Coffee Appreciation

Looks like you had some early channeling? Nice latte art!

For me, and most other amateurs, It simply takes forever to get the necessary number of pours into the hands.
I'm not getting any better for the time being, but I'm getting more and more consistent.
Here's a weekend worth of pours

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"Looks like you had some early channeling? Nice latte art!"

Yep, I love a messy squirter.

All Bialetti 6cup gaskets seem to be sold out even in the northern hemisphere.
Amazon now delivers them express

x2. Multiple lines ftw. Thanks BDW

Ooh, where is that from?

Seriously? The URL is written across the image ! :P

anothercoffee.co.uk

Hippy - VB doesn't know very much about the interwebz

Well that implies it's where the image is from, it doesn't actually mean they sell them.

Just been there... they sell them! Eureka!

It still would've been the first place i'd have looked..
http://www.anothercoffee.co.uk/products/item200704.aspx

Wayno..."teh Interwebz" is the preferred spelling now

It still would've been the first place i'd have looked..
http://www.anothercoffee.co.uk/products/item200704.aspx

Yeah but I wanted a minion to type out the web address for me.

Thxbtw.

Thank BDW.. I just c&p'd it ;)

[cite]Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry[/cite]
The roasting of coffee is done at high temperatures in the range of 240−300 °C (1). For laboratory roasting, 24 min at 220−230 °C was evaluated as optimal conditions for the acceptable sensory properties for the coffee beverage (2). During roasting of the green coffee the typical dark brown to almost black color develops. The “green baggy” aroma of the fresh green beans at the beginning turns into pleasant fresh roasted to even burned notes (3). Certain classes of substances are responsible for these changes in the beans. During the Maillard reaction, Strecker degradation, and pyrolysis reactions of carbohydrates and amino acids, a great variety of monomeric and polymeric compounds are formed that influence the aroma, taste, and other sensory properties of the beverage.
Acrylamide was mentioned by numerous researchers to be one of the hazardous compounds formed during the roasting, baking, and frying of foods. Acrylamide is carcinogenic to laboratory rodents and is described by the International Agency for Research of Cancer as a probable carcinogen to humans (4). In the human body acrylamide is oxidized to the epoxide glycidamide (2,3-epoxypropionamide) via an enzymatic reaction involving cytochrome P450 2E1 (5). Both acrylamide and glycidamide can form hemoglobin adducts (6), but only glycidamide has been shown to form adducts with amino groups of the DNA. It was shown that high levels of acrylamide can cause mutations and cellular transformation (7).
Coffee as a research object is important because of its high consumption in some countries and therefore possible hazardous influence on human health. The contribution of coffee to the dietary daily intake of acrylamide is high in countries with a high coffee consumption such as Norway and Sweden, where it can reach 30% (8), Denmark, where it can be 20% (9), and Switzerland, where it can reach 36%(10).
Although coffee beans are roasted at quite high temperatures, the amounts of acrylamide found in the roasted beans and ground coffee are reported to be low (11). There are no significant differences in acrylamide formation in normal or decaffeinated coffee. In coffee, acrylamide is formed in high concentrations during the first minutes of roasting, resulting in >7000 ng/g. The increase of roasting time leads to the degradation of acrylamide. Kinetic models and spiking experiments with isotope-labeled [14C]acrylamide showed that >95% of the acrylamide is lost during roasting (12, 13). Similar results were reported by Lantz and co-workers (14). However, the roasting conditions have an important influence on the typical coffee aroma and taste that are desirable to consumers. Therefore, the optimization of the roasting conditions with respect to a reduction of the acrylamide formation and maintaining the product quality has not been realized yet (15).
As it was reported in ref 16, during the brewing step of the coffee beverage, almost all acrylamide present in the coffee powder is transferred to the liquid phase of the coffee drink, due to its high solubility in water. In analyzed grounds after brewing no acrylamide was detected. It seems that all acrylamide available in coffee powder is transferred to the water, where it is quite stable. No significant decrease in acrylamide levels was observed after several hours of heating (14, 16). In contrast to filtered coffee, the acrylamide is not transferred completely to the beverage when espresso coffee is prepared.
It has been noted that during storage the acrylamide content decreases (5, 14, 16). In instant coffee acrylamide content is reduced by 67% within 1 year of storage and in roasted coffee by 28% within 7 months (5). It was reported (14) that the storage temperature has a significant influence on the acrylamide degradation in vacuum-packed roasted and ground coffee.
The aim of this study was to investigate coffee for acrylamide formation influenced by time/temperature conditions, precursor concentrations in raw material, and type of coffee bean. Additionally, a model system of carbohydrates and asparagine was used to study the effects of precursors on acrylamide formation.

let me know if you want ore

got the square mile 'luchadores' and thier seasonal espresso blend.

Think I'm leaning towards the luchadore for straight espressos and using the blend for cappucinos. The Luchadores does grind very 'open' so even with the same grind, quantity and tamping as the blend the water goes thro in about 15 seconds. Might play with filling, tamping then filling again to get to the 25 second mark

Bombcup // Did you allude to Monmouth doing 'how to make the perfect esperesso' evenings?

I'm fu=;///8cking wired.

Good work Prav! you around Putney way today? was going to see if Pip and Fiddy were in and maybe pop in

Even if they are not in, Fiddy still has that gang of little people guarding the bike dungeon who could let us in...?

Bombcup // Did you allude to Monmouth doing 'how to make the perfect esperesso' evenings?

Nah, I'm afraid we only do training for wholesale customers at the mo but keep your eye on Square Mile's blog, they've done a filter brewing workshop and have talked about something similar for espresso.

if any of you caffeine druggies are trading up let me know if you are selling your old machine. will soon be in the market for a small gaggia baby type.

I have two I want rid of.. look up there ^^.. wait.. look down there ¬
http://www.londonfgss.com/post514403-659.html

bombcup - are you going to the square mile tasting evening on wednesday? If you are, me and Hippy will be the ones at the back giggling every time they say 'cupping'

shins: "Taste my face."

Fraid not, I'm off to Faro on wednesday to remember what the sun looks like. Enjoy the cupping, I feel the coffee geek is strong within you.

Ahh... I have my fresh batch of Monmouth espresso sat next to me now - with 200g of Grupo Asociativio Quebradon ground for filter - my ceramic filter thing came in the post last week and am itching to try it out.

Apparently it has "fresh red fruit", which could be interesting - never tried a 'fruity' coffee before...