Coffee Appreciation

Christ I was hoping for a bit more disagreement on this forum! ;)

Thanks for all the input folks!

I’m interested in what the experience of @Double_J is with the Lagom mini after living with it for a few weeks. I am one or two espressos a day and that looks like it could be ideal.

We're spending the next few months living somewhere where the boiling point of water is only about 93 degrees.

Dialled the brew temp down to 93 degrees on our Sage machine because higher than that caused the grounds to be pressure wash out of the basket on a test brew. Slowed down flow rate and ground the beans a bit finer too.

The result is a not terrible cup of coffee but it's definitely a bit flat.

Anybody here have any high altitude coffee brewing tips?

Order from Yellow Bourbon at 7 - get a despatch notice at 8.22am.

Wonderful stuff.

LLL thread >>>>>>>>>>>

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I did read that those are the best way to brew high up...unfortunately I'm brewing for four people.

how did it go? and what did you have to order from aliexpress to make up the kit?

I can vouch for YB. People who actually care about what they're doing.

Just ordered a couple of 250g bags from YB, looking forward to my first taste of the forum favourite.

I had a kg of awful lavazza espresso beans someone had given me, I gave up pretty quickly.

Never been more relived at my YB order showing up.

Went great - works perfectly. Ordered an XMT7100 PID, a thermocouple and an SSR (40da-h). Cost about £30 all-in. I can PM exact items if you want. Also needed some connector spades and old wires but my dad had some lying about.

Biggest issue was working out the wiring diagram as most wires didn’t colour match and then quickly getting the PID set to a reasonable temp (defaults to 710C, was worrying when temp was rocketing past 140 first time I turned it on). I’m now slowly tweaking settings to try and minimise temp from dropping when pulling a shot rather than perfect stability at idle.

Would love some links pls!

The OEM distribution puck on my Gaggia Classic is looking a bit worse for wear. Wasn’t there a brass replacement or something? Anyone know what I should be looking for?

Edit: I mean part 33 here: https://www.theespressoshop.co.uk/en/gb/GAGGIA-Classic-Pre-2015-Diagram/cc-41.aspx

Mr Shades is the go-to for Gaggia bits. He’s got brass and stainless options.

@scrabble I’ll PM the links

Mr Shades

Nice stuff but, wow, not showing VAT on the prices. That's a shitty thing to do being that almost everything on their website is for domestic users.

Thought I'd never post on this thread as I HATE coffee! That's a Good start :) However I need to buy my wife a coffee grinder and now I can appreciate why this thread has 920 pages!

After a hand grinder for grinding beans that will be used in a cafetiere. Really liked the Peugeot until I went into a shop and the base didn't even click properly into the body despite features on the mouldings. Also the base felt quite slippery which means once you start grinding I think it will slip when held in the hand.

She's the only one in our house who drinks coffee (1 or 2 max a day) so a small hand-held one will do and if compact could be good as we can put it in our camper van.

Thanks for reading! :)

Rhino, Timemore or Made by Knock. (cheap to mid price)

Rhino better handle than the Hario for similar money, the comandante is nice but pricy.
Wilfa if you want electric.

+1 to all of that.

Love Hario but their grinders are (at least in my experience) absolute shite. Not sure if they've remedied that in the past 3 or so years though

Thanks @Mr_Smyth and @mmccarthy, will look into these. We have an old wooden Zassenhaus which somehow has great reviews, but the metal lid section becomes buckled with use and this completely effects the grind, plus the ergonomics are horrific.

Want to buy once and have the ability to buy spares should something break/wear.

My first grinder was a Zassenhaus, the sort of prismatic hourglass shape designed to be held between your legs.

Impressive output considering the age, but quite a bit of effort (though I was using it for espresso). If I were in the market for your use case, I'd be looking at the Rhino or the Wilfa Svart (or the Timemore, but I've got no direct experience with those). There's some excellent hand-grinders out there for much more money (let alone motorised), but while they're arguably a necessity for espresso, you can certainly get away with something like a Rhino/Porlex for filter coffee like a cafeterie. Though some grinders have issue with consistency when it comes to grinding that coarse so that's something to keep an eye out for.

Not at all a necessity, but the options that have a hex bit on top are a plus for sure. Means you can always slap a drill on there and hey presto, a motorised hand-grinder!

@mmccarthy love the hex bit hack! :) Glad she uses a cafetiere vs. espresso as those grinds are super fine, although the Zassenhaus keeps grinding too fine because it flexes/distorts as you turn the handle!

YB are great, order 2 kgs of Espresso Monday morning at 8am arrived 9am on Tuesday..

New Sette gearbox fitted courtesy of tiny technician

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