The superautomatics don’t produce bad coffee, they just don’t produce great coffee either. Semiautomatic is the way to go. It really only takes like a minute or two to grind, pour, tamp, and pull a double shot once you get into the routine. Some machines are trickier than others, like Tom’s silvia. My gaggia works great every time. If I give it 6 minutes to heat up, I get 190F with the proper pressure to meet my 22 second target.
NYC tap water is the best in the world, once you wait for the chlorine to dissipate. They use it to make Dasani.
It’s good to hear about some good coffee geekery/nerdery around here. I was a professional barista for 4 years, before having to give it up to get married and actually have an income beyond tips, but I miss the day to day grind of making coffee for sure.
Someone (Tom?) mentioned Vivace coffee earlier, as a great place to order espresso from and I’d have to agree. It’s a great place, and much of the current higher end caffe culture (I’m talking stands and shops that actually take the time to make a good shot, and not your places that offer 35 different flavors (Would you like a half decaf lime mocha, 20oz?)) comes from the training videos he put out. I watched them and learned from him, and then my fellow baristas through travel.
Tom’s got it right. Once you get the taste for great espresso, it’s tough to go and have something else. Living in Tacoma, I’ve got access to some great coffee in Seattle (Vivace, Zoka, Cafe Vita), Olympia (Batdorf and Bronsen) and Portland (Stumptown), but Tacoma itself is lacking in a place that will reliably give you an excellent doppio, americano, or even a simple short latte.
I find they make stronger and tastier coffee than drip coffee. Yes, they’re not great.
It’s hard to overheat the coffee: the perc makes a bubbling sound when the coffee is done (all the water has come up through the tube in the middle), and if you heat it too long the plastic O-ring melts. Then your whole house smells like burnt plastic, and there’s molten plastic in the coffee, so you won’t drink it anyway.
But that’s a minute more than pushing a button! If I’m in a hurry, I don’t even use a press, I use a Keurig pod-type machine. Yes, you can throw me out of the coffee nerds’ club.
NYC tap water is the best in the world, once you wait for the chlorine to dissipate. They use it to make Dasani.
I am skeptical: what’s your source? I have a hard time believing NYC has cleaner water than the many cities that get mountain runoff. And: According to the scholars at Reader’s Digest, NYC’s water isn’t exactly clean.
I think that any tap water could be used to make bottled water. They clean it before bottling it. They could use raw sewage, for that matter.
Boiling water is fine (and, in fact, desireable) when you are brewing. You definitely don’t want to keep it that hot in the pot, though, or you’ll end up with McDonald’s coffee.
I drink coffee in fairly large quantities, but I’m more of a coffee retard than a dork. I honestly prefer the taste of my own instant to cafe-brewed stuff - and it’s stronger and quicker. Coffee always tastes better now. Not that I drink this shit for the taste, or understand those who do. I also take sugar with it a lot more regularly than I used to as well.
Personally I am used to coffee the way my grandma made it when I was kid. It was a Sicilian thing. Grandma made perked (brown) coffee and espresso (black coffee) with a press thingie.
As a child I wasn’t allowed to have the good stuff. It would keep me and my brother bouncing off the walls way past our bed time.
But the adults would have little china cups of the good shit (no sugar or lemon, that would insult grandma) and stay up playing checkers for hours. Of course you could have a drop of Sambuca Romana in your second or third cup.
When I was older I got to appreciate a damn good espresso.
And it kept me bouncing off the walls way past my bed time.
The thing is, grandma made a fine demitasse of espresso. I honestly don’t remember what kind of coffee she used, but it wasn’t freshly ground. OTOH, freshly ground does get close to what I remember grandma making. There just ain’t no grandma TLC around these days. Guess it’s a trade off, eh?
I was surprised that anyone would think of refrigerating coffee, of all things. It’s not like it spoils or anything. Just use an airtight container to keep the aroma in.
A better place to spend your money is on a decent grinder. Burr grinders do a much better job than the entry-level weed whacker deals. A word of caution, though: avoid the burr grinders that feed the ground beans into a plastic bin through a notch on the side. These are the messiest things you will ever encounter! Static electricity makes the coffee grounds stick to everything, and coffee grounds will go everywhere whenever you pull out the bin. Look for grinders where the hopper feeds into the bin from the top. Harder to find, but worth looking for.
I had one of those horribly messy grinders. When the air was dry in winter, the ground coffee would fly off in all directions and coat half the kitchen as soon as I removed the bin. I also had one of those automatic machines that was supposedly self-cleaning, but as a matter of fact I had to clean it manually anyway. Much icky wet coffee grounds had to be removed from many hard-to-reach corners inside the machine.
Then I decided it wasn’t worth it and went back to just grinding my coffee at the store, keeping it in an airtight container, and pouring it through a Melitta filter. Simple and good enough for me.
I agree with that, and my father prefers it that way too. I’m just saying that I think the coffee snobs would suggest that the stronger and tastier coffee taste that you enjoy is actually because it is overbrewed and burnt. It has nothing to do with leaving it in too long so that plastic is melting and such; just the basic perc method itself is inferior to drip or press. Sort of like how people can like Starbucks coffee for its great taste and strength, when it is overroasted cheap beans that gives it that (in my opinion) gross taste.
Basically, I have no dog in the fight. I can drink perc coffee, and sometimes enjoy the stronger taste. But I think the coffee experts (for whatever they’re worth) would say you can certainly enjoy the taste of a Big Mac more than a well prepared steak.
Just stating what I have heard from supposed gurus regarding good and bad methods for brewing. In the end, I would hope everyone drinks what tastes best to them.
I only drink espresso and cappuchino. I got a small 15 bar machine here and feed it only with nice coffee by Illy and Lavazza. Drip coffee is hot brown water with bitter taste!
God, I have an espresso nut at the office. Uses a 1000 buck machine for work, has one at home. He even hooked up custom PIDs for better temperature control. He also roasts his own beans.
