Coffee Appreciation

I've been using the Contigo West Loop, and it's pretty awesome. Chuck it in the bag for my ride to the station and it doesn't leak. Drink tasty hot coffee on the train.

speaking of ... whats the current thinking on thermos/flasks that fit bottle cages?

is it still kleen kanteen?

@rhb I don't suppose you know if this would fit a Frank Green cup? And is it any good?

Not sure but probably will fit. Can you measure the inner diameter of the FGC?

It is good, yes. Small capacity means pour technique is little & often.

haven't been home longer than 3 days in a row or more than about 6 days a month since early feb so my coffee machine went a little uncared for and all of a sudden refused to pull a shot properly at all no matter what i tried but I ended up never having time to look at it.

finally got round to doing so today, full breakdown and clean of the external grouphead parts (bearing in mind the internals are all pretty much brand new atm after my service which went without a hitch) got every single bit of coffee oil and the like off the machine. descaled, re-calibrated the grinder back to factory settings. all stuff I've done numerous times before.

can I pull an even slightly viable shot. can i fuck.

doing 17g (bang on for my vst basket), distributed with an ona for evenness, same tamp as I always use, across the whole gamut of grind settings (super-fine to a bit low) and every. single. fucking. shot takes 2 seconds while the PF fills with water then dumps 20ml of coffee coloured piss through in under 3 more seconds. i might as well be putting the cup under a running tap., pucks are showing no signs of obvious channeling, no indent from overfilled basket, acceptable puck dryness/density. nothing I do brings the machine close to choking even with the grinder nearly screaming from being on it's finest setting without knackering it.

the only thing i've not tweaked is the coffee I'm using which is about 3 months old now so i'm sure it's not helping but i've had this issue for about 2.5 months so the coffee can't have been the initial issue.

checked the pump pressure and it's about 10.25bar so could be lower as far as opv modding goes but a lot less than the factory 12-14 bar.

asked the gf to pick up some beans on the way home if there's a coffee shop open but feeling super fucked of, because I just made over 15 coffees and haven't been able to drink a single one.

if fresh beans don't work I genuinely have no idea what to try next.

Gaggia Classic iirc?

The only thing unmentioned is the rubber seal, has that perished?

P.s hoping Fresh Beans are the resolution :)

no idea what to try next

shout at the fucking thing

aye the classic.

the seal looks fine and was fresh in when i serviced/replaced the insides (i tend to replace them more often than needed so I make sure I have two spare in my parts box at any given point in case they become hard to source for some reason).

no beans from the gf so the mystery continues.

If seal is fine then I reckon Beans will solve it.

Thinking back, my first shot yesterday was old beans (6wks+) at bottom of hopper = gusher, fresh bag of beans of same blend with no adjustment was straight back to normal from 17g coffee got my 30g out in 35s.

Has anyone had experience with the Flair:
https://www.flairespresso.com/

My neighbour has one and swears it is better than his gaggia and rancillio that he had before. Looks good too.

Makita battery powered Site Coffee Maker now available in Japan.

https://hiconsumption.com/2018/03/makita-job-site-coffee-maker/

GF brought me some beans home last night. In the meantime I'd managed to tease out a single drinkable coffee by running the grinder at pretty much full tilt and living with ~30ml in about 15 seconds.

stuck the fresh beans in this morning, even after dialling grinder back 1 large notch and about 12 minor notches immediately choked the machine which was actually a great relief.

re-calibrated a final time and back to some semblance of normalcy now.

actually amazed just how much 4 weeks past best beans fucked up the shot. bit gutted as there's 2 more unopened boxes on the shelf (pitfalls of buying in bulk the week before you start spending all your time in another part of the country looking after your mum I guess.

Might be ok if unopened?

That’s been around for a while now. I was tempted because I already have Makita 18V Li Ion kit!

I thought it was for filter coffee but it takes so-called standard 60mm pods. What’s a 60mm coffee pod when it’s at home then? ESE is smaller than that.

Switch to pour-over if you don’t want to waste it, I guess. Espresso past its best usually makes a perfectly acceptable long black or americano.

Switch to cold brew if all else fails

: ]

^ this. Good way to get an acceptable coffee out of old beans.

The only issue with cold brew is that it feels like it has a lot more caffeine in to me. Rocket fuel.

Same here, cold brew gives me a massive caffeine hit.

The longer the contact time the more caffeine is extracted.
E.g. 12hr cold brew > 3 min filter > 30 sec espresso

Yup, don't have any figures to hand but I'd be comfortable betting that cold brew has more caffeine than a regular filter, which has a fair bit more than an espresso (assuming regular size cup of filter).

good shout all, may knock up some cold brew to take to the board game expo I'm off to for next 3 days then. fuck paying NEC prices for hot burnt catpiss.

Hmmm... interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=297vr0vJipw

Day made after I ran out with my Keepcup urgently needing a coffee and Caravan wouldn't take my money for a black filter; they said it was my NHS ID but maybe I just looked particularly frazzled.

Picked up Square Mile "Amaluza" (I'm a loser?) and it is delicious via v60. Tasty brews incoming for a week or two.

Any recommendations for workplace coffee? Bean to cup preferred, would receive fairly heavy usage. We’re currently paying around £500 a month for a pretty bad machine - would we be able to get a bean-to-cup machine with that?