Coffee Appreciation

Brewista smart pour digital kettle

Was that the Geisha from Bailey's coffee roasters? I tried some of their filter roast for that and it was superb.

Leva is a crazy machine, not sure it'll get much commercial use but it's sure impressive.

+1

Cast Iron roasted it, think it was from Morgan Estate in Panama. Guy was saying it's tricky to optimise the roast profile because you can only get really small batches of it.

Yeah Leva looks like more of a showroom/roastery type machine, definitely no good for high volume work. Pretty good design though, I saw other lever machines at the festival and some had the grip ridiculously high up - a shorter person would burn themselves on the grouphead just reaching it.

It's nice having the lever high up, more mechanical advantage. I've used lever machines on carts and stalls where they're too low and it's murder on your elbow, when I had it on a counter I set it quite a bit higher than a regular machine and it was a joy. Handle just above head height like this bloke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rExr7R8TT_o

There was a blue Conti multi-boiler lever machine on one stand t the coffee festival it was beautiful.

Only worked on one lever machine (one of these), for around 3 months. I honestly never had a bad espresso from it.

#BoastPost

Hah! I've made plenty of bad ones on La Marzocco Lineas and Van Der Westen Mirages, as I'm sure several people here can attest to...

I wasn't aware you could do a good espresso @mmccarthy <3

There's a reason I only drink filter coffee these days...

Haha not me!

@StevePeel - finer grind surprisingly didn't make a difference. However 2 minute brew time instead of immediate brew made a big difference. Still not as good as with a kettle, but good enough for work.

I'm feeling particularly poor, anyone got any offer codes for beans? Or seen any good offers?

James gourmet is always good value.

https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/waitrose-1-sumatra-mandheling-100-arabic-coffee-beans/056867-28551-28552

These are good. Pre ground is nonsense, beans are good.

I'm not and never have been a coffee drinker. On a recent work trip to Ho Chi Minh City I was given as a parting gift a large bag of non-branded ground Vietnamese coffee from the central highlands where my host comes from. I've taken to having a cup before my long weekend run, black with plenty of sugar, and have really been enjoying it. So knowing nothing about coffee, other than it's likely to be based on Robusta beans, can anyone recommend a good Vietnamese coffee and where best to buy.

Long techy post.

We just bought an EK43, it's been quite a thing. Immediately I can tell that there's more extraction going on - it is revealing layers of complexity that we've not uncovered before, but it has also given us some difficult questions to answer. The problem is that now there's an edge of roastiness to everything we brew with the EK where before we had body and softness. Playing with the espresso, the SO Peru Cajamarca which gets a lighter roast than the espresso blend tastes rounded, soft, chocolatey with abundant blackberry when ground on the old 65mm flat burr espresso grinder, but with the EK there's less body, lots more detail, but that chocolate gives way to a faint hint of carbon. We calibrate our roasting by taste, and that has been dictated in a large part by the limitations of our grinders up to now.

So as we're now able to get more extraction we need to roast lighter to exploit more of that complexity and remove the roasty hint. This figures, because at Monmouth we used to roast pretty dark by current standards but their filter brewing was all about under-extracted massive doses for big body in the drinks: 26g into 220ml in 2 minutes was the filter recipe, lower extraction conceals roast flavours.

But we have our house style, people choose us because we're not quite as light as many; those lighter bodied, lower brew strength, high extraction brews alienate many who aren't interested in coffee as a hobby, they're looking for a satisfying rich brew. Our filter drinks served in the shop will undoubtedly shine much brighter, but for retail coffee our customers don't have EKs in their kitchens and they're not going to have access to the high extraction yields necessary to make those lightly roasted coffees sparkle rather than turning out green, dusty and sour.

I'm just thinking out loud, I'd be interested to know what people think. It's really re-energised me. It does mean shit-loads of tasting, tweaking and experimenting to be done, and that's great. Fear not, we're not going to release any sour coffee.

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I have thoughts on this, but it's late. I'll get back to you tomorrow.

Nice one, I know you have a lot of experience with this stuff. Looking forward to it.

Mat

Thank you so much for your help, time and the bits you gave me when I visited.

If there is anything I can do for you or if you have a favourite charity please tell me.

@StevePeel if you want any guinea pigs for trying the lighter roast on consumer setups I'd be happy to compare it to my usual hermosa premium order.

Excellent, focus group forming...

Have you considered / is it practical for you to roast a shop EK43 batch and a 'yourgrinderisinferiortoours' batch of some of the beans? Double the work but allows the EK43 to sing in the shop, as well as home / other businesses to make satisfying brews on their kit.

+1 If you need guinea pigs in the North West count me in, I enjoy running light roasts via mc2 & gaggia classic.

Also Fwiw North Tea Power have the EK43 so might be useful to see if they'd be interested in you sending stuff their way for more informed shop opinion?

Hey, Anyone able to recommend a roaster who would be willing to do a single 60kg bag of green beans at a reasonable cost? Preferably within cycling distance of London or vaguely en route from Brighton (where the coffee is currently having come by sail from Colombia) to either London or Brighton? I've pan roasted some small samples and that worked ok but there's no way I'm going to be able to do that for 60kg. Thanks, Tom

Where are you based pal? I've got some I can throw your way.