Coffee Appreciation

GH?

[Edit] Group head. Duh.

A lot of decaf is roasted pretty dark because it’s very vinegary at light levels, certainly Swiss Water process decaf anyway, so you’re in luck given that slightly unappealing brief. It still probably won’t taste as roasty as Starbucks though.

I'm typically Africa occasionally S.America in my coffee choice, so being very brave today...

1 Attachment

Is there a suggestion in there?

Not sure if rude or dim but yes, if you want decaf that tastes like Starbucks which is characteristically heavily roasty tasting, a lot of decent roasters’ decaf has a bit of that about it.

Been having a great time with the YB espresso blend pulling ‘slayer’ style shots in the Lelit Bianca. 30 second pre infusion at 2-3bar then another long pull at ~9bar for a 50ish second extraction, 18g in 45 out..

@Stevethecoffee

Nice one, haven’t played with long extractions for a while.

Dim

Can you recommend any?

Steve might be too humble to recommend his own coffee, but I'm not:

https://yellowbourbon.net/collections/shop/products/swiss-water-decaf-origin-cundinamarca-colombia

Can confirm the YB decaf to be good

And well deserved!

I’ll get some ordered

Used the spb for the first time today. 30g of coffee and 450ml of water on the gold setting.

It was a very nice coffee.

If I want to use more water to make 2 drinks instead of one do I need to double the amount of coffee?

the idea is to keep the ratio of water to coffee constant, so if 30g/450ml is giving you the right strength then yeah, 60g for 900ml.

But perhaps grind slightly coarser.

Thanks will give that a try.

Hmm, this is a lot darker roast than I was expecting. It's a bit Starbuxsy for my taste.

1 Attachment

Not a fan of Brazilian beans in general, but especially anything with "chocolate" or "nutty" flavour notes has a high probability of being bad, bland coffee in my experience.

thing is I like a kind of middle road - my favourite coffees are usually south american, often Columbian. I don't like really light, acidic and citrus / tropical fruit style so tend to look for things like "chocolate" on the descriptor, like YB Brasil Mantiquiera De Minas Natural for example, which is a about spot on.

This one is a bridge too far in the old school direction for me though - not sure I'm going to get through this bag. I only bought it as they had a bit or Aeropress which I was looking for, so I added a bag of coffee whilst I was ordering that.

just had another go with it - kind of ok as espresso, might persevere.

If you don’t get on with it I’ll take it off your hands. Sounds like my wife’s kind of brew.

Does anyone do the whole WDT thing on their robot? I tried it with a home made cork / needles and it tasted worse to me. Wondering if I'm doing it right...

Not a Robot, but I definitely noticed an improvement with my Europiccola.

However, I think the main factor in how much of a benefit you see is down to the grinder and how clumpy it tends be as well as how uneven the grounds are distributed in the basket initially. At least in my opinion.

I do, with the europiccola (at work) and the robot (at home) I bought off you. I find the main thing it helps me with is getting the grounds level so when I tamp it’s nice n horizontal -as well as breaking up a few clumps..

Yeah, I also found that the main benefit of using a WDT was even distribution and level tamping, which gave much more even extraction. Bottomless portafilter was a game changer because I could actually see how evenly it was coming through.