Coffee Appreciation

It's a Bialetti - Should be fill to the bottom of the overflow valve.

I've been using the measuring cup for years - but hippy has now rendered it useless by pointing out the hitherto invisible measuring line! :)

I can now confirm that the cup fills to this line exactly (about 25% of the base unit)

@ Hippy: don't worry bro, I'll just fill to the line / put in 150ml

@ Aroogah: you are not the first to accuse me of this...however you are very wrong about filling to the pressure valve. This has a smaller basket and needs a finer grind coffee - plus there's a load of milk in the top chamber - so too much coffee creates a spilly mess.

Aroogah: you are not the first to accuse me of this...however you are very wrong about filling to the pressure valve. This has a smaller basket and needs a finer grind coffee - plus there's a load of milk in the top chamber - so too much coffee creates a spilly mess.

Someone has to give you grief...sorry Mouse.

Anyway...didn't realise that that the Bialetti also was holding milk and other such strangeness. Are the cappuccinos it makes any good?

I would be sceptical in the "that's the way we've always thrown spears, get that atlatl away from me" kind of way.

yeah it's not brilliant for capp but if you think of it as a decent white / brown coffee with warm milk, then it works a treat.

Oh Yeah...I can do that too....

             **+**

more washing up, innit.

There is no such thing as "too much washing up" in pursuit of good coffee.

Had a superb espresso today at Dose, it was the guest coffee, a pulped natural orange bourbon, can't remember the origin or name as it took me a while to get over the shock of being offered a choice of espresso. It seriously made my day. More shops like this please.

It was very delicate, light in body and had a niiiice orangey citrus acidity, but not sour, balanced nicely with the base sweetness. Really well pulled shot, he's got the temp dialled in just right with the FB80 in there. I think it may have been the Nicaraguan used in Gwilym's comp blend. Can Ross conform this? Go and try some while they've still got it.

i cannot confirm anything.it does sound like what he was using though?

new Fernandez and Wells is open from today in St. Annes court as well.

had a flat white from the whitecross champion guy's stall today. maybe the best coffee i've had in london. and with a vegan couriercookie™ too... teh goodness

One thing I am slightly embarrassed to admit: I have no point of reference or vocab for expressing the coffee I like. Go into Monmouth for a bag of coffee and all I can muster is something like "I bought a Guatemalan one last time and it was good." Now that's like going into a offy asking for a French wine. For me at the moment it's just binary: good coffee / bad coffee. What should I be looking out for in the taste?

i like stuff that isn't bitter and has that winey resinous quality that almost makes me sneeze. and anything that reminds me off 80%cocoa chocolate.

just went to Dose at lunch time and had a latte. it was certainly better than most coffees i've had in London, but I've definitely had better (monmouth at borough). the milk was good, but i think it really wanted a double shot.

will go back there for an espresso tomorrow. and probably the day after.

i wonder if coffee has the 5th flavour unami in it?

Mrs Fix went to Dose for the first time this week (she works opposite). She was impressed, but that may have just been her talking about the blokes working behind the counter.

Budget conscious as ever, I'm going with the flow this year, and getting whatever high roast option The Old Algerian Coffee Shop is doing as their £5 for 500g coffee of the month.

January was a favourite anyway - the organic Bolivian, February's East Sumatran didn't let me down, and I'm about to start March's Brazilian santos 'high'.

just went to Dose at lunch time and had a latte. it was certainly better than most coffees i've had in London, but I've definitely had better (monmouth at borough). the milk was good, but i think it really wanted a double shot.

will go back there for an espresso tomorrow. and probably the day after.

check out the whitecross coffee stall just around the corner. that's some good shit.

One thing I am slightly embarrassed to admit: I have no point of reference or vocab for expressing the coffee I like. Go into Monmouth for a bag of coffee and all I can muster is something like "I bought a Guatemalan one last time and it was good." Now that's like going into a offy asking for a French wine. For me at the moment it's just binary: good coffee / bad coffee. What should I be looking out for in the taste?

It's something which takes work, you have to kind of train your palate, which sounds wanky, but I used to get to the cupping session every day and would be able to identify aromas and nuances instantly. Now that I only do it once a week or so I find it much harder.

Knowing good coffee from bad is a good start. Just concentrate on why it is good or bad. I tend to break coffee down like an equaliser; bass, mid and treble, with the bass being the chocolate or treacle or fig or whatever kind of dark heavy flavours get you first. The treble being the acidity; bright flavours of fruit or wine or anything light and kind of mobile, and the mid being what ties the two together. What gives the impression of a coffee being good or bad is whether these are all in balance, like a good stereo.

So first you will notice the balance and whether anything is out of whack, then try to identify exactly what flavours make up each part, this can be frustrating. Then you've got the mouthfeel to consider, which plays a bigger part than you may have previously noticed.

Just try to be conscious of a few of these things when you're eating or drinking anything and it will start to come naturally. It's kinda rewarding and you can apply it to wine, whisky, beer, cheese, whatever.

http://bicyclecoffeesystems.com/

You know when you try something new, and it highlights a really big gap in your technique? Last time for me it was buying fresh beans that were ground properly - I ended up over-tamping and over-dosing.

I picked up a timing shot glass yesterday and it shows just how inconsistent my tamping can be. No real control over grind, so my main variable was tamp, and it was all over the shop - my first pull only took 13 seconds, while my second took 23, blonding really heavily in the last couple of seconds. Crema wasn't fantastic, but then I am using month-old Monmouth grounds - might explain the flat and earthy aftertaste as well.

I don't mind admitting I can be a bit of a perfectionist - and the Cubika's really showing its weaknesses here; no control over anything, it's just press the button and hope for the best - that's not nearly good enough...

yo Hippola - this is what I was chattin about

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    ohhhh you should also try and catch Gwilyms coffee cart which is on Whitecross Street (weekdays) & Columbia Road in the backyard off Ezra Street (Sunday 8am-2pm only)

he's now british barista champion 2009

BDW: Was there some image or something above? I can't see it.

This Gwilym chap is about a kay away from my office. Would be good to check his coffee out.

after the suggestion by Mooks a while ago, and then weirdly enough a friend of mine bringing up exactly the same idea about a week later, who would be up for a coffee ride?

it would probably be in about a month or so, and probably on a sunday.

Coffee ride FTT (for the tweek)

Sounds good, except the Sunday bit.