Coffee Appreciation

Yes

Your suggestions have done the trick. Single dosing works too, it's consistent every time now and tastes great so that's the way forward now. Another thing for my partner to roll her eyes about but hey ho

Ah great stuff, glad that’s worked out. Cheers.

Holy shit 16 minutes on stirring ground coffee with a pin.

Audiophile vibes is right - all this fussy home espresso stuff makes me roll my eyes, yet I get seduced by much the same silliness with audio:
Trying to achieve professional results in a domestic environment - check, continuous upgradeitis with wildly diminishing returns - yep. Tiptoeing the chagrin of my partner - very much so.

Inappropriate user-name is inappropriate

Question...

My wife has just got a Sage Bambino and 1zpresso JX-PRO grinder. She's so far been unable to make any coffee. What grind setting on the JX-PRO do people advise?

Might need a bit more of a description of what’s not working. Coffee literally not coming through at all?

Yes coffee not coming through at all. Suspect grind is too fine but need to get some cheap beans to trial different grinds rather than waste the fancy ones gifted by a friend.

Cheap beans will act very differently and it’ll be hard to dial in as you might not be able to make a nice coffee from them at all! Buying a kg of espresso beans from YB is a good way to go. Reasonably priced and it’s worthwhile just getting practise at dialling shots in. You’ll waste way more coffee otherwise.

If it’s a light roast, it may be tricky to dial in anyway!

Also, I take it you are weighing the beans. Right?

Grind the beans coarser - if literally nothing is coming out it’s like a fair bit too fine so go coarser. You’re looking at like c. 30seconds for 17g dose which should yield a 34g shot

The espresso range for that grinder is around 1.2 - 1.5, so I would start there. In general if the shot is fast and taste sour grind finer. If its slow and tastes bitter grinder coarser.

Yes weighing beans. Will try the coarser settings and see. Cheers all

I'd second this, and also learnt on a kilo of YB espresso. When you hit those cherry notes you'll know it!

Happy birthday to me.

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Happy birthday! When to one of these in Lisbon. V tasty!

Getting more and more frustrated with my hand grinder, both in terms of time but more that the last two beans I’ve had sit in between steps so I’m getting quite disappointing coffee.. suppose I could up the dose to slow it down slightly…

But still want a grinder…
Torn between the eureka single dose options and the niche, the oro being preferred as its a fair bit cheaper than the niche, has bigger burrs than both, looks a lot nicer than the standard single dose and is only about £70 more… is there anything else I should look at for £450 or so?

I don’t have any experience with a niche but lots with Mignons in all their variants and they’ve always been excellent and reliable. I don’t know of anything else at that price point which is so nicely built and performs so well.

Cheap v1 Fellow Ode for filter people…

coffee chat has reached page 1,000

Brown logo time?

I don't really have space for making anything other than instant coffee at the moment due to not having a kitchen but I recently got one of these, seems to work well.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005491762858.html

That’s where I am currently.

I really wanted a Castro set but they refused to sell me one. So CCL it was.

I picked up a La Pavoni Europiccola from my brother. Note to self - only use filtered water.

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I managed to clear the dessicated coconut/limescale out and replaced a few seals. Just pulled my first ever espresso. Going to need some practice but 4.30pm on a Sunday probably isn't the best time to start chain drinking coffee.
Any tips from La Pavoni users for a complete beginner much appreciated!

Well a lot depends on your coffee, grind, dose and type of basket but for my current blend this is my process,

I use a Knock grinder. Weigh out ~ 15g of coffee. Dispense into basket (I use a home made distribution tool to remove clumps and spread it about! Made a huge difference)

as I don’t have the tamper that fits perfectly, it’s like .5 of a mm undersized so I kind of have to shift it around to get the edges.

Pull up the lever and fill espresso cup with hot water, down again then fit the portafilter. Up and pre infuse for 20seconds (I used to do 10 but found it just seems to taste better if I leave it longer), then pull down fairly gently. If you pull too hard steam will escape from boiler / grouphead join.

Having a bottomless portafilter is useful too, also I can fit taller espresso cups underneath it.

A shower screen is also a good investment. I haven’t got one but sometimes I use an aeropress paper filter.. I think it’ll take a while to dial in but once you’ve got a process locked it’s pretty reliable :). Enjoy!