I worked as a barista for years, including Costa, Caffe Nero, and high end independent coffee shops that get mentioned in guidebooks. What do I drink today? 'Barista style' fine ground instant coffee from Lidl.
I also worked in a ton of bars. Ask any good cocktail bartender what their drink of choice is and nine times out of ten they'll say a bottle of beer.
If you've had to spend a good chunk of your life fannying around with this marlarkey to make a living, more often than not you want nothing to do with it. Is it better than the instant coffee? Yeah. Is it worth the money, maintenance and hassle? Probably not unless you're loaded. If ever there was an indicator of a privileged existence, fucking about with coffee is it.
Yes, I know I need to stop being grumpy. I'm trying to work on it.
On a scale where one extreme is buying a refractometer to optimize every last aspect of coffee making, and the other end is instant coffee from Lidl, there is a wide range in the middle.
V60, Aeropress (only one needed, but I like both for some variety), a decent hand grinder, and good beans is hardly that much money (amortized over years of use, or "cost per wear"), let alone maintenance.
I bought these around 10 years ago (well, v60 twice, I broke it, and I like it ceramic, and I have to buy beans every few weeks), and they are still going strong. The process takes about 5 minutes total time, including brewing. I would never replace it with an instant coffee, I would rather stop drinking coffee altogether.
It does make traveling a bit tricky, as I refuse to carry additional gear around, and don't always have access to good coffee places.
I have to admit, in the beginning, I was looking for the holy grail setup like with other hobbies, but luckily, was not wealthy enough to sink a ton of money into it.
Same here, it's the Pareto principle in action. I even run a Chemex filter under a basic Mr. Coffee which works great since most of the benefit of a Chemex is its filters.
v60 is a really great middle ground. If I’m traveling and the coffee is garbage I’ll happily drink tea.
What do you do for beans? I got tired of paying $20-$30/lb for decent stuff so I roast my own. Costs $6-$10/lb for beans from Sweet Maria’s, which me and my wife go through in about a week.
> If ever there was an indicator of a privileged existence, fucking about with coffee is it.
I don't disagree but this is a little harsh for what can be a relatively cheap hobby and a great way to support local businesses. If someone is a coffee drinker anyway, has a spare 5 minutes, and can stomach like $100 entry cost and higher cost beans then do we need to knock them down for it? Sure people can go overboard and that's pretty gross, especially when the production side of things is not getting the same level of attention.
I think there's a sizeable difference between a $100 grinder + press/moka or whatever and a $700~$1000ish kit for espresso people are touting here as "fun, cheap way to learn".
This is hacker news though. The average audience member is almost certainly gainfully employed. Spending $1k on a lifelong hobby/daily routine is incredibly cheap in almost all regards except one upfront cost.
I agree that coffee prep is over-fetishized, but going to instant coffee seems extreme. At least to me, it's pretty disgusting. But spend like $800-$1600 on a nice grinder and espresso machine that lasts a decade or more, buy whatever brand of beans they have this week at Costco, and you can have really nice coffee without any futzing or making a deal of it.
People have interests and find ways to invest in them. You don't think there are people on "barista wages" who have saved up for a nice guitar and amp, or a gaming PC, a car that was a little fancier than they needed, or some kind of small vacation?
You can't have all of those things when you're scraping by, but some people outside of the tech industry do indeed manage to sort out stable finances and self-indulgences.
> You don't think there are people on "barista wages" who have saved up for a nice guitar and amp, or a gaming PC, a car that was a little fancier than they needed, or some kind of small vacation?
What does that have to do with people on "barista wages" spending $1000 on a coffee machine? Never happened unless they thought they were going to set up business with it.
$800 for a grinder and espresso machine? That's not bad at all. Compare with someone who gets a starbucks coffee once per day, they'll make back the $800 in savings in like 4 months.
This comparison never sits right with me because no one I know has ever bought coffee out every day. Everyone I know makes coffee with a machine, French press, aeropress, moka pot, or pour over at home. So an espresso machine is more expensive period.
You obviously haven't worked in an Australian city office. Every office has a kitted out kitchen, certainly with hot water and instant coffee, but very often these days an automatic espresso or pod machine - where it used to be a filter machine. Yet also outside those said offices (and even in the entry foyer) will be multiple cafés setup with queues of people throughout the day buying their flat whites. It's the new politically correct smoko (Aussie slang for a break away from work for a cigarette)
That doesn’t mean all or most of the people buying coffee are doing it every day— as you said, lots of coffee in the office.
I work (US) where there is similarly a selection of places to get coffee right out the door, and they are almost always busy, but most people I know are not using them every day.
A rough estimate based on the # of people working in the immediate 5 minute walking distance and rough estimate of time needed to order and crowd size— I’d estimate they sell the equivalent to one cup to between 5-10% of the population every day. A slightly smaller % of actual people since some will buy more than 1 cup.
In contrast, nearly everyone I know drinks coffee, or tea. They’ll buy a coffee when they really want to get out of the office rather than a few minutes away from their desk, or want to treat themselves to a higher end coffee than drip or weak pods.
Most people I know buy coffee every day and are middle class, almost all of them are buying machiattos, flat whites, lattes or capuchinos. Most of them could save money - especially in the morning and on the weeknds - with an espresso machine and a decent grinder. Many of them have found the easy in between solution of a pod machine.
Before I worked from home, when I'd commute downtown I'd usually end up buying a coffee on my way in, and then it grew to morning and lunch/early afternoon. Yeah if this isn't you then the comparison is void.
I know several people who go for a coffee once or twice a day at a cafe. Personally I do it whenever I’m away from home. Been going to the cafe every day for the last week.
I’d say this is very normal behaviour in Australia.
I mean, if you like French press then that's great! I used to, but am not such a fan these days. The press takes a lot more babysitting and futzing around. Grind the coffee, pour it in the thing, and the water, leave it for 5 minutes, come back and break the top with the two spoons. You've now dirtied 2 spoons, the container, and the press, so you gotta clean those. If you made too much for a single cup the rest will get cold and also too bitter. All of the batch will be silty if you're not careful.
I just like the taste of an americano better, and I can make one in about 30 seconds, and dirty no dishes other than the coffee cup.
The pour over is better than the press but still, you're futzing with the filter holder, using a filter, pouring over for a few minutes, and I just like espresso.
You greatly exaggerate the difficulty of a French press.
My morning routine: fill and start the kettle. Feed the cats. Open my laptop and check email from overnight or start my Wordle. When the cat that hates the sound of the burr grinder is done eating, press the start button. ~15 seconds later pour the grounds into my press. Go back to the laptop. When the water is done boiling, wait a few seconds and then fill the press. Tell Alexa to start a 4 minute timer. Sometime in the next 30 seconds to 3 minutes, give the press a stir to mix in any grounds still floating on top. Go back to the laptop. When Alexa chimes, tell her to shut up and plunge the press. Pour 2 mugs and take one to my wife. Done.
When the pot is cool, pour the grounds in my countertop compost and rinse the plunger and base. Wash it with soap if I feel like it or put it in the dishwasher if I’m really lazy. Set aside to dry until tomorrow morning.
Whole thing takes about 15 minutes and 10 of that is for the kettle to get to boiling. Meanwhile, I’ve fed the cats and got my Wordle score posted to my friends.
Larger grind size, shorter soak times, spoon off the light brown frothy bubbles at the top just before serving. All French presses will have more oils extracted than paper filter methods. The paper soaks up most of the oil
If you made too much? Are there people who are this into coffee who actually don't measure? That's crazy to me. I make exactly enough every time with a scale
Spoons only come into play if you care a ton about a little fines, not a big deal IMO they usually settle as the coffee cools. As for dirty stuff? I have a water boiler so I just throw in some extra water at 208 and rinse it, done. Easy
With a machine don't you have to clean the casing thing that holds the grounds?
Same thing with a pour over, there's nothing really extra if you use a metal filter. Use the same grind as a French press and they drain just fine without clogging and you even get some extra oils in the extraction. Again, measure your beans and water so you don't make too much. Who's really out here guesstimating on that stuff? Guessing makes for an inconsistent taste and inconsistent caffeine dose
So someone could buy a coffee every weekday for 10-20 months before equaling this one capital expense, and that’s your argument for why wage workers shouldn’t consider it expensive?
I mean, a grande americano at Starbucks here is $5, and supposing your partner or roommate uses it too, and that maybe a third of days you have 2 coffees, that would cost average of $13/day so yeah, you'd make it back in 800/13 = 62 days. But look, if you don't want to drink coffee this often, or are even less precious with how you like your coffee then it may not be worth it, I'm not judging!
I don’t want to pay $5 for the 15 seconds human interaction it takes to make my coffee order and silently pick it up when the very busy barista shouts my name. The 15 seconds are usually pleasant enough, a smile, please, and thank you. But human companionship at the equivalent of $1200/hour is pricey.
No one's saying that getting Starbucks every day is in the price range of a barista either (though they can probably get free coffee if they are still in that line of work). The relevant comparison is to the less expensive alternatives, like a hand grinder.
Classic "get into espresso to save money" lol. Espresso is definitely a pretty expensive hobby (tho doesn't NEED to be). But coffee can be cheap. $100-200 BIFL hand grinder, and like $50 for a brewer + tons of paper filters.
I am not sure I am aware of a great $40 hand grinder. I'd at least go for the Q2 Heptagonal, which is like $80-$100 depending on sales. Used I think you can pick one up for $60-70. But I agree on the french press. It is really forgiving. Worth buying a cheap electric kettle for convenience.
Hario Mini Mill Slim. It's not fantastic, but it's a burr grinder, and it's consistent enough for french press in my experience. Too slow for fine grind settings though. Bought one as a student ~15 years ago. Options were much more limited i.e. nonexistent at that time, but it's still my camping/travel hand grinder.
1zpresso grinders are fantastic and (as you said earlier) a buy-it-for-life thing. But if you're struggling with cost, a Hario is much better and not much more than an electric blade grinder.
Yeah. The 1zpresso grinder is really another level tho. The coffee will be much better than the mini mill. But I won't really knock it. I'd just suggest the upgrade if you can afford it.
I've used their grinders before and loved them, but they have some newer models since I last looked. The Q2 Looks like a great upgrade for my travel setup, and I'm at a financial place in my life where I can afford to do that (so likely will).
I have a younger relative who drinks instant or preground, maybe if I give him my hario he'll start grinding fresh
See if you can get one used for like $60 - maybe join the "Espresso Aficionados" (not just for people who like espresso) discord. They have a buy/sell section, you can make a post that you're looking for one.
You can also save like half the money by making that a hand grinder, and there's fewer parts to break. 30 seconds of mindless spinning really isn't much.
>But spend like $800-$1600 on a nice grinder and espresso machine
The issue with this pricing model is that it is entirely driven by lack of scale. Both grinders and espresso machines are well understood and pretty old tech. Sure, there are improvements, but I doubt most people can tell them apart in double blind tests from equipment that is 50 years old. Due to this lack of scale, coffee stuff gets into 1-2k territory even at the beginner level, unlike most other household appliances that are in the hundreds territory.
The only positive development I've seen here is that grinders from China (like df64) have become good and cheap-ish.
There are plenty of home espresso machines below $1000AUD ($600USD). Breville, Sunbeam, Delonghi, Smeg, Bugatti, etc. And many of them even come with built in grinders.
Personally I wouldn't use most of the lower end options as a daily choice, but if we're talking beginner level, the range is huge.
You have this all wrong.
Spend $150 on a grinder and $10 on a v60 and buy the best beans you can find and you’ll have excellent coffee. Too many people think equipment is more important than coffee. It isn’t.
The wife recently got some instant "espresso"-type instant coffee, and I was amazed at how inoffensive it tasted. Would never swap my whole beans for it given the choice, but it was drinkable. Methinks some progress may have been made.
I recently found some instant coffee that's almost good. I bought it for a hot chocolate x instant coffee but it blew my mind. Definitely not my first choice but it can be very drinkable.
An way to link it to class (and $1000 coffee setups) is to mention the weavers of Mosi ramie fabric in Korea, who traditionally do not own any items made from Mosi because there's no way that they could afford them. The fabric was/is reserved exclusively for the wealthy and the royal.
I think this is a common sentiment. Prolific coffee YouTuber, roastery-owner, and former World Barista Championship winner James Hoffman doesn’t do espresso at home, and says something to the effect of “home espresso is a hobby, not a way producing coffee”.
The guy undoubtably knows how to make coffee. But this is a silly opinion. I’ve got several methods of making coffee at home and the espresso machine is the cheapest, easiest, and best tasting result.
I've got the aeropress for something portable. Its good, it's nice, it's not as nice as an espresso but it a fraction of the cost and doesn't take up your kitchen counter space.
Most expensive without getting in to stupid hipster stuff is just a high end espresso machine, perhaps a commercial one. But the Brevile/Sage barista express is cheap and very good.
I'm not loaded, but I screw with coffee just enough to not have to drink instant. Besides the fact that instant (mostly nescafe) doesn't taste very good to me, it makes me poop liquid. Consistently. I don't know what it is - because coffee makes us poop anyway - but nescafe eliminates a lot of solids in my stool.
I have a pretty basic set up - cheap scales so I know how many beans I'm grinding, a Mr Coffee, and a Krups electric burr grinder. The results are Pretty Good To Me(TM) and my partner - who is not crazy about coffee, but likes what I can make for her.
When I want to get fancy I have a pourover that is handy for making iced coffee or some better extracted coffee than the Mr Coffee can handle.
I compare it to baking. We can easily buy a tray of Mr Kiplings or jam doughnuts from Asda, but we can also if we want to, get some flour and sugar and all that crazy baking stuff and have a crack at it ourselves. Some people go so far as to do that exclusively.
A friend of mine once said "everyone needs something to fill their empty shell of an existence", and that seems to explain a lot of things people do that otherwise don't make any sense.
I drink whatever the local barista pulls. The value I get from coffee is in the five minute walk and the minor social interaction. We've got an espresso machine at home, but ending up with a physical cup of coffee is the least important part of buying one.
When my mother was younger and coffee was first entering mainstream Australian culture, she claims cafes used to serve instant coffee. When I was younger I used to think this was an abomination, but now I totally understand.
I think we should differentiate between a fernet at end of shift, and what somebody orders when they go out for their birthday, etc. Maybe the same, or not.
Like, a shot of amaro would be my assumption of the modal stated bartender preference, and a shot of OGD or VOB would be my guess on the revealed preference. The bottle of beer I sort of doubt.
yes making music. No smartphone as primary phone anymore. Using old computer gear until it literally falls apart. (I am typing this on a Thinkpad X60 from 2006, fine machine)
IDK I can buy excellent specialty coffee for like $11 for 300g (15-20 cups of coffee) + shipping. How does that qualify as privileged? (I am absolutely privileged I just don't think this counts).
I love coffee and I have found a few places in my city that makes coffee I love. So I stick to those places and it really makes my day. Bad coffee makes me cranky! And instant coffee even worse! However if instant coffee works for you then great! :)
My wife has been a Starbucks barista for 17 years. She uses a K-cup machine at home. We had the fancy stuff but she doesn’t want to deal with that outside of work.
Not particularly, I just normally do my food shop at Lidl and it's both cheaper and nicer than the Nescafe equivalent at the local Co-Op. As far as black coffee goes, nothing beats filter but I can't be arsed with the hassle nowadays so I just buy instant. If I want a nice coffee, I'll go to a proper coffee shop to get one.
Also, if I'm out of the house and buying coffee from somewhere that isn't a coffee shop but does have an espresso machine, I'll almost always buy a latte. 9 out of 10 of these places aren't dialling in their grind and get away with it (for the average consumer at least) because the milk will to some extent mask out the resulting shit espresso. You notice it way more if you drink an Americano and sometimes it's bordering on undrinkable so I always just buy a milky coffee from these places instead.
This is exactly my set up! Although I adopted it as a PhD student precisely to avoid those expensive options in the first place. I've just never found any cause to change since.
Aeropress allows you to combine immersion and high pressure with a £25 device that largely self-cleans, and is small enough to travel with. It makes a smooth, rich-tasting coffee.
With electric grinders you pay for the burr, which is what really matters, and then an electric motor. But if you buy a fairly decent hand grinder like the C2 chestnut, you get a far better burr for the same price, and because of that hand grinding is really easy-going and quick. I enjoy doing it every morning.
There are some coffee enthusiasts that create over-complicated aeropress recipes, but the truth is that it was designed for simplicity. What I've found matters is:
1. Small-to-medium grind size
2. Stand upside down to immerse for longer
3. Use 80-85c water
4. Stir
5. Press gently
Obviously the quality and freshness of the coffee beans matters too, and you can vary the immersion time for the strength of the coffee you want.
I don't think there is any more pressure created when making a coffee with an AeroPress than with any other immersion method. The plunger is just to push the liquid through, it doesn't create any additional pressure.
There is. What effect that has is an interesting question.
Aeropress FAQ:
"The AeroPress filter is 2.5 inches in diameter so the area of the filter is 4.9 square inches. If you press down firmly on a scale, it is relatively easy to get the scale up to 25 pounds and then if you press hard on the scale, you can certainly get it up to 50 pounds. Therefore if you press similarly hard on your AeroPress while brewing coffee, the firm pressing will be at 5.1 psi (25 lbs/4.9 sq in) and the harder pressing will be at 10.2 psi (50 lbs/4.9 sq in). Since a bar of pressure is 14.7 psi, the former is .35 bar and the latter is .70 bar."
It does create additional pressure. I think the real question is if that pressure is in any way detectable. Think aeropress vs. French press. The pushing in a french press simple separates the particles, while the aeropress is indeed squeezing the water through the filter.
Maybe the pressure isn't directly having an effect. But a side effect is that you stop the brew process after a short period of time and that will have an effect on taste.
Don't bother with this. The seal created by the plunger is good enough to stop the flow of coffee. Insert the plunger at an angle so that you push out as much air as possible before straightening it out.
I don't see how it's any bother. You have to put the grains and water in with it upside down anyway, so whether you put it onto the mug during or after immersion involves equal effort. In my experience there's some leakage if you just leave it standing for minutes upright.
>You have to put the grains and water in with it upside down anyway
Wait, what? The standard method is to put coffee into the Areopress right way up.
Having tried upside down and right side up immersion, I can’t say it makes much difference either way. In which case, I’d rather not have a top heavy vessel of hot water on the counter.
It also has the advantage of being able to inspect how the filter is seated before you proceed. I’ve had instances where the filter is not seated properly and excessive agitation manages to unseat the filter. If you reuse filters (and I taste no reason not to), I observe that the filters bunch up a little bit more with reuse.
Anyway, I don’t mean to say that you can’t invert things. But taste-wise, inverted brewing may have no clear advantages if you just want a nice coffee.
Agree - there’s always a modest amount of dribbling, even with a very good condition seal.
I’ve never understood the resistance to inverted brewing - with 200g of water, it’s trivial to make it work with minimal-to-no risk of an accident upon inversion.
I did think of writing 'relatively high pressure' to pre-empt this pedantry.
Higher pressure than just immersion, much lower than espresso. How hard you push modulates the pressure, but any added pressure is more than in a French press or pour over.
I hardly think it's pedantry to point out that if you think higher pressure = better, pressing "gently" is an odd choice.
A full grown adult standing with their full weight on their Aeropress can achieve about 4 bar of pressure; standing at the counter, pressing with one arm as hard as I can, I'm unlikely to achieve more than 1 bar. For context, an espresso traditionally requires 9 bar to properly extract. It's doubtful that that even 1 bar of pressure makes any difference to extraction at all.
But assuming that it does, and you think that pressure is a good thing - why on Earth would you instruct people to press "gently"? Now you're looking at more like 0.1 bar of pressure. That's definitely negligible, certainly not "high pressure" or even "relatively high".
Very much the same. Aeropress user for 10 years now. I bought a metal filter years ago and it’s still going strong - probably the best upgrade possible. Not sure if they exist still - bought it on kickstarter.
This year I finally “upgraded” and bought a Niche grinder and reverse osmosis water system with instant boiling water (Osmosis Zero). Mostly for convenience rather than taste. But still using the Aeropress.
My Aeropress recipe is taken from some champion winning recipe and I’ve used it for years:
- Inverted Aeropress
- Fill with boiling water to heat it up
- Grind one scoop of beans (18g)
- Pour hot water from Aeropress into mug to warm mug
- Put grind into Aeropress
- Pour a small amount of boiling water in and stir to wet grind
- Start 2 min timer at same time as pouring in
- At 1:40 fill up Aeropress rest of way, put on filter and cap
- Let sit to 0:50 and pour out mug while waiting
- Invert Aeropress and put on mug
- Slowly press out coffee over the last 50s
- Done!
The only thing you need to adjust is the grind. If too astringent, use a coarser grind. If too weak, use a finer grind. Then enjoy :).
I recently bought the Fellow Prismo AeroPress Attachment [1] which is a metal filter and a new valve head which makes any inverted brewing method simpler and, to my taste, gives a more espresso-like result.
The number of times that I've watched the bloom encroaching over the top of it and then carefully prodding it to release some gas so it can drop down again. I need to be more patient, I think.
20s gives time to pour hot water and stir. It makes sense when you do it. Start the timer before pouring the first water. Idea is to wet all the grinds - if you fill it right away there may be some dry grinds on the bottom (especially with a finer grind).
Let's get down to brass tacks. What recipe do you use? [1]
Aeropress is also my favourite method. It's easy to experiment with the main variables than most other devices - water temperature, grind size, immersion time, coffee/water ratio. I find better than the French press - and I think the main factor is that you add some pressure to the process. Aeropress is also easier to clean.
Same here, except all metal French press instead of aero.
I started noticing differences in beans when hand grinding. Some are tough, and feel like trying to grind rocks. Some churn like butter. I'm not smart enough to know why, but that led to me buying the 'butter' varieties.
Best I've found yet is Red Bird coffee. Easy to grind and tastes awesome. Hardest to grind was Happy Mug, closely followed by SW. Guatemalan is our favorite, so same country of origin for all 3. (All 3 taste great, only referring to ease of grind).
As a sibling comment pointed out, lighter roasted beans are more tough than darker roasted.
But the variety and growing altitude also affect density. A high grown East African seed could be much more dense (and thus harder to grind) than a low altitude Guatemalan.
I just noticed that today myself. I opened up a 2lb bag of beans I bought from a former coworker's new roasting company, and the beans really took some muscle. Brewed up nicely in my pour-over.
Thanks, that actually explains why the easier grinding ones look a bit darker and 'oilier', I guess. They are supposedly all medium roasts...I guess that definition varies slightly.
https://lenscoffee.com/roast-levels/ for some comparisons, I didn't really realize it until I roasted beans myself.
If they are oily then it's more like a dark roast.
Like you, a Timemore C2 and a V60 here (plus a Clever Dripper for immersion occasionally). I didn't enjoy light roasts initially - too acidic! - but over the years, my taste buds have shifted to prefer fruitier, more complex coffees. I still enjoy balanced, non-bitter dark roasts as are common in Japan.
I also enjoy digging into the science of coffee brewing, though - finding out how exactly changing method, temperature, grind size, and brew time change the relative ratios of compounds extracted. There's still a lot of disagreement about the effect of temperature, for example (most experts say temp should be kept higher, while a minority of hobbyists go for lower temperature sometimes). It's a nerdy hobby.
that's what i use. it's OK.
if you know how to make it like that one cup i had that one time that was the best coffee i ever had, let me know.
for a while i knew what bean it was but that's lost to the sands of time/node_modules. El Salvador? it was definitely very light roast.
I have an aeropress and a hand grinder, yet I can't make that awesome coffee. I don't feel like I'm over complicating it so I must be missing screwing up fundamental.
This leaves bean choice, brewing time and grind size. Are there some really basic fool proof values to start with here?
I was also quite disappointed with my aeropress. I think it’s OK coffee just it didn’t match the hype/expectation.
I find the James Hoffmann french press technique - basically stir, break the crust, and let time and gravity do the work produces a far nicer cup of coffee:
We have a french press and a burr grinder. Brewing at 190F has finally made me able to appreciate the difference between various beans. DW prefers to brew at 200f which blows all of that subtlety out and leaves brew that is mild and suitable for mixing with milk and sugar.
To set my non-coffee-snob bona fides, I exclusively drink decaf (I've avoided caffeine for almost 10 years now).
The reactions this post is getting are kind of odd. A typical home coffee brewing setup is going to offer you just a couple of variables --- a set-it-and-forget-it grind size, water temperature, and the dose of grounds you use for whatever amount of coffee you brew.
It is not especially weird or "gourmet" to be interested in what the right values are for each of those variables. You figure out the right grind size and dial it into your grinder; you figure out the right temperature and hit that button on your kettle; you figure out the right dose and either weigh or scoop-measure that much grounds. Mostly what I'm describing is the simple act of brewing a cup of coffee.
I was a coffee snob whose health requires decaf. So far Kirkland (Costco) ground decaf is my favorite and most reliable decaf that doesn't taste like cardboard water.
Beware: he has limited decaf left, so if you really like it, make sure you order a couple extra pounds! Hope you like it. Give it a couple of weeks rest after you get it if you're getting whole bean.
I didn't mean it literally, my apologies if it came across this way.
I mean the response to nearly everything on this site could be described as "generally dismissive". So the responses are not odd, they are totally normal HN responses.
I use uBlock to remove all gamification from websites that I use, so I'm blissfully unaware of how many points any of us have. I'd rather judge comments myself than react to other people's reactions.
To me that's a weird question to ask then. FWIW, I try to address all comments on the content, sometimes - for highly voted commenters/submitters one just notices over the years.
Not to get all nerdy, but there's a couple missing variables: water temperature and evenness of extraction. Water temperature is pretty easy. For light roasts brew hot, almost boiling. For dark, brew a little cooler, maybe 88-90 degrees. Evenness is really the key. Now depending on your method you can do all sorts of rituals whether it's using some super thin needles to rake your coffee in your portafilter to remove clumps (WDT) or pouring careful concentric circles into your V60. But the easiest answer is to eliminate the variable by brewing with immersion. I'm a huge fan of the Hario Switch, but you could just as easily use an Aeropress, a Clever brewer or a good old french press. If you do immersion, steep for a reasonable amount of time (2 minutes on a Switch works well) and adjust the grind according to your taste buds (too bitter -> grind coarser, too sour -> grind finer), you'll be in the ballpark of good coffee very quickly.
The proper answer here is to:
1st) Study chemical engineering
2nd) Apply kinetic and thermodynamics models to a fixed bed desorption column
There are a large number of variables to optimize such as the: bed height, column diameter, particle size, pH, equilibrium constant for optimizing caffeine.
... Then to only realize that practically all you need to do is put the whole bucket of grounds in a small amount of water to and chew it for best results.
Because I need my morning cup of coffee before I can perform any elaborate ritual to create the perfect cup, I stick to immersion and my French press. Very satisfying coffee every morning. If I want something amazing, there’s about a dozen coffee shops I could visit that can truly nail that last few percent I can’t/won’t.
Yeah normally I use Fahrenheit like a heathen American but for some reason in coffee I go with Celsius. Guess it's cause my espresso machine's set to Celsius and it's what most brew guides use.
While it's certainly possible to overcomplicate things, I find that brewing a good cup of coffee in the morning is a pleasant ritual. Some amount of complexity is actually fun, although it's a different amount for different people. In that sense coffee is no different than hifi, wine, chocolate, weed, or any other sensory-driven hobby.
I think it adds a pleasant type of certainty to the day. Perhaps it engadges that part of the brain and switches focus from internal thoughts to the real world too.
My wife broke her leg and the 3 month old poops every few hours in the night. I still enjoy hand grinding my beans and doing a pour over in the morning, though!
I spent $700 on a decent semi-automatic espresso machine and burr grinder, learned how to make espresso correctly, and spend $15-20/12oz bag of beans. This translates to well below $1/16g of espresso. Cost of milk if my wife or I want it is negligible per drink. Considering that espresso drinks are at $4-5 for decent quality, this invest repaid itself very rapidly since we make 2-4 drinks per day between the two of us.
At this point, my routine is pretty much dialed in (pardon the pun), and is quite uncomplicated. Everything is on autopilot. I’m not operating at a very high level. A small amount of effort initially was all it took to get very good results. If I ever feel the need to get deeper into this hobby, the option is always there, and it will probably be there. As a hobby it’s a nice one, because there are lots of little ways to tinker. I could get a bottomless porta filter and play with that. If I really wanted to be spendy, I could get a manual espresso maker.
I haven’t worked as a barista before. I think maybe working as a barista causes you to have an unhealthy and sort of extreme relationship with coffee. If you are deciding whether to get deeper into coffee or not, as a non-barista, I can say that has been a lot of fun and a good way to save money.
Same experience for me! Never worked as a barista but it was actually a super fun and educational journey to learn all things espresso and coffee.
I bought a Mignon Zero grinder and a Delonghi Dedica with a non-presurrised portafilter for about $500 for both. Both are beginners friendly and for home use. I've learned all about dialling an espresso, the amount of coffee to put it, the duration of the extraction, the amount of coffee to get out and what role the cut of the coffee plays.
I've calculated that the investment will pay back it-self in a few months, ~5-6.
I went with a Breville Barista Touch at the beginning of Covid and my experience mirrors yours. I can even get locally roasted coffee delivered to my door. It was a big upfront investment, but it has already paid for itself by curbing my partners Starbucks habit.
This route is the same I took. The automatic machine pays off on your time for sure and just by having whole beans ground you will see an enormous flavor improvement.
But were you actually purchasing 2-4 drinks per person per day before getting this setup? If not, this doesn't pay for itself as quickly as you'd think.
Edit: misread your post. We were buying 2-4 per day between the two of us. The rate at which it paid itself off was quite reasonable. Considering that this purchase was not a major outlay for us, we didn’t bother working the numbers. But since we bought it three years ago, I can safely say it has paid itself off several times over at this point.
One thing I find interesting, though a bit annoying in practice is that coffee from the same materials and with the same process still can vary quite a bit. I've been using an Aeropress for some months now, and even if I keep all the major variable the same, it still tastes different.
I don't trust my senses here entirely, and as it's not blind I can easily fool myself. But the amount of agitation and differences in pouring might affect the taste here sometimes. Though my impression is that this is not always noticeable, but if I'm on the border of the coffee becoming bitter or sour it gets noticeably variable between preparations.
The other part that I'm quite sure of is that the temperature you drink at affects taste a lot more than I thought. If I drink the coffee too hot it tastes bitter, and it noticeably improves at lower temperatures (which is different from what I remember from cheap, pre-ground coffee, which tends to taste really bitter when it gets colder).
The beans taste different at an individual level so what you are tasting is an average of the beans that are used to make that cup of coffee.
Typically beans grown under similar conditions will taste similarly. Because of this coffee farmers will sometimes separate the coffee grown on parts of their farm into "micro lots" that contain particular individual characteristics.
In regards to the temperature you are right also. There is dynamic interplay between bitter, sweat, salty, sour and umami that goes on while the beverage cools. After all, brewing coffee is just applied chemistry whether you realise it or not.
The only time you should not trust your senses is when they are compromised or if you are someone who is highly open to suggestion. Even then your senses are still correct in your experience. You just can't extrapolate this experience out to a percentage of the general population.
Language makes also makes discussing taste confusing too because when people are saying "this tastes bitter" what they are often saying is "this tastes bitter to me" Also taste often gets bundled with smell so when people say "this tastes like raspberries" it can be unclear whether they are referring to the sugars, acids etc. that are tasted or the aromatic compounds that are smelt or both. Synesthesia can also be experienced too ie. things that smell like vanilla can "smell sweet" to some people.
I don't like the stock aeropress recipe. I too found it wasn't very consistent and sometimes gave wildly different results. I've found James Hoffman's aeropress technique to be fantastic though and much more repeatable--give it a shot: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VlT_jUVPc
The big difference with James' technique is that it spends more time immersion brewing, almost like a french press, vs the stock technique that's really rushing you to extract and then percolate with the push. I find the longer immersion brew is a lot more forgiving and repeatable as a technique.
Yeah as I've discovered, making it more like a French press makes it better.
So why not just use a French press? It's much less complicated.
My first week with aeropress, a majority of the attempts were dogshit. More dogshit coffee in one week than in 10 years with French press. And really only one way to fuck it up in French press. Forget it on the counter (10+ minutes). There's more ways to fuck up aeropress than I can count. I admit I can usually only count to ten.
the grind needs to be adjusted for room conditions (temperature and humidity). What typically happened in the cafes I've worked in is the barista would dial it in in the morning (by taste) and then adjust in the afternoon. Worth mentioning that these places use grinders with much smaller increments than your typical domestic grinder.
For the record, single origin beans for black coffee have lost most of their top notes 2-3 weeks after roasting
I got into manual lever espresso during the pandemic, and was shocked at how different the same coffee on the same grind setting would act under pressure at 10am and 3pm. Settings would be perfect for 10am, but a complete mess barely able to hold pressure as the water gushed through the puck at 3pm.
> single origin beans for black coffee have lost most of their top notes 2-3 weeks after roasting
nah. Sey coffee, one of the top roasters in the country (who also buys very high quality green coffee to roast), puts on the package "best after 2 weeks"
and it's relative, top grade coffee after it gets "old" (for whatever value of old) is still better than lesser quality that never tasted that good in the first place. I'm talking about aromatics, tea like fruit notes, etc.
The beans degrade daily. In my experience you have to grind a little courser as time goes on and they will loose the interesting qualities of a week to ten days.
Not my experience at all, at least with pourovers. Others have done blind taste tastes with beans upto 6 months out from the roast date (light roasts), which seem indistinguishable on pourovers and immersion brewing. The taste tests suggest that peak flavor develops at about a week out from roasting, and degrades very slowly - much more slowly than conventional wisdom suggests. The norm has been that beans are essentially stale 2 weeks out from roasting. These tests suggest that as long as you store your beans reasonably well, they're good for several months. Depending on your technique, the loss of the bloom might require modifications, but they're still good beans.
I can imagine that the same probably doesn't hold true for espresso, since the back pressure from out gassing is crucial to extraction.
The storage is the problem. How do you store them?
edit: I am thinking mainly of espresso and now that I fully read your comment, I see you acknowledge that. Espresso in a sealed bag is pretty good for months. But once you open it, the flavor changes day by day and after a week or so the special qualities are basically gone. There are various things you can try but I have yet to find a great solution to this.
This has been blind tested time after time, and at best nothing beats out a carefully opened bag that’s folded tightly. Many of the fancy containers are actually worse.
I think there are a couple of different things at play with espresso beans in regard to aging.
Flavor compounds: my understanding is that flavor compounds continue to develop post roast, with the consensus suggesting that 5–10 days post roast rest is required to develop peak flavor.
Outgassing: beans continue to outgas after roasting, and a tightly sealed bag wouldn't prevent it. However, once most CO2 has been lost, it doesn't necessarily imply that the beans are stale. Espresso techniques are designed around the back pressure from outgassing, and 'flat' grinds would pose a problem. I'm sure it can be addressed, though - by reducing flow rate, for example.
Stale: The real issue with aging is the oxidation of coffee oils, and that's where proper storage is required.
For an incremental $165, their setup could be very competitive with a multi-thousand dollar espresso setup. The trick is to get a pair of kitchen tongs, and heat the stainless steel cylinder in the pour over kettle with the water for the espresso. (The tongs are needed to remove the cylinder from the hot water. I’ve found 208F is ideal across many different types of espresso beans.)
I think the baratza grinder they use will be passable for espresso (I blew the money I saved on the espresso machine on a nicer grinder.)
Other than cost, this setup has an additional benefit over conventional machines: Most have a boiler that contains brass parts, which adds lead to the water. This doesn’t matter in coffee shops, since there is high water flow through the machine. However, for home use, the water sits in the boiler for roughly a month, leaching a ton of lead per shot of espresso.
Of course, I’m hoping they take my advice and publish the results. I don’t own a brix refractometer.
Want to taste coffee? Switch to light roasts. Want coffee flavored drink? Do whatever, mixing it with cream and sugar and flavor will make all the prep in the world pointless.
For real though, light roasts and a couple different beans and you'll really be able to taste the differences. I'm not talking subtle either. There will be some you hate, some you love and some that make you go "wait! That's coffee?"
I disagree with this. It's clearly personal preference. As an ex barista, I used to enjoy the shit that knocked your fucking socks off, which was always dark roasts. The sort of stuff that is standard fare in mediterranean countries. My absolute favourite however was Indian coffee. I used to describe that to customers as like being punched in the face by a film noir detective. Real good shit.
> I disagree with this. It's clearly personal preference.
you are correct that you might like the taste of dark roasted coffee as a personal preference, but that's not a "quality" quality, it's a taste preference. But you can make that strong dark coffee out of virtually any beans, just roast them to near death, it doesn't matter what you start with. Like chocolatey notes? you're in luck! that's called Brazilian coffee, and it's really really cheap to buy the beans.
You may not like more lightly roasted tea-like coffee flavors, but they have more distinct differences, fruit notes, etc, that you would easily be able to taste and differentiate between, even if it's not your preference.
being a barrista gives you a leg up on knowing about the coffee you tried regularly, but not on the coffee you haven't, and it takes a substantial amount of time to develop a palate, as with wine tasting.
> being a barrista gives you a leg up on knowing about the coffee you tried regularly
we used to have two different guest blends every week at one of the coffee shops I used to work at. So I've tasted a lot of different varieties of coffee. I prefer dark roasted coffee.
And no, you can't make what I'm talking about out of 'virtually any beans'. You can make burnt, shit coffee out of any beans. They are different things.
Just because you have a preference for light fruity coffee does not mean you get to determine what is 'quality' for the rest of us.
I'm judging quality as the market judges quality which generally equals higher priced (the only exception are coffees (or wines etc.) have "brand" recognition or are near tourist areas and the tourists drive the prices up in the excitement of buying from where they are, Kona.)
dark roasting coffee decreases the subtle differences between beans. The more you roast, the more the aromatics disappear. full stop, theres no way around it. You are not going to buy the most expensive coffees to dark roast unless you are a fool. But as you say, there are differences between heavily roasted beans, as an example I mentioned, some might have chocalate notes.
If you search for "Indian coffee Bibi Plantation" you should be able to find some. It makes for crazy good filter coffee. Probably wouldn't recommend it for espresso unless you're going to mix it into a custom blend. Blends are normally better than single origins for espresso.
I haven't had any in a long time. You used to be able to buy it from HasBean but they don't sell it any more but there seems to be quite a few places you can still get it. Indian coffee from the Bibi plantation:
I agree that cream, sugar, milk, ice, chocolate, caramel, and other additives disguises the flavor of coffee; I think that's pretty hard to dispute. That's what a lot of people want — usually people in front of me in line at the coffee shop.
I don't agree that light roasts are the only way to taste the real flavor of coffee. Both the bean and the roast are components of the flavor, and the lighter roasts just push the slider more toward the side of tasting the bean, at the expense of the roast. Often, for my taste, the result is too acidic and sour, and often really inconsistent.
The reason to roast coffee to different levels is because it brings out different flavors at every level. The right level of roasting will depend on the person, and certainly on the bean: there is no One True Way that results in "the flavor of coffee". That's why some roasters are better than others, and why roasting machines don't just have one big button that says "light roast".
I understand that this idea of "adding anything destroys the flavor" is popular and widespread, but it's a really odd thing to think. That's not how cooking or taste buds work, so why would it apply especially to coffee?
Chocolate is in a similar flavor profile so it does mask something from the coffee. But a small amount of dairy really doesn't mask much, except perhaps in highly acidic brews. Sugar does nothing to cover the flavor of coffee unless it's in quite large amounts (which, yeah, Starbucks does that).
Many of the best flavors in life take time to get used to. Blue cheese, durian, whiskey, coffee. Just because you don't like something immediately doesn't mean it won't grow on you.
Or maybe it won't. I personally really dislike whiskey. And I'm Irish, I've tried a lot of good whiskeys. Still tastes bad to me.
I've never had durian, but I liked the rest of that stuff right off the bat. Really I get pickier over time. I'd probably dump out the thin black coffee I used to buy at high school football games if I had it now.
The last "light roast" coffee I had tasted fruity and tea-like. I hated it. I don't care if medium and darker tends to be more one-note; I want coffee to taste like coffee.
Coffee is a berry. "Tasting like coffee" includes those fruit aspects, because it is literally a fruit. Bringing out its natural fruity characteristics requires quality, fresh beans and a very competent roaster. Fruity and tea-like is exactly one of the aspects I go for when seeking out coffee.
Roasting to a higher level has been popular historically because it can cover up all sorts of faults, but still give a consistent character. Most of us grow up only tasting that.
But find a high quality lightly roasted specialty coffee, or even roast your own beans... and there's so many nuances there that are missed when clobbered with a high roast level.
So yes, I want my coffee to taste like coffee too. Like the coffee berry.
Coffee's the seed of a berry fruit. You're not really contradicting me so I'm not sure what the motivation was for your diatribe except that you're triggered someone doesn't like the horse piss that you do. Taste in coffee isn't "rationalized", by knowledge of it's origin or otherwise. You either like it or you don't.
I have begun appreciating not having an espresso setup at home. Cortado is my drink of choice, and it is mighty-hard to make it for cheap at home. Aero press is a good backup for lazy days.
But, there is something about the ritual out going to a streetside cafe in the morning. It pushes you to step out if you work exclusively from home; gets you that essential morning sun and serves as a social third-place for those lonely days. It also serves as a great lubricant to do secondary chores on your way back. It costs money ofc, but as far as activities that facilitate those specific things, a semi-regular cafe visit is a fairly cheap 'indulgence' to have.
I feel bad for Americans who live in neighborhoods where everything is a drive away, and chain cafes like Starbucks are the only type of establishment that can survive. As much as I crib about Seattle, it pulls off prison-cell-sized espresso-cafe-on-the-corner pretty well.
Very well stated. Having a reason to get out to a cafe is nice. Cafe staff over here aren't so social - they mostly don't seem to want to chat - but the few who do are great to talk with. Now if only the cafes near me offered better coffee...
Home coffee is a little time-consuming without an automatic machine. I do pourover when I work from home and it takes at least 20 minutes (Aeropress or Clever would be faster, it's true). It's a nice ritual, but I can definitely understand why people want something that doesn't take much attention to make.
After buying a decent espresso machine (or whichever method you prefer) and grinder, the thing that will improve your coffee immeasurably is home roasting (like I started to do 15 years ago, and never looked back)
It is not difficult (although I occasionally over- or underroast a batch) and great fun. Green beans keep for a long time (at least a year) so it is easy to buy in bulk, which is cheaper. Also, I'm never out of coffee....
A skillet will work, but results in a very uneven roast (which you may like, but I didn't)
I started with a popcorn roaster I bought second-hand for €10. Those work already surprisingly well, but will spread chaff (the thin membrane around the bean) around the house.
Then I graduated to a simple roaster (aorund €100) , which basically does the same thing (blowing hot air upwards through the beans) but with a chaff filter, and allows for larger batches.
Now I use the Gene Café, which stil uses the same principle (hot air) but has a rotating drum and lets you regulate the temperature.
Most roasters have a timer, but I never use it, it is important to stay around and look at (and smell) the beans. The whole process takes at most 20 minutes.
Googling for "best home coffee roaster" will tell you all you need to know, and then some.
The entirety of this thread is people talking about their espresso machines and grinders, or else contrarians talking about their instant coffee.
Am I really the only one speaking up here who simply enjoys "Mr. Coffee"-style drip coffee from a paper filter? This used to be so ubiquitous. Today, when I go to the local grocery store there is more space dedicated to plastic K-cup nonsense than to regular normal ground coffee.
Not only is it easier, it's just better. I feel like the Simpsons principal in the "the kids are wrong" meme, I just don't understand normal drip coffee falling out of style.
A cheap drip coffee machine (sometimes an actual Mr. Coffee) is what I typically find at airbnb or vacation rentals, etc., and it makes me perfectly happy.
At home, I have what should be considered "the cadillac" of these type of makers - the Technivorm Moccamaster - and I feel squarely on the correct side of diminishing marginal returns (especially given the relatively low price).
Absolutely agree — I once went on a tour of a coffee roastery. The guy who ran it was a total coffee nerd; knew 1000 different varieties of beans, taste profiles, etc. When I asked him what he uses personally to make the best cup of coffee he answered without hesitation that his preference is a basic drip filter machine every time.
Far and away the best cups of coffee I've had were when I worked in a kind of industrial-mixed-use-complex with a high-quality roaster in one of the buildings. If you came in before starting work in the morning they'd have just finished a roast and would prepare coffee from the still-hot beans. Incomparable.
It's interesting that you should say that, as the consensus among most roasters and coffee aficionados is that beans don't reach their peak until two or three weeks after roasting.
The “resting time” after roasting depends heavily on the bean and roast level.
Soft beans that are roasted dark don’t require much time since most of the oils have been brought close to the surface already.
Very dense beans roasted lightly take time to degas. In my experience 4-7 days is the sweet spot.
It’s not even a subtle difference. Drinking a very light roast right after roasting will be very sharp/sour/acidic, many times undrinkable. After a several days they will get sweet and fruity and delicious.
Try any natural process bean, medium-light to light roast.
I don't understand what chemistry is going on, but I have personally roasted beans (I don't even work on this very hard, max power, wait for first crack, then eyeball it) and they will consistently take at least 14 days to start tasting good, and last for well over a month without much of the typically stale bean attributes. They degrade a bit, but still taste good.
My record for one of my own roasts is maybe 3 months. It may have tasted good for longer, but I brewed and drank it all. I've had some random washed ethiopians that took a long time to mature, but by and large natural processes really take a long time to mature and last a long time for me.
Yeah, coffee from apollon's gold and manhattan coffee often require this long. Not all manhattan coffees require 40+ days, but all apollons gold do: https://apollons-gold.com/
Even really dark coffees should be good for at least a month, but maybe you just like that fresher roast flavor, and there is nothing wrong with that!!
Really interesting coffee, but expensive for sure. I don't always get their coffee. But other specialty roasters do well 3-4 weeks too.
I’ve tried roasting my own coffee beans in the past, honestly couldn’t tell much of a difference over time - they were all equally bad, as it turns out I’m pretty terrible at roasting coffee.
It's more like waiting 2-3 days after roasting. Beans should ideally be used within 2-4 weeks of the roast date, with darker roasts/blends being more forgiving.
For espresso at least, the advice is to let it rest for 1-2 weeks after roasting. Roasting traps CO2 in the beans, and the aim with resting the coffee is to let some of it escape. It’s especially important for espresso but resting filter blends up to 2 weeks after roasting is becoming common advice too.
I've heard the same, but tend to get my favorite shots out of same-day medium-dark roast no matter the bean. Not a pro, but I suspect the just-roasted comes out with body and sweetness yet low acidity.
Similarly I have dreams of a very distinctive tasting coffee I had out west that was roasted on site. I have never been able to replicate that glorious sludge. I had beans from the roasterie shipped to me as a gift, and I could not succeed. Yet, from photos and memory, it appears as though they brew with average coffee machines. I can only imagine that the sheer freshness of a dark roast makes a difference.
Same here. I tried freshly roasted beans at Stumptown where my friend knew the roaster. By far one of the most flavorful cups I've ever enjoyed. It was a dark roast though, so not sure what that factor contributed.
I love coffee, though apparently all the wrong kinds. I like Starbucks dark roast. And around the house, it's all instant, all the time, either Walmart or Cafe Bustelo instant espresso. Half and half, no sugar, maybe sugar-free chocolate syrup (I'm diabetic). At work, we have a remarkably good machine that puts out a variety of coffees. No overcomplication for me.
Gross lol. But more seriously, there's nothing "wrong" with liking what you like. The overcomplicating crowd these days is more into catching the complexities of various growing regions and processing methods in light roasts. I've been getting into this kind of stuff lately and I'm loving it but I still also love drinking cups of overroasted coffee loaded with cream and sugar when I go to a diner.
Yeah nowadays outside of my Clever Dripper (probably the simplest "enthusiast" coffee maker), it's Cafe Bustelo in a Moka Pot, McDonald's, or even NYC street cart coffee.
Same here. My brother is a coffee nut, and seeks out third wave coffees. I like over-extracted, dark coffee. I absolutely _hate_ the fruity notes in some of the hip coffees of today.
I looooove fine-quality beans with all kinds of delicate flavor complexity (I don't buy them much because they're expensive, but I love them when I get them).
But the ones where "sugar" or sweet-bright berries make there way into the tasting notes, I usually like less than, say, Kirkland-brand beans. Just gross to me.
We buy the Starbucks Espresso roast for home use because of the price (through Costco's Kirkland brand), it is quite dark but can be pretty solid if you prep it right.
Conversely, I cannot stand the drip coffee made at the actual Starbucks locations. Bitter horseshit. I tested the "blonde" roast last time just to have something more drinkable, and that was terrible as well.
There is a lot of desire for an amazing cup of coffee, and this desire pays for a LOT of ritual and effort, which is reflected in the kinds of information you can find out there for making coffee well.
If you’re okay with “just” a really good cup of coffee and your real desire is consistency with a strong secondary criterion for efficiency, there’s less information out there (probably because this type of person has less desire to make blog posts about their “just” really decent coffee).
The process for this efficient, consistent, “just” really good coffee is pretty simple, though.
The efficiency and consistency criteria require brewed, not espresso (espresso requires expensive equipment just to get started, and requires relatively high effort for consistency - that’s what you pay a good barista for).
The quality criterion requires you to “grind to order”, as ground coffee oxidizes quickly and that tastes bad - buy whole roasted beans that you like the taste of in small airtight bags (whole coffee beans are still slightly perishable).
The consistency criterion requires a consistent grind, which means a high quality grinder, specifically the “burr set”. With hand grinders you are paying for just the burr set, while electric grinders you are paying for other things too, so pick a good hand grinder (James Hoffman has extensive reviews of hand grinders and his style is likely very palatable for tech people). This is the only part you should invest in research.
The consistency criterion also requires a robust brewing process without too many pitfalls or rituals, which is immersion brewing. A Haribo Switch or any French press is the answer here. You should mis-use the French press, though: do not plunge, just let it steep and settle, then bring the strainer down to just above the liquid and gently pour out most of the liquid.
Doing it this way means you don’t have to worry about water temperature, blooming, puck prep, channelling, clogging, or any other of the myriad ways in which a cup of coffee might go awry.
V60 brewing is great but my best and most consistent results have been from a recipe shared by a friend which uses an Aeropress and freshly roasted (<2 weeks old) single origin light roast beans.
Here’s the method as shared to me
0) pre warm your mug and rinse your aeropress filter
1) course grind - more than normal aeropress, more like v60+ grind - 35g of you fav and fresh light roast coffee bean into aeropress. On a Comandante C40 hand grinder, this is about 25-28 clicks out.
2) pour 150g of 85c water into aeropress
3) stir for 10 seconds
4) put aeropress end and filter on
5) wait 1:00
6) press coffee into mug, aim to finish at ~1:30 mark
7) pour 100-150g of 85c water into your mug, diluting to taste
enjoy a very flavourful coffee
I'm very confused how you get to the point where water and coffee are mixing in your Aeropress before adding the filter. I know that people like messing around with their coffee, but I assumed that the process had to be 1) filter, 2) coffee and water, 3) plunger end cap. (I guess you could switch 1 and 3, but I'm pretty sure liquid physics means that you need a container before you add the water)
It isn’t in the instructions for some reason, but some people put the plunger into the Aeropress first, flip the whole thing upside down, and then put the beans and water in what normally would be the bottom. It makes more sense to me, although it is probably just silliness. Some water escapes before brewing if you go filter down!
Yeah I have both a V60 and aeropress and enjoy them for their unique strengths, neither is 'better' than the other. The V60 has a learning curve and is much more fussy, kind of like using a manual espresso machine, where you really have to rely on grind size and technique to get consistent results. When you dial it in and nail it a good V60 brew with a light roasted but flavorful coffee is just amazing.
The aeropress is awesome in it's great consistency at putting out good cups with little fuss. I use my aeropress multiple times a day and never get a bad cup.
I've been a customer of theirs for almost 4 years now[0], and I'm a convert. My initial reaction to them was also pretty dismissive. I'm not normally interested in IoT-with-subscription type things, but now I'm a fan.
The coffee I really like is $14 a bag, and shows up just as my previous bag is almost finished.
Inventing and using a pour over technique that is so convoluted that even you yourself mess it up every time you make a coffee is one way to humble yourself daily.
With respect to the original investigator in the 2006 linked blog post, isn’t it rather obvious that a way to measure the total-dissolved-solids value, where those solids affect the way light refracts in water, is to use a refractometer?
I would guess that different solids cause different amounts of refraction. Most beekeepers have a telescope refractometer that’s calibrated for checking water content in honey. (Wet honey bad, dry honey good.)
You’d probably be able to use it for salt content too, for example, but if you brew coffee then put honey and salt in it, one measure of refraction obviously isn’t going to help you pick apart how much of each substance you have. (The original refraction post talks about this — sugar in your coffee will taint your refraction reading’s ability to proxy for TDS because now it’s measuring coffee+sugar. Although you could of course weigh how much sugar you put in the coffee. A handy technique if you have a cheap refractometer calibrated to a specific range into which the additional sugar can place you, and the deviation from which you can use to measure how strong your coffee is.)
I have an italian manual espresso maker. I used it twice. Loved the concept, hated using it.
I have a moka pot. When I get an envie for coffee, I will brew about 2-3 pots a morning. Makes a great cafe cubano.
But in South Louisiana down River Road, you grow up drinking coffee. I started drinking coffee with condensed milk from the time I was old enough to hold a cup. Also, a proper New Orleans style cafe au lait is second to none when it comes to coffee with milk preparation.
So I've conquered coffee. Sure, there might be better technical applications out there where you can taste all the fruity nonsense of the beans, but coffee has never been about that for me and I've never wanted to demand much more of it. I suppose if I were a multimillionaire I'd get a cool grinder and cool espresso machine with all the bars or whatever, where it would inevitably collect dust because I'm not a fan of routines for routine's sake. I like high quality espresso... just a shame that I feel like I have to drink 8 shots to feel like I'm actually drinking coffee.
I am actually considering getting one. I grew up in North Africa where this was the standard way of making coffee and it was a part of breakfast. But ever since I left many years ago, I stopped drinking coffee and now I have zero tolerance for caffeine (as in, even a coke in the morning will keep me up at night). But everyone around seems to be into coffee and it seems like a nice bonding activity, I'm thinking if I get back to drinking it maybe I'll build up my tolerance to caffeine.
I've reduced my consumption to one cup, and in very little time exceeding that amount now makes me jittery. Amazing how we adjust to that, but I enjoy the ritual and taste so I allow myself the one.
Okay but real talk if you're at all distractibile in the morning before you've had your first cuppa, at least melting the gasket is inevitable. Speaking from experience, obviously. But yeah, they make a good brew.
The Hoffman Method still tends to produce bad rates of Frangilier Decay. Well, unless you've prepared a Guzman Lattice first, but let's not kid ourselves - there's almost no chance you did the spectrometry right without a paid subscription to the Escogido Index. At that point you may as well dump the intolerable bilge you're making and just buy Dunkin.
Yes, that and keeping the lid open to eyeball the pressure of the liquid pouring up, so you can lift the pot slightly off the stove and/or turn down the heat just right.
"Keep an eye on it" yeah that was my complaint... but I'll admit, boiling the water first should shorten it up. The only risk there is letting a pot boil dry. I was absentminded in mornings before I had a kid. Now I've gotta be on top of coffee and another disagreeable human's routine as well. Adding more steps is never the answer. Cold concentrate with a dash of lime juice is my fancy.
"Keeping an eye on it" for all of 30 seconds. Letting the pot boil dry will be impossible, the moment it starts sputtering you're done. If you don't have 1-2 minutes to take care of a moka pot brew, then you're better off with instant or cold concentrate as you suggested.
The pot I was referring to is the pot of pre-boiling water.
And fwiw, when I use a moka (which if you'll reread my comment, is never the first brew of the day), I never let it go empty after that first burnt cup. Don't need the Humperdinck or whatever method to tell me that.
And, to that end: I've found a low-heat, long extraction to be optimal for a moka. The best I've ever had sat atop a wood stove for about 10 minutes, with one solitary drip every few seconds -- using a single-shot GSI "camping" moka with a standpipe dripping into clean glassware. That Hedwig guy is trying to make coffee fast, and there's a time and place for that. I just happen to think that a moka is the wrong tool for that job.
Coffee is a fun hobby. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that. If it is, that’s OK, too. If you feel a strong need to decide whether other people are “right” when they seem more enthusiastic about coffee prep than you, and whether you might be “missing something”, consider chilling out. You’ll be happier.
Not sure I agree with the “pizza cognition theory” being applied to coffee.
The coffee I started drinking in the 80s was very firmly first wave stuff. Instant Maxwell House kind of stuff. I now very much enjoy and prefer the fruitiness of third wave coffee. Maybe that’s James Hoffman’s fault.
Needs more process control data (full Design of Experiment) to prevent Poor Over Complicating Coffee.
One of the key aspects of Peets/Starbucks/Dunkin' is that they roast the bean within an inch of their lives. That produces an extremely CONSISTENT coffee flavor. It's process control.
You already know that the mass market really likes sugar and milk to the point where dark roasts don't do much other than provide an abstract coffee flavor.
That’s certainly part of it. A lot of people drink these dark beans black, too. One aspect of this so that cheap coffee machines are terrible at brewing lighter roasts.
I'm surprised no one is talking about mocha pots here. I love my aeropress but I also love the flavor of my mocha pot. If there are any Italians reading this, I would love to hear what coffee people drink.
Yes, mocha pots are great ! You can have way stronger and tastier coffee than with french/aero press or the kind of coffee machine used in this article. Most expresso machine for home use are worst too (but they do are more convenient).
We call them "Cafetière à l'Italienne" in france.
I've never used a bripe, but I assume it's firmly a novelty contraption and doesn't offer any competition in terms of making good coffee. Anyone with personal experience can confirm/deny?
Very easy method for good coffee with an okay grinder: use a Hario switch or similar immersion brewer. Very forgiving. Heat water to roughly 200f and add water first in a 16:1 ratio. Add beans on top and let sit however long. Maybe like 5+ minutes. If the coffee is astringent grind corser. If it seems weak either up the ratio to 1:15 or 1:14 or grind finer. Very easy, repeatable, good, almost as quick as a drip.
Water is very important to a cup of coffee. It is mostly water. I would suggest you make your own or use a brand of bottled water.
Hario Switch is my next device to try to perfect the pour over. It gives a much needed control knob (time) to twiddle. And besides, James Hoffman likes them[1], how bad could they be? :P
I take slight issue with a few things here: 1) grind settings will change for different coffees, roasts and ages (time since roast), 2) liking strong coffee and light roasts is a contradiction, the author likes dark coffee and that’s ok, 3) the 3 “waves” are not really so distinct as suggested - light roasts are not new and dark roasts are not old, and blends are favored over single origin by large coffee producers because they can be more consistent than single origin.
Aeropress a month in. It is the most overhyped ridiculous nonsense. Uninteresting. Flabby. No body.
Everything else is better. Nothing beats espresso. French press is my daily go to. In every possible way aeropress is over complicated compared to French press.
It is possible to get ok coffee with an aeropress. Make it more like French press. Courser grind. Longer steep time.
I guess the pour over fans are ok with aeropress because it's simultaneously inferior and over complicated. And yet is familiar by being excessively filtered.
The author's right in that this is truly a beginner's guide as it neglects to mention that optimizing TDS and extraction is a process that is not only contingent on the brewing method and equipment, but also the coffee being brewed. You're going to be doing this for every bag you brew. It doesn't stop.
The more advanced guide will have you dialing in brew temp, preheating, pour schedule, recipe, water treatment &c. It really doesn't stop.
My preferred process is water heated to 190ºF, a pourover cone, and medium-fine ground beans (medium-dark roast). I use 35 grams of coffee to about 500ml water.
I hate 'bright' coffee with a sour taste, which is what I generally associate with Stumptown. The Aeropress is great, except that I like to have a bigger cup of coffee to start the day. The Aeropress comes with on trips and when I need a pick-me-up mid-afternoon.
I'm always amused whenever I see these type of coffee posts. All too similar. If you really want to try something different, I recommend trying out different water filters and using commercial machines. I still use an espresso machine, chemex, and grinder but now have a "daily" setup of commercial beans, Bunn CWT15-3, and Mocamaster that's served me faithfully for almost a decade now.
"I don’t need you to tell me how f**n’ good my coffee is, okay? I’m the one who buys it. I know how good it is. When Bonnie goes shopping, she buys s*t. I buy the gourmet expensive stuff ’cause when I drink it, I wanna taste it. But you know what’s on my mind right now? It ain’t the coffee in my kitchen. It’s the dead ** in my garage." - Jimmy, Pulp Fiction
As a coffee latecomer, I've spent little time and way less than a thousand dollars equipment in the search for the perfect cup.
And at the end of it all, I found that a used jura on craigslist makes everyone go "wtf have I been diong" and when travelign I just dropship an aeropress and a bag of grond beans to the friend I'm visiting. but the jura is better.
The article is remarkably self-aware on all this, but everything surrounding gourmet coffee is so insufferable. Talking about coffee varieties, roasting, grinding still makes some sense, but these microgram-level scales, calling a stupid plastic funnel "the Hario® v60" and the other one the AeroPress™ (1) sometimes make me want to give up coffee, just to avoid having a common experience with those people.
I can make coffee in a hundred different ways, one of which is putting the damn sieve on top of the cup and pouring hot water on it. The other: mix a spoonful of coffee and a cup of water and boil the damn thing. All the ways come out perfectly fine. How many layers of complexity can you add to something so simple.
(1) yeah, that one's more like a syringe than a funnel.
I'm going to regret reacting to this, but here we go
- Nobody cares about microgram scales. 1/10 of grams, however, are important, especially if you are dosing for espresso, where the amount of coffee affects the flow rate.
- Hario v60 and Aeropress are very different. The second one is an immersion brewer, which makes it easier to get good results even when your grinder isn't the best. The fact that they're made out of plastic is meaningless.
- Its really not simple at all. For years, I didn't have to care because I was blessed with pretty great instant coffee in the country where I lived. Unfortunately I moved to the UK and got to experience instant coffee hell. It was so bad that something had to be done. Few years later and here I am with a Flair manual lever espresso machine, temperature-control kettle and all the other tools you mention.
Sometimes, the taste sucks so much you gotta do something.
We can do surprisingly good coffee with 100C water, a cheap burr grinder like from Hario and an Aeropress. You can outperform a lot of coffee shops quite easily with this very basic setup following recipes and slowly learning how to set the grind better.
What's the great instant you drank? Clearly you love and appreciate good fresh coffee so I wonder what it might be that met that bar when others didn't. I don't mind some instant coffee now and then but it has a certain quality to it that makes it identifiable as such, if not simply "worse" than fresh (which can be quite bad).
(My standard coffee setup, since we may as well: Technivorm KBG-V, 40 grams of medium grind for 6 cups (approximately two regular size mugs))
For the most part I agree with you and find the fussing over minutiae to be on par with audiophiles for silliness. However, I will say that a couple times a week I'll have a really good cup of coffee made with my moka pot because it really does give the coffee a refined quality that's just far superior to what I make with my plastic pourover cone. It's also kind of a freaking nuisance that I just couldn't bear on a daily basis, but it does really make great coffee.
Yeah, I find a moka pot coffee the optimal (for me) balance between effort and quality. Nothing complicated about using the moka pot, but it does need to be watch because overbrewing will ruin it.
I boil the water first in teapot, otherwise it's in contact with the coffee too long and the results are bitter. And yeah, just a few minutes watching, but it does require attention. :)
I actually loved my AeroPress. I loved the coffee, and I loved that it was a $35 piece of plastic I kept in a drawer instead of a $1000 status symbol like an espresso machine, or a fetishized piece of kitchen sculpture like pour-over equipment. I also liked that the AeroPress was a straightforward procedure with no artistry, in contrast to all of the mysticism surrounding other methods.
Now I drink drip coffee, for purely practical reasons. Whoever wakes up first brews a 10-cup pot, and that's good enough for us.
I don’t really get why a pour-over has gotten this reputation as some sort of fancy/advanced way of making coffee.
Doing pour-over with like a Chemex or Hario is super easy. Just skip any steps that don’t feel necessary after you’ve done it a while. For me, filter, beans, heat water, pour pour pour, done seems to work just fine.
What’s the alternative, use a coffee machine or something? Coffee machines look like a real pain to clean, the Chemex is just a glass pot, it is fine with just a swirl of water at the end of the day. Aero press is super easy to clean too, just rinse.
I’m with you. Pour over can be incredibly simple if you’re not afraid to just experiment and find out how to make it to your tastes without fussing over it all morning.
I love coffee, but I’ll never weigh out grounds for my pour overs. I used to use V60 and occasionally chemex, but then I got annoyed that I couldn’t buy filters for them at any old grocery store. So now I use one that takes #2 Melitta filters.
I can respect connoisseurship, but for something I’m doing several times a day, I need to balance it with practicality or I’ll get burned out on it.
tbf the Hario V60 can be exacting, and is sensitive to technique. It makes repeating from cup to cup difficult - more so than the Chemex. I've used a V60 almost every day for the last 10 years, and I admit that I've gotten some very tasty brews - and utterly dull (yet drinkable) cups the next.
Another of my office mates was a barista. To me, this is like reading, "Shop class is soul craft" because coffee is definitely art in the hands of an experienced aficionado.
After a decade of personal experiments with coffee devices you'd recognize, I've settled on a cheap and simple Mr. Coffee burr grinder and Bodum pour-over. I don't pre-soak my filter, just grind-and-go with a Sumatra bean from Fresh Thyme.
My experience has been that coffee is phenomenological to the point that it seems to resist attempts at empiricism, similar to audiophile pursuits; like software, it's prone to Heisenbugs!
On the range of over-the-top coffee things, the Hario v60 and the Aeropress are way off the bottom of the scale. The Aeropress’s MSRP is $39.95. The v60 ranges from $12-$30 depending on color and material.
Yeah to really appreciate the V60 you need a gooseneck kettle that can slowly pour without splashing, so add another 20 bucks to that cost (or 100+ if you want an electric gooseneck kettle). It's still all in much cheaper than even a nice drip brewer.
But is it even needed, you can put the paper filter directly at the opening of the mug, or a normal sieve found in every kitchen also works and then no paper needed. Wikipedia says Hario has perfected their product from 1980 until 2004 WTF?
Hario filters are pretty thin because they’re designed to sit in the cone. The cone is shaped to allow water to flow around the filter (bypass). To say this is equivalent to a sieve is a little reductive.
It is needed if you want to control for taste. Paper filter vs metal filter makes a massive taste difference in lighter roasted coffees, along with other parameters like extraction time and water temperature.
For folks that only drink darkly-roasted coffees, there is a lot less variance in taste across brew methods.
A Turkish cafe near here served coffee in the traditional manner: little copper jug with handle, hot water and a pile of coffee grounds at the bottom. You got a separate glass of hot water and a Turkish delight cube on a small saucer.
Basically served like alcohol. Brought home the drug-nature of the drink.
Disclosure: I'm a moka pot and cafetière type. Bought ground coffee of various makes.
We have a Delonghi Eletta which automates everything, but the real secret are the high quality beans. I discovered Cafe Richard , Florio mix, it's fantastic.
If anyone else hates lukewarm coffee, the Espro P7 Stainless 32 oz is both fantastic and painless. It sits on my desk between 5am and 11am before it starts to cool. It's such a pleasure.
other people here who love coffee but feel like it's impacting them mentally detrimental in some way and hence decided to either ditch caffeine altogether or switch to a milder source like green tea?
my impression is that avoiding caffeine intake of +30mg (rough estimate) helps me stay calmer and more collected. but i miss the buzz ... the mental fireworks.
I know you mentioned green tea but you might want to look at matcha if you haven't already. Similar caffeine level to coffee but the theanine balances out the caffeine so you don't get as jittery.
I'm not sure if I want to increase my caffeine intake further. I'd rather decrease it progressively. But thumbs up for the Theanine. It helps that I really don't enjoy the taste of green tea (while I really enjoy a properly prepared cup of coffee :/)
is there a way to microdose caffeine? I'm kind of hyper-reactive and suffer anxiety and can't focus when I'm in the office, I usually don't drink coffee - having a hard time letting go of milk - but when in the office it's too convenient to just drink latte-macchiato.
> I'm kind of hyper-reactive and suffer anxiety and can't focus when I'm in the office, I usually don't drink coffee - having a hard time letting go of milk - but when in the office it's too convenient to just drink latte-macchiato.
Er... Using a milligram scale, measure a hundred milligrams out, dissolve it into perhaps 100 ml or 500 ml of water (depending on your target dose) and use a pipette or small measuring cup to dispense?
For actual espresso, you need a proper espresso machine (and not just any appliance labeled as such).
The Breville/Sage Bambino may be the most affordable entry-level machine worth recommending right now, selling as low as $200-250 on seasonal/store deals. Using its pressurized (aka. dual-wall) basket with not-too-stale preground coffee, you can get espresso that could be "good enough" for many, especially for milk drinks.
If you end up enjoying it and decide to step it up, you'll then want to grind whole beans fresh for the non-pressurized basket with an espresso-capable grinder, for which "good enough" manual options currently start around $60 for a Timemore C2, and around $170-200 for electric grinders like Baratza Encore, Breville Smart Grinder Pro, or Fellow Opus.
Then at some point, you might notice that sometimes your espresso is "good enough", but sometimes it's not, and sometimes the stars align and it tastes amazing. If you decide that you care enough to want it better more often, you'll want a bit more consistency. You'll first want a small 0.1g scale (like a $16 Weightman) to measure your grinds going in, and then going under your cup to measure the liquid coming out, stopping the shot manually at your desired weight instead of relying on the machine's water volume (a lot of which gets absorbed in the puck inconsistently), and observe on its timer how many seconds it took to get there. Now you can play around and find out what dose (coffee grams in) and ratio (grounds:liquid) and total shot time produce the shots you like, and replicate it every time by tweaking your weights and grind setting. You can adjust to different beans that you buy. You see that too much time/water makes shots bitter, and too little makes them sour. Then you might notice that sometimes the shot comes out unevenly in fast streams and manages to taste bitter AND sour, because it's finding paths of low resistance through unevenly compressed grounds, so you might start stirring your basket with a spiky tool (that you bought for $5 or made with needles on a wine cork) for a few seconds before tamping to distribute better. At this point your espresso is probably very often "good enough" or better.
Also, for some reason, you are now considered an asshole, and you should have stuck to Aeropress or instant coffee.
I recently got the Smart Grinder Pro along with the Breville Dual Boiler, and I'm kind of blown away by the quality of espresso I can get from relatively cheap supermarket beans.
I've really enjoyed this upgrade from their 870XL. It's a bit less forgiving thanks to the bigger/more shallow portafilter, but like anything I'm enjoying the learning process.
After I quit alcohol a couple of years ago, I have no problems justifying spending a fraction of what that "habit" tends to cost people, on good coffee.
Unless you're ready to spend about 1000 bucks (at least 500 on a brewer and a similar amount on a grinder), IMHO I wouldn't try to replicate espresso at home. There's no real cheaper shortcut to getting real espresso--lower cost options can't evenly extract a puck of coffee and will give wildly different (and usually unsatisfying) results with every brew. IMHO I'd get an aeropress, moka pot, or similar setup for brewing good cups of coffee at home.
I disagree. For 50$ you can get a basic second-hand espresso maker that produces decent servings. 10$ gets you a grinder. I've tasted espresso from all kinds of makers. Admittedly, some were noticeably better. Very rarely it was because of the machine. Mostly it was the beans. So save all that money and reinvest it in testing various beans, until you find some you like. What does a 500$ grinder even do?
> For 50$ you can get a basic second-hand espresso maker that produces decent servings.
i highly doubt you can get any espresso maker with $50 that produces the right pressure, consistently enough, and with evenly heat enough, to produce anything that someone would call espresso.
The secondhand, $10 hand grinder _might_ be good, but most hand grinders aren't good enough to grind fine for espresso.
The cheapest cost, real espresso is a manual press like the flair. These won't cost $50 secondhand.
> i highly doubt you can get any espresso maker with $50 that produces the right pressure, consistently enough, and with evenly heat enough, to produce anything that someone would call espresso.
I just did. I'll spare myself the snobbery in your remark and stand by mine. There's quite a bit of sophistry in how coffee is (subjectively) appreciated and my argument is based on one such observed fallacy.
As a traveler, I've noted that the problem of finding a good espresso is common among people who would call themselves aficionados. I've also observed such people who would normally look down at the entry-level Breville or DeLonghi machines, with similar arguments to yours, be perfectly content with the output of a Staresso or Nanopresso when traveling/camping, even if it's admittedly not on par with what their high-end machine usually produces at home. Now, forgive the subjective argument, but I'd say that the popular Breville Roma produces a noticeably better espresso than either the Staresso or Nanopresso. If you like the latter, you should also be able to somewhat enjoy the former.
Hop on Facebook Marketplace and I bet you could find a second-hand Roma for around 50$.
The roma and similar sub $100 espresso machines (I have a delonghi model in that category) use a pressurized basket and aren't really making espresso comparable to more expensive machines. Expensive machines have more powerful pumps and boilers that ensure a proper 15 bar of pressure delivered to the puck vs. the roma and similar pressurized basket machines have a valve in the bottom of the basket that forces the basket to build all the pressure. The end result is an inconsistent brew as pressurizing on the basket wreaks havoc on the puck. Basically these cheap machines are designed to give a lot of crema and a meh espresso shot.
I've had more success with my machine after removing the valve and depressurizing the basket, but then you start to run into the limitations of the boiler and pump not being up to the task. It's why I said you really need to spend about 500 on a brewer to get espresso comparable to what you get at a coffee shop. This isn't snobbery or whatever you want to say, it's just a simple fact pressurized basket brewers don't work the same way and are difficult to get consistently good results--they're designed to make a pretty looking brew.
for an electric machine, yes, this is the basic minimum, but not for a manual lever machine (i would expect brand new to cost less than $250, and second hand to be around $150 in good condition).
The most expensive part of espresso machine is the pump. If you for go that with a manual, lever espresso machine, you bring the cost down drastically. Ditto with grinder - a good manual grinder with good burrs capable of the fine grind for espresso can be had for around $100 bucks brand new.
Thanks for the detailed answer and insight. It opened up an interest in more closely comparing the shots one gets from machines in the different categories, to see how apart they really are.
I also worked in a ton of bars. Ask any good cocktail bartender what their drink of choice is and nine times out of ten they'll say a bottle of beer.
If you've had to spend a good chunk of your life fannying around with this marlarkey to make a living, more often than not you want nothing to do with it. Is it better than the instant coffee? Yeah. Is it worth the money, maintenance and hassle? Probably not unless you're loaded. If ever there was an indicator of a privileged existence, fucking about with coffee is it.
Yes, I know I need to stop being grumpy. I'm trying to work on it.