[HN Gopher] The Beginner's Guide to overComplicating Coffee
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The Beginner's Guide to overComplicating Coffee
Author : xrayarx
Score : 60 points
Date : 2023-02-23 07:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tylercipriani.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tylercipriani.com)
| themadturk wrote:
| I love coffee, though apparently all the wrong kinds. I like
| Starbucks dark roast. And around the house, it's all instant, all
| the time, either Walmart or Cafe Bustelo instant espresso. Half
| and half, no sugar, maybe sugar-free chocolate syrup (I'm
| diabetic). At work, we have a remarkably good machine that puts
| out a variety of coffees. No overcomplication for me.
| surement wrote:
| Gross lol. But more seriously, there's nothing "wrong" with
| liking what you like. The overcomplicating crowd these days is
| more into catching the complexities of various growing regions
| and processing methods in light roasts. I've been getting into
| this kind of stuff lately and I'm loving it but I still also
| love drinking cups of overroasted coffee loaded with cream and
| sugar when I go to a diner.
| peruvian wrote:
| Yeah nowadays outside of my Clever Dripper (probably the
| simplest "enthusiast" coffee maker), it's Cafe Bustelo in a
| Moka Pot, McDonald's, or even NYC street cart coffee.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Same here. My brother is a coffee nut, and seeks out third wave
| coffees. I like over-extracted, dark coffee. I absolutely
| _hate_ the fruity notes in some of the hip coffees of today.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I looooove fine-quality beans with all kinds of delicate
| flavor complexity (I don't buy them much because they're
| expensive, but I love them when I get them).
|
| But the ones where "sugar" or sweet-bright berries make there
| way into the tasting notes, I usually like less than, say,
| Kirkland-brand beans. Just gross to me.
| spion wrote:
| I like starbucks dark roast too. For me, it requires quite a
| bit of work to make it work, but when you succeed, my oh my its
| phenomenal.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| One step upstream from this, you can also overcomplicate your
| supply of coffee with an absurd IoT device:
| https://www.bottomless.com/coffee/index.html
| xeromal wrote:
| When you think you've seen it all...
| function_seven wrote:
| I've been a customer of theirs for almost 4 years now[0], and
| I'm a convert. My initial reaction to them was also pretty
| dismissive. I'm not normally interested in IoT-with-
| subscription type things, but now I'm a fan.
|
| The coffee I really like is $14 a bag, and shows up just as
| my previous bag is almost finished.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403664
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| Inventing and using a pour over technique that is so convoluted
| that even you yourself mess it up every time you make a coffee is
| one way to humble yourself daily.
| mynameishere wrote:
| Just use a Moka pot. You can't go wrong, unless there's a
| meltdown and everyone in the house burns to death.
| curiousgal wrote:
| I am actually considering getting one. I grew up in North
| Africa where this was the standard way of making coffee and it
| was a part of breakfast. But ever since I left many years ago,
| I stopped drinking coffee and now I have zero tolerance for
| caffeine (as in, even a coke in the morning will keep me up at
| night). But everyone around seems to be into coffee and it
| seems like a nice bonding activity, I'm thinking if I get back
| to drinking it maybe I'll build up my tolerance to caffeine.
| kurthr wrote:
| Needs more process control data (full Design of Experiment) to
| prevent Poor Over Complicating Coffee.
|
| One of the key aspects of Peets/Starbucks/Dunkin' is that they
| roast the bean within an inch of their lives. That produces an
| extremely CONSISTENT coffee flavor. It's process control.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| You're right of course, but also the mass market really likes
| dark roast beans. (I run a YC backed coffee-related company and
| see this first hand.)
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| You already know that the mass market _really_ likes sugar
| and milk to the point where dark roasts don 't do much other
| than provide an abstract coffee flavor.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| That's certainly part of it. A lot of people drink these
| dark beans black, too. One aspect of this so that cheap
| coffee machines are terrible at brewing lighter roasts.
| caboteria wrote:
| While it's certainly possible to overcomplicate things, I find
| that brewing a good cup of coffee in the morning is a pleasant
| ritual. Some amount of complexity is actually fun, although it's
| a different amount for different people. In that sense coffee is
| no different than hifi, wine, chocolate, weed, or any other
| sensory-driven hobby.
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| I think it adds a pleasant type of certainty to the day.
| Perhaps it engadges that part of the brain and switches focus
| from internal thoughts to the real world too.
| williape wrote:
| V60 brewing is great but my best and most consistent results have
| been from a recipe shared by a friend which uses an Aeropress and
| freshly roasted (<2 weeks old) single origin light roast beans.
|
| Here's the method as shared to me 0) pre warm your mug and rinse
| your aeropress filter 1) course grind - more than normal
| aeropress, more like v60+ grind - 35g of you fav and fresh light
| roast coffee bean into aeropress. On a Comandante C40 hand
| grinder, this is about 25-28 clicks out. 2) pour 150g of 85c
| water into aeropress 3) stir for 10 seconds 4) put aeropress end
| and filter on 5) wait 1:00 6) press coffee into mug, aim to
| finish at ~1:30 mark 7) pour 100-150g of 85c water into your mug,
| diluting to taste enjoy a very flavourful coffee
| timerol wrote:
| I'm very confused how you get to the point where water and
| coffee are mixing in your Aeropress before adding the filter. I
| know that people like messing around with their coffee, but I
| assumed that the process had to be 1) filter, 2) coffee and
| water, 3) plunger end cap. (I guess you could switch 1 and 3,
| but I'm pretty sure liquid physics means that you need a
| container before you add the water)
| bee_rider wrote:
| It isn't in the instructions for some reason, but some people
| put the plunger into the Aeropress first, flip the whole
| thing upside down, and then put the beans and water in what
| normally would be the bottom. It makes more sense to me,
| although it is probably just silliness. Some water escapes
| before brewing if you go filter down!
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Yeah I have both a V60 and aeropress and enjoy them for their
| unique strengths, neither is 'better' than the other. The V60
| has a learning curve and is much more fussy, kind of like using
| a manual espresso machine, where you really have to rely on
| grind size and technique to get consistent results. When you
| dial it in and nail it a good V60 brew with a light roasted but
| flavorful coffee is just amazing.
|
| The aeropress is awesome in it's great consistency at putting
| out good cups with little fuss. I use my aeropress multiple
| times a day and never get a bad cup.
| tptacek wrote:
| To set my non-coffee-snob bona fides, I exclusively drink decaf
| (I've avoided caffeine for almost 10 years now).
|
| The reactions this post is getting are kind of odd. A typical
| home coffee brewing setup is going to offer you just a couple of
| variables --- a set-it-and-forget-it grind size, water
| temperature, and the dose of grounds you use for whatever amount
| of coffee you brew.
|
| It is not especially weird or "gourmet" to be interested in what
| the right values are for each of those variables. You figure out
| the right grind size and dial it into your grinder; you figure
| out the right temperature and hit that button on your kettle; you
| figure out the right dose and either weigh or scoop-measure that
| much grounds. Mostly what I'm describing is the simple act of
| brewing a cup of coffee.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| The article is remarkably self-aware on all this, but everything
| surrounding gourmet coffee is so insufferable. Talking about
| coffee varieties, roasting, grinding still makes some sense, but
| these microgram-level scales, calling a stupid plastic funnel
| "the Hario(r) v60" and the other one the AeroPress(tm) (1)
| sometimes make me want to give up coffee, just to avoid having a
| common experience with those people. I can make coffee in a
| hundred different ways, one of which is putting the damn sieve on
| top of the cup and pouring hot water on it. The other: mix a
| spoonful of coffee and a cup of water and boil the damn thing.
| All the ways come out perfectly fine. How many layers of
| complexity can you add to something so simple.
|
| (1) yeah, that one's more like a syringe than a funnel.
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, it can be a bit annoying but you have to just ignore it
| like everything else in life.
| tptacek wrote:
| It has a name because it's a specific size and shape of plastic
| funnel, for which specific paper filters are made. It's also
| usually not plastic?
| spion wrote:
| I'm going to regret reacting to this, but here we go
|
| - Nobody cares about microgram scales. 1/10 of grams, however,
| are important, especially if you are dosing for espresso, where
| the amount of coffee affects the flow rate.
|
| - Hario v60 and Aeropress are very different. The second one is
| an immersion brewer, which makes it easier to get good results
| even when your grinder isn't the best. The fact that they're
| made out of plastic is meaningless.
|
| - Its really not simple at all. For years, I didn't have to
| care because I was blessed with pretty great instant coffee in
| the country where I lived. Unfortunately I moved to the UK and
| got to experience instant coffee hell. It was so bad that
| something had to be done. Few years later and here I am with a
| Flair manual lever espresso machine, temperature-control kettle
| and all the other tools you mention.
|
| Sometimes, the taste sucks so much you gotta do something.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Thanks for the response and information, and no need to
| regret it, I often take part in this type of conversation.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| We can do surprisingly good coffee with 100C water, a cheap
| burr grinder like from Hario and an Aeropress. You can
| outperform a lot of coffee shops quite easily with this very
| basic setup following recipes and slowly learning how to set
| the grind better.
| devindotcom wrote:
| What's the great instant you drank? Clearly you love and
| appreciate good fresh coffee so I wonder what it might be
| that met that bar when others didn't. I don't mind some
| instant coffee now and then but it has a certain quality to
| it that makes it identifiable as such, if not simply "worse"
| than fresh (which can be quite bad).
|
| (My standard coffee setup, since we may as well: Technivorm
| KBG-V, 40 grams of medium grind for 6 cups (approximately two
| regular size mugs))
| nlawalker wrote:
| _> sometimes make me want to give up <X>, just to avoid having
| a common experience with those people._
|
| Thank you for this phrasing, it articulates that feeling so
| well.
| amluto wrote:
| On the range of over-the-top coffee things, the Hario v60 and
| the Aeropress are way off the bottom of the scale. The
| Aeropress's MSRP is $39.95. The v60 ranges from $12-$30
| depending on color and material.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Yeah to really appreciate the V60 you need a gooseneck kettle
| that can slowly pour without splashing, so add another 20
| bucks to that cost (or 100+ if you want an electric gooseneck
| kettle). It's still all in much cheaper than even a nice drip
| brewer.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| For the most part I agree with you and find the fussing over
| minutiae to be on par with audiophiles for silliness. _However_
| , I will say that a couple times a week I'll have a _really
| good_ cup of coffee made with my moka pot because it really
| does give the coffee a refined quality that 's just far
| superior to what I make with my plastic pourover cone. It's
| also kind of a freaking nuisance that I just couldn't bear on a
| daily basis, but it does really make great coffee.
| eschneider wrote:
| Yeah, I find a moka pot coffee the optimal (for me) balance
| between effort and quality. Nothing complicated about using
| the moka pot, but it does need to be watch because
| overbrewing will ruin it.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't really get why a pour-over has gotten this reputation
| as some sort of fancy/advanced way of making coffee.
|
| Doing pour-over with like a Chemex or Hario is super easy. Just
| skip any steps that don't feel necessary after you've done it a
| while. For me, filter, beans, heat water, pour pour pour, done
| seems to work just fine.
|
| What's the alternative, use a coffee machine or something?
| Coffee machines look like a real pain to clean, the Chemex is
| just a glass pot, it is fine with just a swirl of water at the
| end of the day. Aero press is super easy to clean too, just
| rinse.
| valarauko wrote:
| tbf the Hario V60 can be exacting, and is sensitive to
| technique. It makes repeating from cup to cup difficult -
| more so than the Chemex. I've used a V60 almost every day for
| the last 10 years, and I admit that I've gotten some very
| tasty brews - and utterly dull (yet drinkable) cups the next.
| dkarl wrote:
| I actually loved my AeroPress. I loved the coffee, and I loved
| that it was a $35 piece of plastic I kept in a drawer instead
| of a $1000 status symbol like an espresso machine, or a
| fetishized piece of kitchen sculpture like pour-over equipment.
| I also liked that the AeroPress was a straightforward procedure
| with no artistry, in contrast to all of the mysticism
| surrounding other methods.
|
| Now I drink drip coffee, for purely practical reasons. Whoever
| wakes up first brews a 10-cup pot, and that's good enough for
| us.
| davidthewatson wrote:
| Your comment resonates with me being a fan of subtractive
| methods.
|
| I shared an office with the nice, modern gentleman who wrote
| this:
|
| https://blog.moertel.com/posts/2002-04-25-coders-guide-to-co...
|
| Another of my office mates was a barista. To me, this is like
| reading, "Shop class is soul craft" because coffee is
| definitely art in the hands of an experienced aficionado.
|
| After a decade of personal experiments with coffee devices
| you'd recognize, I've settled on a cheap and simple Mr. Coffee
| burr grinder and Bodum pour-over. I don't pre-soak my filter,
| just grind-and-go with a Sumatra bean from Fresh Thyme.
|
| My experience has been that coffee is phenomenological to the
| point that it seems to resist attempts at empiricism, similar
| to audiophile pursuits; like software, it's prone to
| Heisenbugs!
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Far and away the best cups of coffee I've had were when I worked
| in a kind of industrial-mixed-use-complex with a high-quality
| roaster in one of the buildings. If you came in before starting
| work in the morning they'd have just finished a roast and would
| prepare coffee from the still-hot beans. Incomparable.
| nickff wrote:
| It's interesting that you should say that, as the consensus
| among most roasters and coffee aficionados is that beans don't
| reach their peak until two or three weeks until after roasting.
| 24t wrote:
| It's more like waiting 2-3 days after roasting. Beans should
| ideally be used within 2-4 weeks of the roast date, with
| darker roasts/blends being more forgiving.
| jna_sh wrote:
| For espresso at least, the advice is to let it rest for 1-2
| weeks after roasting. Roasting traps CO2 in the beans, and
| the aim with resting the coffee is to let some of it
| escape. It's especially important for espresso but resting
| filter blends up to 2 weeks after roasting is becoming
| common advice too.
| kitotik wrote:
| The "resting time" after roasting depends heavily on the bean
| and roast level.
|
| Soft beans that are roasted dark don't require much time
| since most of the oils have been brought close to the surface
| already.
|
| Very dense beans roasted lightly take time to degas. In my
| experience 4-7 days is the sweet spot.
|
| It's not even a subtle difference. Drinking a very light
| roast right after roasting will be very sharp/sour/acidic,
| many times undrinkable. After a several days they will get
| sweet and fruity and delicious.
| MrLeap wrote:
| Probably helps to try and advocate for subjective perceptions
| that make letting-the-product-sit-in-a-warehouse-for-a-while
| not devalue the product.
|
| It's probably not that big of a lift if the difference is
| marginal!
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Definitely a dark roast. The light roast trend makes no sense
| to me personally, go figure.
|
| [edit also possible that much of the coffee in the consumer
| market is more like 2-4 months after roasting, if not longer]
| doubleg72 wrote:
| Yeah I heard this as well, I'm curious if it similar to
| placebo effect..
| mrmincent wrote:
| I've tried roasting my own coffee beans in the past, honestly
| couldn't tell much of a difference over time - they were all
| equally bad, as it turns out I'm pretty terrible at roasting
| coffee.
| ggm wrote:
| Picked two out of 6 tests wrong. That's one pick away from 50/50
| in a 1 in three random selection test.
|
| Methinks he overcomplicated his story!
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The author's right in that this is truly a beginner's guide as it
| neglects to mention that optimizing TDS and extraction is a
| process that is not only contingent on the brewing method and
| equipment, but also the coffee being brewed. You're going to be
| doing this for _every bag_ you brew. It doesn 't stop.
|
| The more advanced guide will have you dialing in brew temp,
| preheating, pour schedule, recipe, water treatment &c. It really
| doesn't stop.
| papandada wrote:
| I've never used a bripe, but I assume it's firmly a novelty
| contraption and doesn't offer any competition in terms of making
| good coffee. Anyone with personal experience can confirm/deny?
| Gerard0 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tltBHjmIUJ0
| readingnews wrote:
| Meh, just join any good coffee forum and see how far the rabbit
| hole goes. Here, I will start you off...
|
| https://home-barista.com
|
| Good luck.
| fabian2k wrote:
| One thing I find interesting, though a bit annoying in practice
| is that coffee from the same materials and with the same process
| still can vary quite a bit. I've been using an Aeropress for some
| months now, and even if I keep all the major variable the same,
| it still tastes different.
|
| I don't trust my senses here entirely, and as it's not blind I
| can easily fool myself. But the amount of agitation and
| differences in pouring might affect the taste here sometimes.
| Though my impression is that this is not always noticeable, but
| if I'm on the border of the coffee becoming bitter or sour it
| gets noticeably variable between preparations.
|
| The other part that I'm quite sure of is that the temperature you
| drink at affects taste a lot more than I thought. If I drink the
| coffee too hot it tastes bitter, and it noticeably improves at
| lower temperatures (which is different from what I remember from
| cheap, pre-ground coffee, which tends to taste really bitter when
| it gets colder).
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I don't like the stock aeropress recipe. I too found it wasn't
| very consistent and sometimes gave wildly different results.
| I've found James Hoffman's aeropress technique to be fantastic
| though and much more repeatable--give it a shot:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VlT_jUVPc
|
| The big difference with James' technique is that it spends more
| time immersion brewing, almost like a french press, vs the
| stock technique that's really rushing you to extract and then
| percolate with the push. I find the longer immersion brew is a
| lot more forgiving and repeatable as a technique.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| The beans degrade daily. In my experience you have to grind a
| little courser as time goes on and they will loose the
| interesting qualities of a week to ten days.
| valarauko wrote:
| Not my experience at all, at least with pourovers. Others
| have done blind taste tastes with beans upto 6 months out
| from the roast date (light roasts), which seem
| indistinguishable on pourovers and immersion brewing. The
| taste tests suggest that peak flavor develops at about a week
| out from roasting, and degrades very slowly - much more
| slowly than conventional wisdom suggests. The norm has been
| that beans are essentially stale 2 weeks out from roasting.
| These tests suggest that as long as you store your beans
| reasonably well, they're good for several months. Depending
| on your technique, the loss of the bloom might require
| modifications, but they're still good beans.
|
| I can imagine that the same probably doesn't hold true for
| espresso, since the back pressure from out gassing is crucial
| to extraction.
| 24t wrote:
| the grind needs to be adjusted for room conditions (temperature
| and humidity). What typically happened in the cafes I've worked
| in is the barista would dial it in in the morning (by taste)
| and then adjust in the afternoon. Worth mentioning that these
| places use grinders with much smaller increments than your
| typical domestic grinder.
|
| For the record, single origin beans for black coffee have lost
| most of their top notes 2-3 weeks after roasting
| rcarr wrote:
| this guy knows
| jna_sh wrote:
| I got into manual lever espresso during the pandemic, and was
| shocked at how different the same coffee on the same grind
| setting would act under pressure at 10am and 3pm. Settings
| would be perfect for 10am, but a complete mess barely able to
| hold pressure as the water gushed through the puck at 3pm.
| rcarr wrote:
| lol atmospheric conditions, the bane of a barista's life
| ska wrote:
| another possible factor here is that roasted beans aren't so
| stable over time, so "the same" materials, aren't.
| fabian2k wrote:
| I mean differences from one day to the next. For longer time
| frames this of course could affect taste.
| ska wrote:
| Ah ok then my next thought is grinder. I found a huge
| difference in consistency after getting a decent quality
| burr grinder.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Is there a "good enough" guide to making an espresso?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Unless you're ready to spend about 1000 bucks (at least 500 on
| a brewer and a similar amount on a grinder), IMHO I wouldn't
| try to replicate espresso at home. There's no real cheaper
| shortcut to getting real espresso--lower cost options can't
| evenly extract a puck of coffee and will give wildly different
| (and usually unsatisfying) results with every brew. IMHO I'd
| get an aeropress, moka pot, or similar setup for brewing good
| cups of coffee at home.
| rcarr wrote:
| I worked as a barista for years, including Costa, Caffe Nero, and
| high end independent coffee shops that get mentioned in
| guidebooks. What do I drink today? 'Barista style' fine ground
| instant coffee from Lidl.
|
| I also worked in a ton of bars. Ask any good cocktail bartender
| what their drink of choice is and nine times out of ten they'll
| say a bottle of beer.
|
| If you've had to spend a good chunk of your life fannying around
| with this marlarkey to make a living, more often than not you
| want nothing to do with it. Is it better than the instant coffee?
| Yeah. Is it worth the money, maintenance and hassle? Probably not
| unless you're loaded. If ever there was an indicator of a
| privileged existence, fucking about with coffee is it.
|
| Yes, I know I need to stop being grumpy. I'm trying to work on
| it.
| tptacek wrote:
| That has not been my experience asking cocktail bartenders what
| their drink of choice is.
| toasteros wrote:
| I'm not loaded, but I screw with coffee _just enough_ to not
| have to drink instant. Besides the fact that instant (mostly
| nescafe) doesn 't taste very good to me, it makes me poop
| liquid. Consistently. I don't know what it is - because coffee
| makes us poop anyway - but nescafe eliminates a lot of solids
| in my stool.
|
| I have a pretty basic set up - cheap scales so I know how many
| beans I'm grinding, a Mr Coffee, and a Krups electric burr
| grinder. The results are Pretty Good To Me(TM) and my partner -
| who is not crazy about coffee, but likes what I can make for
| her.
|
| When I want to get fancy I have a pourover that is handy for
| making iced coffee or some better extracted coffee than the Mr
| Coffee can handle.
|
| I compare it to baking. We can easily buy a tray of Mr Kiplings
| or jam doughnuts from Asda, but we can also if we want to, get
| some flour and sugar and all that crazy baking stuff and have a
| crack at it ourselves. Some people go so far as to do that
| exclusively.
| rcarr wrote:
| Fair enough mate, just don't become a hipster Patrick Bateman
| buying a PS2k grinder to fill the void
| jna_sh wrote:
| I think this is a common sentiment. Prolific coffee YouTuber,
| roastery-owner, and former World Barista Championship winner
| James Hoffman doesn't do espresso at home, and says something
| to the effect of "home espresso is a hobby, not a way producing
| coffee".
| iamthepieman wrote:
| Want to taste coffee? Switch to light roasts. Want coffee
| flavored drink? Do whatever, mixing it with cream and sugar and
| flavor will make all the prep in the world pointless.
|
| For real though, light roasts and a couple different beans and
| you'll really be able to taste the differences. I'm not talking
| subtle either. There will be some you hate, some you love and
| some that make you go "wait! That's coffee?"
| dunefox wrote:
| Light roasts are rough. Really strange flavour, everytime I
| tried it it was not enjoyable.
| rcarr wrote:
| I disagree with this. It's clearly personal preference. As an
| ex barista, I used to enjoy the shit that knocked your fucking
| socks off, which was always dark roasts. The sort of stuff that
| is standard fare in mediterranean countries. My absolute
| favourite however was Indian coffee. I used to describe that to
| customers as like being punched in the face by a film noir
| detective. Real good shit.
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(page generated 2023-02-24 23:00 UTC)