Woodworking Coffee Adicts

[BlIss]

Oh how many times I have read and heard the same stories, let alone experienced it all.

How to make good coffee is just like how to you make a wooden bowl ?

How long is a piece of string as there are variables in every input....

The Machines will assist in throughput and a level of consistency, after that the User had better be able to manage the variables.


The ex Australian Champion (Tim Adams), myself and another did a few visits teh other week and the outcome (Best 5 in Brisbane) as published in the Crema mag, was as some expected but not all would agree.

The issue was consistancy and how one performs on teh day. Places I have had a great SB etc severed up dish water on the day we called in. Can not score on previous or "What IF", had to be done as we found them, on the day.

Thus I grow / roast / Grind on demand and drink my own coffee AND even then I do not always get it right Just ask my wife

With the wood work, if I stuff it; It is hit with a saw and in the fire box

[Sir Stinkalot]

Reviews and verdicts on coffee machines would be good too.

Here is my little humble setup .... just coming up to its first birthday.

Machine: Diadema Junior Regal (Called Stephano)
Grinder: Compak K3 Touch Polished (Called Grinderman)
Tamper: Bogav Classic
Cups: 12x ACF Bowl Cappuccino Cup (200ml)
6x ACF Tulip Espresso Cup (70ml)

[Whit68]

G'day all,

I know good equipment matters but for me it is all in the beans and as far as beans go 5 Senses are the only ones. Dean is a good mate of mine and I know the passion that goes into everything he does and the result is the best beans money can buy.

[BobL]

G'day all,

I know good equipment matters but for me it is all in the beans and as far as beans go 5 Senses are the only ones. Dean is a good mate of mine and I know the passion that goes into everything he does and the result is the best beans money can buy.

Yep - Dean knows his stuff, and quality beans and a french press is all you really need. Espresso machines are like hi-fi - some folk like to go to the n'th degree but the law of diminishing returns applies just the same, and a good barista with fresh beans and a $500 espresso machine can usually make a better cup of coffee than a rank amateur can make with a $2000 machine. The thing about the expensive machines made out of brass and stainless is they can last a lot longer than the ones with a lot of plastic in them. I've seen a lot of people buy cheap machines and they barely last twice as long as their warranty.

[texx]

funny i just found this thread i have spent all day researching coffee machines for our shop .
seems some people dont like our instant even though they have never tried it ( moccona intensity )
anyway we are going to move with the times and throw 2 or 3 grand at some gear and do a course see what happens .
we did do plunger for a while but it never realy took off much .and i used the best beans for that bought fresh from the roaster.
it is a lot harder in a small country town and people from the city traveling through cant seem to realise that ,
they expect a little town with a pop of 900 to have all the frills of the city . not viable in most cases.
we get a few people a week ( travelers ) asking for a latte and my wife has never even seen one .

johno

[BlIss]

funny i just found this thread i have spent all day researching coffee machines for our shop .
seems some people dont like our instant even though they have never tried it ( moccona intensity )
anyway we are going to move with the times and throw 2 or 3 grand at some gear and do a course see what happens .
we did do plunger for a while but it never realy took off much .and i used the best beans for that bought fresh from the roaster.
it is a lot harder in a small country town and people from the city traveling through cant seem to realise that ,
they expect a little town with a pop of 900 to have all the frills of the city . not viable in most cases.
we get a few people a week ( travelers ) asking for a latte and my wife has never even seen one .

johno

My BIL was teh Station Master there some 3 years ago...

If your only doing 10 or 20 a week, then 2 or 3 K may be well over the top; as the Machine Vs Grinder VS FRESH beans will still see you serving crap coffee.

Be aware a 2 hr Braista course is worth nothing... Even the 1/2 day courses can be a waste if you do not have some background to start with.

There is NO HARD rule but Roasted beans can last from a couple of weeks to a couple of months IF stored correctly. Grind them and you done and dusted... 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 min and there are stale. Open a 1 Kg bag out there and pour into teh hopper and they are all stale in under an hr. Yet they might sit there for a week plus...

OH and don't forget good water or ya coffee and Machine will suffer yet again.

Thus if you do not have a Coffee made mate (home roasting) AND or access to a small Prosumer type machine, a few K on stale coffee is not a step forward. Have seen a few that have broken, to $$$ to be fixed (travel costs) and just get used to steam teh milk and teh coffee is instant

Search out Home Barista and the FAQ's then look at the Crema and CoffeeSnobs fourms. One of teh Admins from CS (Mal) is from Warwick and may be better placed, to offer first-hand / local advice. And that is worth more than a dozen well meaning posts....

AM

[q9]

Yes, often when travelling, I don't expect much from small towns as far as coffee goes. I wouldn't think Texas would have a great calling for "real" coffee. You could possibly get away with a domestic class machine - it still beats any instant.

[BobL]

Here is my little humble setup .... just coming up to its first birthday.href="http://s10.photobucket.com/albums/a114/Sir_Stinkalot2525/woodwork/?action=view&current=IMG_9478-1.jpg" target="_blank">

Looks good SS - very colourful!

After my warranty ran out I plumbed my machine in. The inlet is connected to a water purifier and filter and the outlet drains straight to the same drain line as the dishwasher. This means no for filling or emptying the drain tray. This has been a improvement on the speed of coffee making but it is not without a need for maintenance.

One night I woke up and got up to get a drink of water. As I staggered into the kitchen I almost slipped over on a some slippery liquid. I turned on the light and there was a pool of brown black water all over the floor, dripping down the bench front and coming from under the coffee machine drip tray. The stuff was all inside two cupboards (SWMBO best china) and in short had made a big mess

To cut a long story short what had happened was a large olive pip had jammed in the dishwasher spigot/drain/outlet. When the dishwasher had tried to pump the water way the olive pip had prevented the water going to waste and so it backed up and went to the next available pipe which was the coffee machine drain. The dishwasher had then discharged a soapy load back through the coffee machine drain, the pipe of which was coated in brown grounds and flushed everything out onto the kitchen floor. The reason the olive pip had jammed was because the plumber who installed the dishwasher (not me) had used a 1/4" bit to drill a hole in the 1/2" spigot to the drain.

Anyway all has been good since except the drain line will eventually clog with grinds if left for too long so every couple of weeks I dump a half cup of hot water and dishwasher powder down the drain.

[texx]

My BIL was teh Station Master there some 3 years ago...

If your only doing 10 or 20 a week, then 2 or 3 K may be well over the top; as the Machine Vs Grinder VS FRESH beans will still see you serving crap coffee.

Be aware a 2 hr Braista course is worth nothing... Even the 1/2 day courses can be a waste if you do not have some background to start with.

There is NO HARD rule but Roasted beans can last from a couple of weeks to a couple of months IF stored correctly. Grind them and you done and dusted... 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 min and there are stale. Open a 1 Kg bag out there and pour into teh hopper and they are all stale in under an hr. Yet they might sit there for a week plus...

OH and don't forget good water or ya coffee and Machine will suffer yet again.

Thus if you do not have a Coffee made mate (home roasting) AND or access to a small Prosumer type machine, a few K on stale coffee is not a step forward. Have seen a few that have broken, to $$$ to be fixed (travel costs) and just get used to steam teh milk and teh coffee is instant

Search out Home Barista and the FAQ's then look at the Crema and CoffeeSnobs fourms. One of teh Admins from CS (Mal) is from Warwick and may be better placed, to offer first-hand / local advice. And that is worth more than a dozen well meaning posts....

AM

not sure what you mean ,
we have not had a train here in at least 15 years ,
i would drink more than 20 a week .'and i have several regular customers that are asking for it .that dont sound right
we get asked for cappuccino a quite lot .
i go to toowoomba every week and i can get freshly roast beans there .i need to get a grinder too.
water will be tank water .

johno

[BlIss]

Opps 30 Years not 3....

I even won a fishing comp and had the pic in the pub... Got lots of Foxes that year as well.

Eel Tail catfish and some big crays....

Long time ago now.

A single group, Tanked would do you... But depending on what is around a 2 group may be just as cheep but space and plumbing in and water filters etc may knock any savin g on the head.

Do not rush in...

A good grinder will set you back $500 to $1500 and trust me even teh $500 units are bottom of teh range.

Mind you an EM6910 and an EM0480 grinder and a bit of training would see you easily looking after ya self and a couple of drive bys with ease.... It would also let you learn and see if it is really what you want... On special or do a deal with the big suppliers and the two for under $750...

If it is not what you expect, you have lost little....

Any machine with out a dual boiler and or a good sized HX may struggle AND for ease Volumetric - i.e. Push button and programmed...

Thus A machine and Grinder and Maintenance to meet ya needs etc etc will cost you $$$$

But an EM6910 or teh Soon to be released BES900 T2 (June) may well be the best option..

[Bushmiller]

Forumites

Great to see this level of enthusiasm and knowledge too. Like I said at the begining, I was unsure as to whether this would end up like a why bother (weak, skinny, decaf {normally} latte). Clearly I need not have worried. You have come up trumps and I am hoping there is more to come.

Thanks to Wendy (Rufly Rustic) for re-positioning this thread in it's rightful spot after I made such a nonsense.

Perhaps I can make some very general comments about coffee.

Coffee unfortunately is a very fickle creature. It has an extremely short shelf life. Gerrad, my mentor, maintained that from the day it is roasted it will only make the best coffee for about a fortnight. After that a gradual degradation of the beans occurs. It will still be satisfactory for most of us after that time (perhaps up to a month in total). It would take a very experienced coffee taster to determine the difference between two and four weeks.

This all assumes however that the beans have been kept correctly and only ground just before use.

This fickle creature coffee has many enemies; Sunlight, heat, time and moisture. Moisture is often the worst of them all. Coffee is absorbent, but moisture ruins coffee. It is the reason why it should be kept in a cool, dry, dark place. That automatically precludes the fridge and freezer. Each time the bag is opened warm air is introduced and on return to the fridge/freezer the moisture is condensed and absorbed by the coffee. You never see this because the coffee bean is like blotting paper, but this is one of the worst things that can befall a coffee bean.

There is plenty of heat in an espresso machine and in the group head in particular. You will know this if you have every touched it with bare skin. Now the group handle should remain in the head until it is replenished with fresh coffee. When returned to the group head the extraction process should start immediately.

I would place the cups either side of the machine, insert the group handle, press the start button and then place the cups under the group handle.

It will take a couple of moments for the liquid to come through and this is long enough to position the cups. I was told that you have four seconds to start the extraction after the handle is placed in the group head. In a commercial situation a routine like this speeds things up during busy times too. Not an issue for the domestic user, but still good practice.

The milk, if required, is heated before all this takes place.

BTW, one of the reasons I so loved the knock boxes made by BobL was that our coffee machine did not have a tray or drawer for the used coffee grounds and we improvised with a 1m piece of 150mm plastic pipe with a cap on the bottom and a bolt through the top covered with garden hose. It was crude and not a little gross and pretty heavy when full.

Regards
Paul

[BobL]

Coffee unfortunately is a very fickle creature. It has an extremely short shelf life. Gerrad, my mentor, maintained that from the day it is roasted it will only make the best coffee for about a fortnight. After that a gradual degradation of the beans occurs. It will still be satisfactory for most of us after that time (perhaps up to a month in total). It would take a very experienced coffee taster to determine the difference between two and four weeks.

Bean or bean content degradation starts immediately after roasting. The much wanted sweet volatiles are lost along with the CO2 that is made during the roasting - most volatiles are inside the bean under pressure and are lost from the bean within days irrespective of how the beans are stored. Also irrespective of how the beans are stored the essential oils produced/released during in roasting wick to the surface of the bean over a period of 1 - 3 weeks and turn the bean outer coating shiny or oiyl (usually the oilier the bean the more the chances of it being off) and begin to break down. From here on the predominant degrader is oxygen or air compounded by light and water. These speed up oil degradation to the point where the oils become rancid and the develop that acrid burnt sandshoe aroma, this is also gives stale coffee a very unpleasant taste. Keeping beans away from excess oxygen and in moisture free in light proof containers helps. There have been patents issued for vacuum, nitrogen, and mixed Argon/Nitrogen based storage systems which help but no matter what is done the oils will break down eventually and the beans go stale. I never buy imported coffee beans as they sit around it warehouses for months. Fresh beans are definitely the only way to go.

As BM says storage in a fridge is not so good - too many smells. Storage in a freezer is not perfect but OK provided, the bag is truly factory sealed with a one way air valve (ie not a ziplock or clip), and the bag is removed from the freezer and allowed to come up to room temp before opening the bag otherwise the beans will condense water onto them. I found that beans placed in a freezer in this way still go off but about 2 times more slowly than they otherwise would at room temperature.

BTW, one of the reasons I so loved the knock boxes made by BobL was that our coffee machine did not have a tray or drawer for the used coffee grounds and we improvised with a 1m piece of 150mm plastic pipe with a cap on the bottom and a bolt through the top covered with garden hose. It was crude and not a little gross and pretty heavy when full.

One more thing I forgot to add its that I put the used coffee grounds in the garden They keep slugs and snails away and it makes excellent compost - they do after all smell faintly of sewage, and the garden after while takes on a stale coffee aroma.

[artme]

Did someone mention Maccas and coffeee in the same sentence.??

Macca's "coffee" is the most putrid abomination ever put in a cup.

[Bushmiller]

Sorry. Forgot to include O2 in the list of coffee enemies.

All our coffee grounds go into the worm farms (we have three.)

Regards
Paul

[Bushmiller]

I have to assume that when an establishment selling coffe goes down this track, they undergo training. Why would you part with upwards of 10K worth of coffee gear and not find out how to use it?

I suspect that some don't do this, but certainly they don't pass on knowledge (such as it is) to their staff.

It is why most establishments offer a very substandard product. I have heard it said that 20% of coffee making is to do with the beans and 80% is the barrista input! No wonder that on a good day the results are variable and on a bad day just plain daibolical.

Regards
Paul