Coffee Appreciation

Kind of related, mainly not- my mother takes (or rather has taken) a teapot, jug of milk and two teacups upstairs to have tea with my father before they get up for 20-30 years now, but she’s sadly too frail to carry the heavy pot up the stairs now.

My brother and I would like to get her some form of semi automated tea making device to have upstairs which she can just top up with water- does anyone have a recommendation for such a think that an almost 80 year old woman could learn how to use?

Simple to operate is key.

would a 2nd kettle, tea pot and mini fridge be a solution?

Taste better essentially, but is the extra hassle worth it.

tbh, i prefer the coffee from the gaggia to the v60.

Its not so much carnage in terms of thinking they'll knock it over (4yr old and 2 yrs old), just there's always lots to do and not a lot of time to get everyone ready and out the door (albeit, its usually them leaving and I stay at home to work).

That's a Teasmade right?

or something like this

tea making

AAAGH, WITCHCRAFT!!!

That's basically what I meant too, not the danger of it just that mornings are so hectic that being able to concentrate on a v60 just became more and more difficult, where as you can just dump the water and coffee in the clever dripper and forget about it.

If you prefer the gaggia though the I'm not sure what you can do to make life easy, espresso is just a pain in the arse with or without kids. If you're making milk drinks with it then maybe a bean to cup option is worth it?

Any ideas on why the second shot I make on my Sage Barista Pro behaves totally differently? First shot pulls fine and tastes great. Second shot takes forever to come through and up to a minute to get to the same weight, like the grind is way too fine or something. Everything else is the same and I flush the portafilter through with a couple shots of hot water before doing the second shot. Annoying af!

Do you purge the first dose from the grinder? If not it’s because you’re mostly using coffee that was ground last time you used the machine, and the second shot is freshly ground, so you want to make your adjustments based on the second shot.

I don't purge no, but sometimes I'm only coming back to the machine after 20 minutes and it still behaves like that. Would the beans in the grinder mechanism change that much so quickly?

Might do, it’s a warm and potentially humid environment. Worth giving it a try.

Will do. Do I have to purge or can I just dose the grinder for each shot and just keep grinding until it's all through every time I make a shot?

You probably need to purge, but maybe not a whole shot, you’ll have to experiment, but just to see whether that is actually the issue I would purge a whole shot the next few times you start the machine up.

Single dosing might not make a difference because the whole space between the burrs and the exit needs to be full of coffee for the newly ground stuff to push it through, so it’s continuously replacing old coffee if you see what I mean.

This is why people agonise over grinder retention. My view is that you can purge an awful lot of coffee before you’re close to the price of a grinder that claims not to retain anything.

Here's a bit of a retromod europiccola I knocked up from bits in my spares box and the addition of a pressurestat and anti-vac valve as found on modern La Pavs.

Managed to get handy with the drill and convert the portafilter to bottomless and drilled out a dome nut to make a single hole steam tip 😁

1 Attachment

Very very cool!

It's finally landed! Now to find some cheap beans to season

1 Attachment

Nice!

It's worth the wait

very cool.

I am annoyed I didn't order

Good work, I do think these are a design classic as well as being great machines.

Anyone wanna buy an Iberital MC2 that's in need of some TLC? I took it apart to clean it, put it back together and now it's making a knocking sound. Took all the bits off and tried spinning just the shaft and it still makes that sound, so it's not misaligned burrs or the nylon cog. It might be an easy fix, but it's now way beyond my skill level/lack of expertise.

The build quality is top notch! It's so quiet too. Love the fines knocker. I've slowly been seasoning. Pulled a shot there. Everything in the right ballpark, not much flavour but have barely put 250g though it. Looking forward to tasting the improvements as I go.

Just need to powdercoat the Robot black now to fit in!

I put through 1kg of odd beans through mine and have found the shots to be nice and balanced with no channeling. I'm using medium roast beans so perhaps all the talk of issues with under seasoned burrs is with lighter roasts?

I thought about bringing it into work for everyone to use for a month to accelerate things and see the difference.

That's good to hear. I bought 1kg of beans in Lidl for a tenner to season with which already feels very wasteful. I'll put this through and that'll be that. Bringing it into work to accelerate is a great and was less wasteful plan.

Does anyone else watch videos like this and get strong "audiophile" vibes?

https://youtu.be/gpf0TFdLHYM?feature=shared