Coffee Appreciation

What’s your recipe?

15g/ 250l. 45 second bloom. Total pour 1:45.

Tried 98 and 90 degree water but both quite harsh.

They roast really full so you want less extraction to minimise the toasty flavours. Their filter recipe for service was (probably still is) 26g / 250ml / low 90s temp / 2.5 minutes to produce a really rich full bodied cup. It does work but it canes through your bag.

Cheers, that makes sense. Blimey that ratio is well outside my usual range. Will give it a try.

Any Monmouth drinkers here got any tips?

Yes, Monmouth is second wave and shit. You need to up-wave yourself to third wave, you coffee noob.

Ha!

Not sure why it took me so long, but first foray into YB's coffee recently ('only' for the Moccamaster, rather than the home espresso game). Absolutely lovely @StevePeel, will be upping my order shortly (to keep down postage costs only, or at least that's my story... ;-))

I ordered from YB yesterday, arrived today

Just need to wait for my coffee maker to arrive now :)

I've heard that crema isn't a good indicator of much. Good shots can have thin crema apparently

I bet that is their recco - 10 cups per bag!!

You have a barista arriving in the post? Is this the 4th wave equivalent to a mail order bride?

@Jonny69 I remember you were trying to find out what Puly Caff was after taste-testing some descaler.

I bought some Cafiza. Ingredients are sodium pecarbonate, sodium carbonate and it also "contains" sodium hydroxide. Basically it sounds like a weak alkali, which it seems you figured out in your previous comment

Not recommended for use on aluminium apparently. I think my Sage machine is at least partly alu, hopefully none of the important bits...

Edit: there's also an SDS here: https://urnex.com/cafiza-espresso-machine-cleaning-tablets-home

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A nice surprise just now.

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Still wanting to flog your other machine?

Absolutely. I’ll spend a week running these both as I get used to the Niche, but drop me a PM and we can discuss.

I’ve got another dumb coffee question. I have a gaggia grinder and I put the portafilter underneath to dispense the coffee. Is there a way to get the grinder to dispense a specific amount of coffee?

Pulling the lever the amount of coffee dispensed is very hit and miss.

Unless you single dose and grind only what you weigh before hand, not really. There are of course grinders will built in dosing mechanisms but they are on the pricier side.

Is there no timer function? I'd advise against single-dosing unless you're confident in how little coffee is retained in the grinder as most (especially those with dosing chambers) will retain a few g of coffee.

Is there a way to get the grinder to dispense a specific amount of coffee?

The only way I have found to do this is put a specific amount of coffee in the grinder and then grind until empty.

I tried timed grinds but that wasn't consistent enough for what I wanted.

I worked at Costa years ago and each pull of the lever on the grinder dispensed a shot, double shop two pulls. I think in my head all grinders were the same. Sadly not.

Zing!

Also, trying to use the lid of the hopper to push air through like a bellows - that’s what I do with my MC2 and I get almost no retention as a result. Or I get out what I put in anyway.

Ha ha. So you don't employ the whacking and shaking method like I do?

We've got a sage dose control pro grinder. The internetz is full of people saying it has a bad retention problem but I've never measured more than a gram of retention with it. No idea if it's hoarding coffee inside or whether they've fixed the design but the tests I have done so far show that if I out 18g in, I get ~18g out (after a bit of a wobble/shake/whack)

The lid on the mc2 has a perfect snug but not tight fit for using as a bellows. And watching the last of the grounds fly out is always satisfying.