Coffee

I've used a home espresso machine, with built-in grinder, daily for at least 10 years. I'm generally happy with the results - there's some variability but most everything I make is acceptable, and I fairly regularly get something I feel is good. Recently I've been getting a lot of "acceptable" and it's been a long time (many months) since I've made one that I'd call "good". They're missing that bit of oily lustre that I feel really makes it perfect.

• I drink a single shot over a small amount of hot water
• I get my beans from a local (same province) roaster that say they roast to order
• I like dark roast beans - the roaster calls it their Italian roast
• my house water comes from a well and is naturally a bit hard, but we have a whole house softener
• I've never de-scaled the machine because of the water softener - there's no build up or crusting at any orifices
• I don't make any attempt to get perfect extraction quantity - I grind, tamp and trim with the tool supplied with the machine. When I first got this particular machine (about 4 years ago) I programmed the extraction time, but a can't remember the "recipe" I used
• I've tried beans from one other local roaster (via a grocery store) with the same results

My experience says it's stale beans, but I'm buying roast to order, so I'm confused.

There are plenty of travel brewing options, the aeropress, pipamoka, espro, and an eruption of practical portable espresso options lately. Unless you are either traveling a lot or using these regularly at home, they can be difficult to dial in to the brews you might be used to if you are a primarily pour-over brewer. There have been a number of foldable, portable, optimized pour-over brewers, but these tend to do best with a gooseneck kettle which is a deal-breaker for me when selecting a travel companion. Immersion options like the clever dripper have been touted for their travel-friendly simplicity, but it’s a notably different brew profile if you are used to pour-over. Two recent zero-bypass brewers have caught my fancy as work / travel options, the Ceado Hoop and the Orea Z1. Neither is really touted as a primarily travel brewer, but they are both super simple to use, do not require a gooseneck, and they are durable with high quality simple construction. In brief, either one of these is worthy of its space in your luggage, but which is the best?

Brief Rundown of devices

I’ve described the Hoop a bit briefly but only in reference to its filters. It’s a unique radial infusion brewer where the coffee grounds sit in a central chamber and water flow into the chamber and over the grounds is determined by a series of small holes that connect to a larger outer water reservoir.

The Z1 is basically a spinoff of the tricolate zero-bypass brewer but utilizes a fast Sibarist filter and has a built-in melo drip disperser which allows for a clumsier water source than a gooseneck kettle since it converts any pour into a diffuse uniform drip.

Packing

Let’s look at portability and practicality for travel first. Both are high quality food grade, high heat tolerant plastic. The z1 is Tritan and the Hoop is BPA free plastic but the resin type is not published. Both fit pretty practically in luggage, and while you can’t do that cute thing like you can with the aeropress where you slide a grinder inside of it, they certainly aren’t space hogs. The Hoop has a little bigger footprint, but if you are willing to stuff a clean pair of socks or something in it, I think it actually takes up a bit less space.
Winner: this one’s a tie

Brewing

I’ll lead with saying both can brew an excellent cup. They are very simple to brew with, but the Hoop takes the cake for simplicity if that’s what you crave when being out of the comfort of your kitchen coffee lab. The Z1 on the other hand is going to require a few pours and does offer some variables you can play with a little to tweak your brews. Both brew best on the coarser end of the pour-over range which is good news if you want to have a separate travel grinder – a middle of the road grinder will do very well with these. The Hoop is extremely flexible with how you pour the water in. You could take a large pot and just dump the water into the reservoir and you’d be fine. The z1 is fairly forgiving too, but you do need something with at least a bit of a spout. I usually use a collapsible travel kettle or a hotel kettle and these work fine, but you can’t pour too quickly or the Melodrip will overflow and slower pour rates can lead to dribbling and dripping with conventional spout kettles. I do usually make a little bit of a mess with the z1, but nothing terrible. Of note, I’ve learned that since I bought my Z1 (very early adopter), Orea sells a travel kit which includes a little cup with a pour spout. I remain skeptical about how usable this is, as I imagine this must be very hot to hold when filled with near-boiling water. The big issue with both of these is their big bottoms. That’s right, they both have weirdly large back-sides and it’s a frustrating design attribute that can really leave you stuck on the road. Neither fits on my Hario 02 carafe at home, nor do they fit with most standard sized coffee mugs. The Hoop is the bigger offender here requiring a 7cm diameter opening on the vessel below it. The Z1 isn’t much better, but enough so that I can typically find a large mug at an Airbnb or thankfully the wide mouths of the hotel paper cups typically fit. I’ve traveled with the z1 a lot and have always lucked-out with this, but I can imagine a situation that leaves me stuck with hotel coffee and it does give me some anxiety. I’ve found a nice 3D printed adapter that I’ve previously plugged for the Hoop – it’s durable and easy to travel with, but still – it’s another thing.

The Coffee Soldier's typical hotel room setup =)

With a filter in place the z1 doubles nicely as a dosing cup and fits nicely onto some grinders.

I do like how the Comandante grind cup fits perfectly onto the z1 as well for a no-mess transfer.

Winner: it’s close, but the z1 has an edge here.

Cleanup

Both are easy to clean and have just two parts that need washing off. The perforated bottom grate of the Z1 does require a little agitation to get residue fully off it, and I find the Hoop rinses off a little faster.
Winner: Hoop by a margin

Cost/Value

Orea seeks helpless coffee gear heads like online betting websites seek gambling addicts, and I think even those that like their products resent them a bit for it. At over 80 USD for the z1 not including any of the growing list of accessories for this, it is obscenely overpriced for a small plastic cup with some holes on the top and bottom. You’ll also be quite locked in to the special Sibarist filters which perform well but are hard to come by and also very expensive. The Hoop is reasonably priced, and you can in theory use Aeropress filters, but in reality, the experience and cup are only worthwhile with either Sibarist filters or Scott Rao 62mm filters currently. The Rao filters are more reasonably priced when comparing them to the Sibarist options. Winner: Hoop by a longshot

Wrap up/TLDR

Either of these makes for an excellent travel brewer. These are worth considering if you don’t have a travel solution yet or if you are looking to switch your travel brewing to a pour over method. If you’re not traveling all that often and want to keep things as simple as possible, I would recommend the Hoop but do recommend the 3d-printed step down adapter to make sure you can fit it on your cup/mug. If you travel frequently or for longer durations and want to have some options to tweak your travel brew a bit, the Z1 offers some flexibility that is a little closer to more traditional pour over methods. If you haven’t quite gotten to the point where TSA is pulling coffee gear out of your luggage and giving you WTF looks, I would lean towards starting with the more reasonable price point and simplicity of the Hoop. What am I up to these days? I travel with the Z1 and I’ve parked my Hoop at work as a perfect yeah I have enough bandwidth to pay some attention to this Zoom meeting and brew a pour-over at the same time solution.

-- I already have a recommended HOOP brewing recipe and hope to have my Z1 recipe available by next week.

Do you already have a travel favorite brewer? Do you have another pour-over on the go solution?

Crossposted from https://lemmus.org/post/20899568

Peer pressure - 505 | Azul Crescent's silly scribbles

Tried two different cups on two different day. While Costa Rican coffees tend to have a bit of a kick to them, this was bland. Like a bland spice coffee. You need to go deep, like two tea spoons just to make a half decent cup. Either that, or I drink really strong coffee. Either way,I will pass next time.

The SCA flavor wheel is the standard reference for Q grader cupping, but it's also a nice reference to have on hand to help in the search for nuance in your own cup. Printing this out is both nice to have as a tool, but it's also kind of pretty and doesn't look too bad on a wall.

You can buy a digital PDF for $10 from the SCA.

OR, it's pretty easy to find high resolution English language versions at least online.

Try 1: https://atlanticspecialtycoffee.com/wp-content/uploads/SCA_TasterWheel_English_8.5x11.pdf

2: https://imgur.com/a/k1sFXXM

I'm rebuilding a FE-AR La Peppina from the early 70's, and the boiler and piston seem badly corroded.

Am i gonna slowly kill myself if I use it?

This is arguably one of the best coffees I have ever tasted. Its just villainous. Can anyone reccommend anything else that packs a punch like this?

I like, red grape, and Carmel.

Dear coffee juice estimators, I’ve had this V60 02 dripper for 3,5 years and some hairline cracks have been building up all over the cone. At one point, a bigger horizontal crack appeared and a short time ago a bigger vertical one took off while pouring - I really heard and felt the plastic creaking. It has almost never seen the dishwasher, mainly only rinsing and hand washing.

I’ve used this V60 regularly, more often in the last year than the years prior, but I wanted to ask if someone experiences the same degradation with other colors of plastic? I have two AeroPress devices that are like new, one being older than this dripper…

It looks like a very poor material choice, but maybe it’s due to the crystal clear transparency.

Close up:

Removed the boiler from my Gaggia Classic and it was a humbling experience to learn just how much scale can build up even on RO water.

Ultimately wasn’t able to get the boiler looking squeaky even after 2 hours of sitting in descale solution. Is that probably fine? I just rinsed and brushed it until I didn’t see any more visible scale flakes coming off. Flow is back to normal as far as I can tell.

Get pumped! This is the incredible coffee product review you’ve been waiting for! The hot new gadget that will revolutionize your coffee brewing experience! Ok, no it’s not, I’m literally taking a few minutes to dribble on about a tiny broom and dust-pan. There’s some precedent / inspiration for this at least. The Coffee Chronicler, a chap for whom I have much respect for as a coffee aficionado, once posted about one of his favorite coffee gadgets being a small dust-buster. While I agree, it’s paramount to have a quick and easy way to clean up the blizzard of grounds that come with a busy home coffee lab, I’m very much in favor of this simple device. I have a mini vac in my kitchen, but I rarely use it for counter-top clean ups.
Maybe it’s that there’s not power or a place to mount it quite close enough or that my electric grinder doesn’t fit near the area I brew at. Maybe it’s that I’m up early and I don’t want to wake the dog or trigger my introversion with a loud hum. Whatever it is, I’ve found myself much tidier using this little hand sweep. I can quickly dump the pan in the sink or the bin. The brush magnetically adheres to the dustpan and it’s small and not at all ugly to look at. I’m not pushing this particular model or brand. I assume there must be mimics; it’s just the concept that I like. This has lowered the threshold for my willingness to clean up to the point that I find myself happily doing it on the regular.

What do you use? Shop-vac? Wet sock? Lemmy know.

I understand that people in Korea look at me funny when at 38°C in the summer I order a hot cafe latte.
But I also look at them funny no when at -15°C they order a Ice Latte to go.

archive.is

The Ceado Hoop has become explosively popular but it's stock filters are notoriously poor. If you are interested in learning about options for using fast Sibarist filters in the Hoop, this blog post goes into detail.

When buying coffee, vendors usually list coffee grades, gr 1-5, reflecting the physical quality of an agricultural commoditty. E.g. # of rotten beans, broken beans, insect damage, unscreened pebbles, bean size etc.

Then you get the cupping notes. Citrus, floral, coco, caramel, winey etc.

Does the Lemmy braintrust agree with the consumer buying principle that 80% of your buying decision should be on what you smell and taste in the profile and 20% on grade?

Put another way, other than carefully screening beans in small batches for bad beans and bebbles, does grade mean anything to the drinker? Would the coffee fanatic not enjoy their favourite profile at gr4 over an ok profile at grade 2 as long as they don't chip a grinder on a pebble?

80/20 at least. Maybe more like 95/5 because while pebbles can be removed and insect damage likely can't be tasted, a bad tasting cup of coffee is always a bad cup of coffee.

Hi!

I'm looking for ways to enhance my coffee experience at home and since I'm mostly drinking drip, I figured that after grinder and water, filter has the most impact on taste (if I'm mistaken feel free to offer your advice :).

So I've started looking for suggestions on filters and read good things about Sibarist, Hario Meteor and Cafec T90 but to be honest, I don't know what to look for in a filter, so any help here is much appreciated !

Also, I'm using a cheap cilio ceramic filter rest (see attached picture), so maybe I should get something better for flow?

If the filter can be reused to avoid unnecessary waste it's a nice bonus.

Cheers,

Do you feel like experimenting with the Tetsu Kasuya method really changes the sweetness/acidity balance?

Hi,

I've been using a blade grinder for years and just recently realized how badly it affected the brew (took me a while, please don't hate haha).

So I started looking for a better alternative, with burrs, and from what I gathered, a good manual grinder will beat any fancy electric one, so I guess I'll be grinding my beans myself now.

I still need your help picking the right grinder for me, so here is my situation :

• I mostly use a moka pot and a dripper, and more rarely a French press, for lack of a proper espresso set up
• I'm also an espresso guy but I will probably end up investing in a decent espresso set up sonif the grinder could manage all of these that'd be neat! (I haven't started benchmarking for a proper setup yet because enjoying a good ristretto from time to time is fine by me for bow, but any advice on a a machine that is not too pricey is welcome too!)
• most of the time I grind approx 20g of beans
• I buy my beans from a local roaster, in small quantities (by 250g), dunno if this is any relevant

So far here is a list of grinders I've seen recommended on this sub :

• 1ZPresso JX pro
• Commandante c40 (but there are different burrs and I don't know which one I'd pick)
• Capresso Infinity
• Hario mini mill

Haven't bern really checking the the last two though. There seem to be quite we difference in prices range, so I need your help picking the right model (and size?). I don't want to spend too much, but I'm okay for a little pricey one if it makes a great deal of difference and it'll last! Also I'm open to look for second hand grinders unless you thinks it's a bad idea ?

Cheers and thank you for your help,

Edit : kingrinder's P & K series are also seemingly a solid choice, if any of you guys have an opinion, I'm interested!

FWIW, I understand freeze-drying. My question is more about how instant coffee is prepared versus brewing. When you brew coffee, you run the water through the grounds while filtering them out. When you make instant coffee, the grounds just dissolve into it?

What am I missing here?