Coffee Appreciation

Anyone on any nice subscriptions atm? Bit done with Pact. Brewing filter only.

Last of the Passalacqua going through today. On to the Saka - straight from the roasters, more Robusta in this one.

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What is the thing you’ve circled?

Thanks very much for all the help and advice. I can take stuff apart and put it back together but I haven't a clue what’s going on technically. Main issue with this one is spares. Unless I know what’s wrong I won’t know what to order. Also I paid nothing for the machine so don’t want to throw good money at bad.

If I can’t get it going a new coffee machine beckons. I’d spent up to £400.

Any suggestions? Don’t really want to go second hand. Not bothered about steam arm, but would like it to be bulletproof.

Robot : )

circled thing - I'd assumed that the metal tubes poking out of the aluminum body are the heater elements I could be wrong though.

Found that research, here you go... Spent grounds tho', just noticed yours hadn't been used...

I don't see if the SCG was composted tho.

Either way, I'll probably just try and use it as mushroom growing substrate like someone else did to great success!

I must've picked that titbit up from somewhere else, that advice was to compost before use... I used to chuck all our grounds on our veggie beds, that might explain why very few plants would actually amount to anything!

Moccamaster .............thoughts, opinions, diatribes?

Well loved for good reason.

Good, but if you can stretch to the Sage brewer you get more control.

But less serviceability. My preference is the Sage.

I have been bought a De Longhi Specialista for my birthday and I’m very happy with it.

Can I use a non-pressurised basket in the portafilter?

Technically no reason why not. Might be more a matter of whether you can actually get one for that machine.

I have a Coffee Factory sub for their "roasters choice" so 2 different bags each month. Some have been good, others ok, nothing bad in the year or so I've even using.

Here is a referral link for £5 off a subscription (you can cancel before it renews)
(I also get a £5 off my next sub)
https://thecoffeefactory.co.uk/referral/REF-Y46K-WUHQ-FFF8

I'm thinking of picking up a Ceado grinder for espresso and moving an old Mignon E to just do drip/filter work. I've always seen a few words about how espresso-specific grinders don't go coarse enough for v60 and similar. How does this work exactly? Just that the grind adjustment physically doesn't go far enough? Maybe I'm wasting my time with this idea.

I'm no expert on this but my engineering head would say that a set of burrs have a particular window that they can operate in. There's like a centre point (grind size) where the burrs work at their most efficiently and they'll grind finer and coarser either side of that - but only up to a point. If you have a set of burrs where the centre point is to work efficiently in the espresso size range, then grinding a lot coarser than they are designed to do will probably result in a poor quality grind. Likewise, a set of burrs that are designed to work well for coarse grinds will be far too close together if you tried to grind to espresso sizes.

Really enjoying my Mont58 subscription at the moment.

We get through about 2kg of beans per month so we get 500g of two randomly selected coffees from Mont58 and then pick and choose whatever takes our fancy from Yellow Bourbon or sometimes Monmouth. Feels like we've been drinking hit after hit.

Can't believe I made coffee without weighing/measuring for so long...what the fuck was I thinking?

Struggling with decaf beans - is it normal to grind much finer than with regular beans? I've gone 4 notches finer on the Niche and still coming through too fast.

Yep decaf is a cunt, I can see why people get a second grinder for it

The Saka Crema Bar is pretty delicious now it’s dialed in. 55% robusta which is the highest of any that I’ve tried.

Cool at least I know this - will go finer tomorrow

Very very often decaf is 5 points finer than regular espresso.

At least with the Niche once you find the good point it's easy to switch back and forth.

I completely took the machine apart today. I think I may have found the culprit. A fried pcb. Not sure if a replacement is going to be easy to source.

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Reckon I've a couple notches to go then.