Brontoforumus

Kayma wrote:I bought a french press for myself my wife for Christmas. I guess everyone knows this already, but Keurig coffee, it turns out, kinda sucks.

Keurig coffee is bad, but you don't know bad coffee until you've tried one of those Keurig-like drip machines, where you fill up the cup section with whatever coffee grinds you have and let it do its thing. The idea is supposed to be that you "reuse" the same cup, instead of buying new cups, but yeah. It is bad.

Somehow worse is the machine we have at my work, where you use little disposable cloth-filter "pods" instead of k-cups. It's way more environmentally friendly, since the pods aren't plastic, but yeah, it tastes like garbage.

are moka pots just a brazilian/european thing? Never had an issue with the coffee that comes out of them.

Moka pots are seen as a fancier French thing 'round these parts. It makes a good cup, they're just expensive.

Mothra wrote:

Kayma wrote:I bought a french press for myself my wife for Christmas. I guess everyone knows this already, but Keurig coffee, it turns out, kinda sucks.

Keurig coffee is bad, but you don't know bad coffee until you've tried one of those Keurig-like drip machines, where you fill up the cup section with whatever coffee grinds you have and let it do its thing. The idea is supposed to be that you "reuse" the same cup, instead of buying new cups, but yeah. It is bad.

Somehow worse is the machine we have at my work, where you use little disposable cloth-filter "pods" instead of k-cups. It's way more environmentally friendly, since the pods aren't plastic, but yeah, it tastes like garbage.

You can coax something that's almost not shit out of the refillable K-cups if you put in half-instant, but yes, those things are an abomination unto the Coffee Lord.

I am tempted to give Aeropress a try, I love my French press except for the last couple sips of chalk.

I'm not totally sold on the thing just yet, but... it makes a good cup, and the fact that you can control each part of it (how long it steeps, how quickly and forcefully you can press water through the grinds, what temperature you add the water at) makes me feel like I can adjust it. I am always in a rush in the morning, so, I haven't really been experimenting, but it's promising, especially for the price.

That said, I have no idea if the French Press is just flat-out better.

What I usually did with my Aeropress was grind two scoops of beans and put that in, fill it with boiling water to the 4 line, and press immediately. Then top the cup off with water and/or a little milk. Steeping it is an interesting idea though.

It's a great product for the all of $20 it takes to get one.

So after a few weeks of my cold brew coming out kinda chalky, I read some more guides on how to get it done right. I'd been putting the grounds in first, water on top, and then shaking the jar, but most every set of instructions I've read since says to put the water in first and the grounds on top.

So I figured out, over the course of a few tries, what the right amount of water was to put in before my beans. I got it down to where I was pretty consistent.

And then I got new beans and they're not working the same at all. Using the same amount of water, the same amount of beans, and the same grind, I'm now winding up with a heap of grounds that ends up piled way above the top of the jar and has to be pushed down with the lid (resulting in plenty of spilling in the process, and less than complete saturation of the grounds on the top).

My guess is that it's because the new beans are dark roast. Dark roast beans are oilier and I'm supposing that means they don't absorb water as rapidly as light and medium roast beans. But that's just a guess; it's not like I've got a bunch of different brands and a bunch of different roasts lined up so I can isolate the variable conclusively.

i'm glad nobody else knows what to do with their time on Earth either

If it weren't for coffee, I'd be spending a lot more of my time on Earth sleeping.

Hi Kazz! How are you, man?

So, my mom got the Chemex coffee maker a while back, and every time I'm back home I try it. Really not impressed.

I guess it's just a standard drip coffee, but man, the coffee comes out really weak and watery. Picking different grinds helps a bit, though not nearly enough.

From what baristas have explained to me, Chemex coffee is specifically supposed to produce the "cleanest" cup. Very little body, clearest flavor notes, due to very fine filtering. Not my thing either, I like aeropress. Been using french press at home to make 2 or 4 cups and finally have the hang of it.

Amazon.com wrote:The BIGGER Better Nut Milk Bag from Amazon is on its way!

So I bought one of these the other day at the recommendation of my brother, for straining out the grinds from a large batch of cold brew (which I tend to make on Sundays for the rest of the week).

It's gotta be better than the awkward three-mason-jars-straining-at-a-time thing I'm doing now.

I have a cold brew drip coffee maker at home, it makes the most amazing stuff. Diluted with milk it just tastes almost chocolatey.

I also started using a Royal Belgian Balance Siphon to make hot coffee at home. (Mine is made of brass, but otherwise the same model as the video.) Y'know, for when making a cup of coffee doesn't feel enough like performance art. But seriously, it makes really good coffee. I get all my coffee beans from the local roaster, and we have an electric grinder with settings from espresso to French press.

Mmm... genuinely considering that. I make a lot of cold brew this time of year.

Whoa, I am drinking tea made from dried coffee cherries for the first time, and it is....way better than I expected? Rich and dark and a little tangy, but no coffee-ish aftertaste.

My brother turned me onto this Vietnamese instant coffee mix. Adding a pack or two to a cup of my usual at home Vietnamese coffee gives it a little extra boost, and I think I might start to keep a couple of these at work for the days when I don't think I need coffee until I actually do. It's really pretty alright for instant.

I still haven't jumped into trying my own cold brew blends at home, which I need to do at some point, but when I want to make a big iced coffee pitcher for the week my go-to has been a copycat recipe from a place in Austin called Jo's Coffee. It's like someone figured Vietnamese coffee wasn't sweet enough as it is and wanted to kick things up a bit by making it taste like Nutella. I fill a pitcher with the following: 30oz espresso, 10oz cold brew, 10oz whole milk, 10oz chocolate milk, 2.5oz condensed milk, and a bit less than an oz of hazelnut syrup and whisk thoroughly. (This is a 6X batch from the copycat recipe). And yet somehow it makes me twitch erratically far less than the plain cold brew at work!

While I definitely still find that dark roast doesn't work nearly as well with cold brewing as light roast (doesn't seem to absorb the water as well), I've finally figured out how to get a good cup of coffee out of it; it's a matter of changing up the ratio. I do 2 parts water to 1 part concentrate for light roast cold brew; for a good cup of dark roast, I'm finding I need 1:1.