just crossed an age threshold?