ah yes the “negotiator” I had forgotten where I had seen that idea
I guess this makes sense, I only remember seeing the clover in a couple of shops and generally it’s good but given how it works, I wonder why the aeropress didn’t take off in the aftermath. Personally I think the aeropress makes waaaay more sense for the vast majority of “third wave” type cafes, particularly for the use case Hoffman is outlining here (they want to offer a wide range of coffees from different roasters). V60 in my mind only makes sense if you really put in the time and effort to precisely dial in each bean wheras the aeropress is waaaaay more forgiving and suited for a volume operation where a barista just starting a shift might be making four or five cups all with different beans.
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I successfully “negotiated” a V60 filter into one of these pods using the other pod. Only problem is that they’re kind sharp on the inside because of the cube-shaped internal cutout to dodge the needle, so I ruined a few filters in the process by pushing down too hard. Once I got the seating pressure right, it seemed to work reasonably well. The cup was much cleaner than the one you get from the pod-specific mini filter.
However, the cups were bad this time due to incorrect grind size and hard water. So, I guess I’d recommend this method to people who want to brew on a pod machine at home? For travel, I feel like you either need to dial it in at home first or travel a hand grinder. And even then, you’d probably want to only pick coffees that are robust to water chemistry variance.
The heart wants what the heart wants
So I need to buy a new coffee machine. Need some recs.
Kind of a weird situation. No one in our house drinks coffee. It’s only when we have guests. Heaviest users are inlaws when they stay with us. We generally make sure to buy some (what we believe to be) good beans just before they arrive and just let them do their thing. You put the beans in the top put in some water and it grinds the beans, heats the water, and makes the coffee. I’m sure this Philistine level coffee making, but it seems to be fine as far as they are concerned. They like being able to program it to start itself at a certain time in the mornings.
So any recs for something that can do that?
Yeah that’s batshit. I’m in Malaysia now. Girlfriend has a french press and grinder. I bought my favorite beans (which happen to be grown in Malaysia) and I’ll be sure to bring back as big a bag as possible home when my trip ends.
I made coffee for my asshole brother when he was in town with a wacaco picopresso because it irritated me less than having to take him to a coffee shop. Watching him get heart palpitations was the good stuff.
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I had to google that
Makes a great cup if you don’t mind doing a bit of the work yourself. Highly recommend.
ETA: requires a super fine grind and I have a very nice manual grinder. I think @Cactus has the same one.
sure absolutely and if some idiot wants to lug a fucking machine all over creation because that’s their comfort/routine thing more power to them but it’s the end here that’s the giveaway. They seem to know that this is a hassle and they’re willing to leave the machine at home if the coffee at the hotel is of sufficient quality???
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xBloom?
That looks good, but I was hoping to spend about half of that or less.
They can’t grind the coffee then put that into a coffee maker? You’d get way more value on your money buying them separate. And if that’s a no-go, can they just settle for a pod machine? You can get some decent pods these days. I’ve made some pretty nice k-cups using refillable pods and dirt cheap Keurig machine.
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Yeah, I guess those would also work. I didn’t really think of them as I don’t drink cofffee.
What’s your best option for separate grinder and coffee maker?
I feel like this is getting into the traveling Nespresso problem from above: What level are these guests on and how good is the coffee you’re buying? Because if they are Dunk’n drinkers and not, say, 90 point Kenya AA microlot drinkers then I’m gonna recommend a budget setup. I’d have to check on the latest options and deals.
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yeah for normies (basically anyone who isn’t drinking single origin light roasts) you hit a BIG diminishing returns wall once you get past like a Baratza Encore. Also these people are already gonna have a big problem paying $150 for a grinder.
Machine wise, for dunkin-level or even like normie blue bottle beans, the differences between drip machines are going to be extremely incremental. Depending on how much they drink and how much fiddling they’re willing to put up with I might even suggest an aeropress at this point.
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Honestly, if Melk was hosting me and honoring my green room coffee rider list, I would not be opposed to a K machine. You can buy the refillable pods and put any coffee you like in there ground for drip. That provides flexibility you won’t get otherwise since you could buy preground coffee off the supermarket shelf, preground coffee from a specialty roaster, and even the single-use plastic (uh) pods in a pinch. Of course you can also grind yourself but that isn’t required. I could get better results out of that and the correct water chemistry than I could out of a $6,000 Jura superauto and bad water.
Preground coffee stales much faster, but for LRSO coffees off roast, rest after grinding allows for proper degassing up to a point. Barista Hustle (I think?) did a study years ago where they compared coffee preground on an EK43 to coffee ground fresh before brewing with an Encore or w/e. The results – in their opinion – were that EK coffee tasted better for at least the first several days, which seems totally plausible to me. And that’s for fancy pants microlot stuff. For the Krispy Kreme and Veranda blends, these effects would be greatly diminished if not impercetible.
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I think this hits all those requirements and is at least a good backup option. It is just basic drip so nothing special, but it has a burr grinder, programmable, all-in-one setup.
My inlaws had this and it worked great for a number of years. They are the type that brew multiple 12 cup pots of coffee every single day, so it got a lot of usage in those years and it probably only broke because of one of their 20-something sons messing it up, tbh.
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I think the last bag of beans we got was Stumptown, so I’m assuming they’re on the Dunkin end of the scale.