Coffee Appreciation

Just had my last of the day, nice as well.

1zpresso hand grinder (k-ultra), double thumbs up. While I don't have a lot of experience with hand grinders, having only had a hario but it's just a joy to use.
So easy to adjust, so nice to hold and use, and so fast. The only thing I'm not 100 about is the foldable handle. While it works fine, I'm not sure it will still be robust in 5 years.

I got my sense of taste taken out a couple of weeks ago, either by COVID that my tests couldn't pick up or by a particularly bad sinus infection. Pretty much everything has come back... except the taste of coffee. My wife got me a Dark Arts subscription for Xmas and I haven't even opened the first bag because it feels pointless.

Spent Christmas at my sister in law's, they have a Sage Oracle which is an incredible coffee machine and they buy excellent 3rd wave coffee. Infuriatingly they set the grinder to "30" which is less than halfway between coarse and fine, which is obviously far too coarse for espresso, and they've done zero setup on all of the editable, customisable settings. So a pre-programmed double shot pulls about half a cup of sour under-extracted coffee.

They're quite fussy about their incredibly expensive machine so I spent the Christmas period surreptitiously grinding much finer, then flicking the grinder back up to 30. Then trying to work out how to edit the double espresso setting to get the right weight out.

My main takeaway from this experience was £1,700 buys you a machine that's incredibly repeatable and conducive to experimentation thanks to everything being computer controlled.

Nightmare! In the lockdowns this was a real fear for me (irrational considering what else could result from covid I know...). I hope it comes back soon.

And that 99% of people who own one will never get the best out of it?

I've got COVID at the moment.

A few days ago I made what should have been the perfect Latte. Nailed the milk. Outstanding beans...nailed the espresso. Or at least thought I had.

Fucking thing tasted like I'd made a mug of Nescafé with half a teaspoon of granules.

Thankfully it doesn't appear to be lasting long.

As I'm at the office I'm gonna go and get a flat white in a minute to see if the foam spreads the taste across my tongue better - I noticed strong tea with milk and hot chocolate were the first hot drinks I started to taste again. I got a tiny hint of something this morning with my black filter cup but nothing particularly reassuring; it's weird because I can clearly smell the difference between the 2 packets of beans I have open (very dissimilar washed and natural) but there's just no real taste.

Stepping up from a Wilfa Svart, I mainly brew v60 (15 or 30g dose) or Moccamaster (30-60g doses) and every now and again an Aeropress.

What grinders should I consider? I've got my eyes set on the Fellow ODE Gen2 as the best value upgrade and wouldn't want to spend more than that. Anything else worse looking at?

Baratza could be worth a look.

I have previous version of this one, it's outlived many of the cheaper grinders which came before:

https://baratza.com/grinder/virtuoso-plus/

100% on that

Ode sounds like a good call. Gives an easy upgrade path to SSP burrs down the line if you want to throw even more money at grinding.

Have seen a few reports of the ode’s motor being underpowered though. Doesn’t feel like it’s been out long enough to know what long term durability will be like.

Okay, what about hand grinders for filter only? 1zpresso?

I have an OE Lido 2 and it's great for filter!

I know Timemore is getting good reviews. This is suspiciously cheap - £27 delivered:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005082574977.html

Can anyone enlighten me why? I know the store has no reviews but I guess if it is a scam AliExpress should refund the money?

Thats not that much cheaper than usual for AliExpress. Theyre usually ~35. I have one and its a great travel grinder. Can't do super fine aeropress stuff and definitely not espresso but good for filter

So when I bought my c2 from AliExpress it was about £44 after all the taxes and other bits. It came in a posh cardboard box with the carry bag and brush - which didn’t seem like it would be economical if it was fake. I’ve watched the for a while on ali express to buy for other people, and you couldn’t get one for less than about £55 for quite a while, so dropping down to more like £35 all in (I assume it’ll be in that region with tax and delivery etc) seems odd to me. Although the c3 has been released, which may have had an effect.

My suspicion is that there might be places making fakes, but then again I don’t understand how they could make a facsimile and turn a profit. I’m curious either way! Fancy being the Guinea pig for this endeavour?

As for the c2, I think they’re a fantastic grinder for filter that is very hard to beat at that price point, but they’ve been climbing in price a bit and when you get nearer £80-100, I reckon there are better options. If you can get one in the region of £50, I don’t see much competing with it IME.

I’d also be tempted by the c2 max as the c2’s capacity is probably it’s only real minus point for me.

I've got COVID at the moment.

A few days ago I made what should have been the perfect Latte. Nailed the milk. Outstanding beans...nailed the espresso. Or at least thought I had.

Fucking thing tasted like I'd made a mug of Nescafé with half a teaspoon of granules.

I had Covid for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I got SO lucky I didn’t lose my sense of taste because my morning coffee was practically the only thing keeping me alive while I was getting jumped on and hit in the head all day by my two little kids when I just wanted to crawl away and die in a corner somewhere. Not their fault but boy did daddy really need to just pull the curtains closed and sleep in the dark for a couple of days!

A toast: to coffee!

Thanks, looking into hand grinders the 1zpresso ZP6 could be the one for my use case

Did lol, maybe repost.

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They didn't exaggerate, it truly is exceptional

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Nice!

Normcore tamper/distributor: yes or no?
I bought a knockoff for about £30 without realising that it wasn’t spring loaded, so I sent it back.
Seems like a nice addition to the espresso setup, or is it a silly waste of money?

I just use a needle - poke it in the puck a few times, then tamp.

Honestly it's so effective that buying anything seems hard to justify. $60 is a lot.