Coffee Appreciation

What a lovely idea! ;)

filth!

Bought myself 500g of monmouth espresso to practice with on my new coffee machine (cheap morphy richards thing) but when I asked for it to be ground for a home espresso machine they've turned it to a fine dust and it's almost impossible to get a palatable shot from it. no matter what I do it's horrifically bitter and tastes burnt. have tried high dose/low dose. hard tamp/loose-ish tamp. anyone got any suggestions for how to salvage it.

if not it looks like i'll have to do something similiar to the post above and run it through my aeropress although that tastes just as bad at the moment.

I could purchase it from you, as I have a machine?

Then you could buy some fresh.

Bought myself 500g of monmouth espresso to practice with on my new coffee machine (cheap morphy richards thing) but when I asked for it to be ground for a home espresso machine they've turned it to a fine dust and it's almost impossible to get a palatable shot from it. no matter what I do it's horrifically bitter and tastes burnt. have tried high dose/low dose. hard tamp/loose-ish tamp. anyone got any suggestions for how to salvage it.

if not it looks like i'll have to do something similiar to the post above and run it through my aeropress although that tastes just as bad at the moment.

Don't tamp, or just level off.

Then adjust dose so that you're extracting a double or single in somewhere between 20-35 seconds. You're working with more than one variable, so small doses should be producing small amounts of liquid.

Personally, I keep ground coffee refrigerated. Beans just kept air-tight.

filth!

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^^ thanks. I think a shot glass might help with this as I'm flying blind on the amount poured so getting the timing right is next to impossible.

Heading to Edinburgh this weekend; planning to check out this place which recently opened:

http://www.brewlabcoffee.co.uk/

Super excited.

Good thermal cup recommends anyone? Got obe that fits in Carradice pocket, but it both leaks & cools v.quickly...

Anyone recommend places for coffee in Manchester? Will be up there this weekend.

Central Manchester is North Tea Power (in Northern Quarter), in the 'burbs Coffeefix in Gatley.

NTP use hasbean house blend "deer hunter", square mile single origin

Coffeefix use Coffeecircle "barn raiser" and hasbean single origin

^ Cheers. I'll give them a try.

Good thermal cup recommends anyone? Got obe that fits in Carradice pocket, but it both leaks & cools v.quickly...

I've got a Lifeventure stainless one from Blacks, it's pretty good and cheap too

still not having much joy with the monmouth espresso on the morphy richard but I had my first crack at using my new milk frothing jug and thermometer this morning.

took the little rubber frother attachment off the steam wand and had kept the jug in the fridge overnight so it was nicely chilled.

used a technique I saw in a video on coffeeforums.co.uk and straight away got a really dense foam with a nice silky texture that like in the video had a glossy sheen similiar to wet paint.

overall really pleased with how well i did for a first try. I also realised that I had been massively over heating the milk before as I steamed for roughly half the time I usually do.

Any canary wharf people been in Taylor St Baristas today?

The music is stupidly loud and had to wait almost twice as long as normal despite it being pretty quiet.

Weird.

still not having much joy with the monmouth espresso on the morphy richard

Is it a really tight grind? You could try reducing the dose down to around a single if it's really slow.

I used to have one of those Morphy Richards jobs when I was a student. It worked well with supermarket pre-ground which suggests it may run at relatively low pressure.

Getting wildly inconsistent grinds on my Porlex these days – so much so that I can't actually make filter coffee any more. A few turns off the tightest setting I'm getting everything from a fine drip filter to pretty much half a bean. I don't think the burrs are worn, I've only had the thing for about 9 months...

Any suggestions?

You sure you've tightened/lined it up properly?
#wildguess

cleaned it recently? I just did that on mine - a handful of grapenuts ground through cleans out the accumulated oils and grinding detritus.

(BMMF's tip, not my own)

My housemate put mine through the dishwasher the other day. I was bricking it for some reason but it came out looking brand new. (It was still grinding effectively beforehand - and after. I've had it about 18 months - works like new.)

managed to fluke a fantastic coffee out of my espresso machine this morning. was from pre-ground workshop beans i did in the porlex last night.

used 13g in the 14g basket, fairly firm tamp, pulled about 80ml/2.5oz in roughly 20 seconds so thought it might be a bust and a quick taste test of the espresso on it's own was ok but not fantastic, I then steamed some ok milk considering it's only my third attempt with jug/thermometer since I got them and made my coffee.

all i can say is wow. i was totally gobsmacked at the final result in the cup. would put it in around mid level in terms of quality compared to the very decent coffees i've had from workshop, prufrock and lmnh all of which make coffee i really enjoy.

have totally given up on the pre-ground monmouth espresso though. I spent 30 minutes last night trying all kinds of variations in dose and tamp to give all kinds of extraction times (working on 60ml/2oz shot) and all of them were nasty super bitter shots that stank of burnt coffee.

am so glad I managed to get a decent result this morning with the different beans as it was beginning to get annoying.

Been using the stove top a bit lately in place of my usual morning aeropress. Quite enjoying the results. I use James Hoffman's guide on technique (predominantly the only difference to how I've always thought it was done before was the coarseness of grind. He recommends using a rough grind almost like something for a french press). Then add boiling water and immediately cool down as soon as you hear gurgling. I top up with water and the result is a really good, balanced cup.

cleaned it recently? I just did that on mine - a handful of grapenuts ground through cleans out the accumulated oils and grinding detritus.

(BMMF's tip, not my own)

I haven't actually had to do that on my own Porlex Mini yet, possibly because HasBean's output is generally oil lite.

Still got a packet of Grapenuts on standby though. I'm not sure they'd be safe to eat anymore.

I usually send some rice through once a year or so on my Zassenhaus turkish.

Oooh, that's a point.

I've recently been given a Zassenhaus mokka 496. I'm trying to strip it, clean it and reassemble/use but can't seem to get the mechanism apart. It took me ages to undo the case as there's a hidden screw behind the name plate (held up by tacks so I didn't think to unscrew it at first). But now I'm inside there's a long screw through the plate which seems fused in place. That may be the case due to its age but I wondered if I wasn't doing something right.

I'll get some pics up at some stage, but in the meantime, has anyone ever come across a source of technical diagrams for them?

Didn't notice any diagram (didn't dig) but maybe this could help?
Either way, I bet an email to these folks would prove useful.
http://www.orphanespresso.com/Hand-Grinder-User-s-Manual_ep_553-1.html

Ta very much - good resource, shall send one off and in the meantime get polishing.