Coffee

Moving from Porlex II to Kingrinder K6
So, I was perfectly happy with my Porlex mini II, as a I love specialty coffee but I definitely don’t understand yet the small nuances in coffee brewing.
But a couple of days ago my sister accidentally broke the ceramic burr. I was going to just buy the burr but I instead made a little research, suspecting I could get a better grinder. Eventually I landed on the Kingrinder K6 and I was able to receive it the very following day.

So, I’m using for just a couple of days, but the difference is immense.
The object itself is much bigger and HEAVIER, I couldn’t believe how much more robust it felt. Also is far more complex and sophisticated in its assembly, and the structure is more stable.

It’s very handy, firstly because it can easily grind much more coffee, much more quickly and easily. It also features the external grinding size adjustment with precise clicks easy to check thanks to the marks on the outside.

But the main difference is the resulting ground. At a first look it does look more evenly sized but you can’t really be sure. By just brewing it with a V60 the difference couldn’t be clearer.
With the Porlex, the coffee ground after brewing featured a mud-like smooth layer covering both the paper and the coarser particles. It almost disappeared with the K6, only the coarser ground is visible now. Also the brewing time got shorter, especially when brewing two cups of coffee at a time (500ml of water for 30g of coffee).

The only downside is the maintenance. The Porlex burr is made of ceramics, you can easily wash them with a toothbrush and water and make it completely white and clean again.
The K6 burr is made of metal, the manual strongly recommends to avoid water and just brush it, however due to the complexity of the mechanisms it takes a bit longer to disassemble it and definitely more hustle to reassemble it. In particular it requires a very tiny piece to be put back in place in the end which is particularly annoying. I think it may be a huge problem for people with lower hand mobility and strength, so I would appreciate if this process were a bit more accessible.

In a nutshell, it costs like 20€ more than Porlex but looks like a completely different category. I couldn’t recommend it more

#coffee
@coffee@lemmy.world
@coffee@a.gup.pe

I understand that the Aeropress is by no means the best way to make coffee, but I'd like to think I've got a good thing going with it. It's certainly a step up from the "throw x bulk preground brand from the store into the dripper", though. And it's a cheaper method, which is okay by me.

I've come to love it. I make coffee, loose leaf tea, and yerba in it, depending on what I feel that morning. For those of you that use the Aeropress, I'd like to share a sort of frankenstein recipe I made as well as hear some of yours to try out. My recipe is a combination of two champion's recipes with my own coffee measurements. According to an assortment of coffee calculators, I should be using nearly double the amount of ground coffee that I do, but I can get a great flavor and strength with a lesser amount of beans.

My Frankenstein Aeropress Recipe (Americano, Inverted Method, Standard Aeropress Size)

Makes: 20oz (US standard/ 591ml)

• Grind 25 grams of beans. The grind size will vary between roasts, but usually I do somewhere between espresso and drip on the Hario Skerton Pro for a true medium roast.
• Boil water to exactly 194f/90c. An electric kettle with temp setting helps immensely here.
• Invert your Aeropress and place your grounded material in. Add just a slight bit of water, enough to cover the grounds. This may take some getting used to; you can start small and keep adding bit by bit to get what you need. I still sometimes over-fill. Stir with a spoon until you get what I like to call a "wet concrete" consistency (not the best analogy, but...). Make sure all your ground material is wet.
• Let sit/bloom for one minute. If your roast is very fresh, you may notice your coffee rise and take on a sort of half-baked brownie appearance.
• After one minute, stir generously almost like a dough. If it's a darker roast or not as fresh, it may just make a sort of silky liquid. If it's more of a dryer concrete consistency, use a bit of chopping with your spoon and fold. Do this for just a bit.
• Add water until filled to the top of the press. Be VERY careful here. I can get it right to the lip without spilling, but a little extra air will not hurt. Please do not burn yourself.
• Stir again after filled and set a timer for two and a half minutes.
• During these minutes, get your filter in the cap and wet it with water. This doesn't change the flavor, but rather keeps the filter from slipping out when using the inverted method.
• When your brew timer is up, stir again. If you like a more bitter coffee, try to dip some of the foam from the top into the mixture. Alternatively, if you like a sweeter coffee you can place a napkin on top and soak up the foam (I did this by accident when I spilled a bit on the stir).
• Place your filter cap on and put your mug over the Aeropress. Flip both (be very very VERY careful). After the Aeropress is safely on top, shake it a little to get any leftover grounds off the plunger.
• Let the coffee settle for about twenty or so seconds.
• Slide the Aeropress left and right then back and forward to even the material for the plunge.
• Plunge slowly. This part is a bit of work, since the Aeropress wasn't really designed for this much ground material. When you hear the hiss of air, stop plunging. Plunge the little bit of leftover air into the sink and empty your Aeropress into the trash.
• Add your desired sugar and cream. Fill almost to the top with your hot water and add a bit of cold water until you get your desired drinking temp.
• Stir and enjoy.

I've found that this makes a very flavorful cup of coffee, despite using only 2/3 the suggested amount of beans to make it according to Aeropress calculators. I have not tried this recipe as a regular espresso; I haven't reached that peak of coffee enjoyment yet, having only started getting back into it in the past year. I can't remember the names of the champions that I mixed up this recipe from, but it also takes some steps from a few tip tutorials.

I will probably be switching to pour over at some point, because the amount of requests I'm getting from friends and family for coffee is getting overwhelming for the amount this makes. As a note, this method works great for loose leaf tea. Take your tea steep time and cut off a minute for steeping in just a bit of water, just like blooming. This ensures that the tea leaves stay at the bottom of the Aeropress when adding the rest of your water. So for black tea (4 minutes and 30 seconds recommended steep time) I do one minute for the "bloom" and then three and a half minutes for the steep at full water (212f/100c). I usually do 2 grams of tea for each 6 oz of water.

If you're unaccustomed to or have never heard of the inverted method, please take a moment to look up and watch how it's done. Hot water is no joke, save yourself from possible skin grafts. It is more than okay to use these measurements and timings using the regular method. Alternatively, you could use the Fellow Prismo to the same effect as inverting.

Kingrinder K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 and K6 comparison
This should be a whole article, it’s amazing
Archived on Wayback Machine 21/02/2025
@coffee@lemmy.world
@coffee@a.gup.pe

Always thought I wouldn't like it and didn't see the point.

And then I got some nice decaf beans and holy shit. This is great. I can have coffee in the evening now as a beverage to enjoy.

I know this is obvious. But if you like speciality coffee, and you wish you could drink more without a panic attack, then I think trying some decaf roasts is a big brain move.

Now whipping out the Aeropress in the evening is my highlight.

I think when I last looked at decaf it was basically just the supermarket brands and the coffee sucked (cause it was supermarket coffee). Now that I'm looking around there is a decaf roast at almost all local roasters.

Do you know any coffee roasters accounts in the Fediverse?
@coffee@lemmy.world
@coffee@a.gup.pe

I ordered a bag of Lavazza Super Crema for playing with my espresso machine, but wanted to try it out in the V60 for kicks.

Set the ESP to 24 and ground 17g. Brewed with 320ml of water. Coming from mostly light roasts, this taste a bit on the dark side for me, but overall a good balanced cup of coffee. I may go corser on the next brew, maybe 26.

I did 50ml for bloom (30 seconds) Add 70ml wait ten seconds Add 100ml wait ten seconds Add final 100ml

Happy brewing.

I purchased this primarily for calibration purposes. I knew I wanted my grinders in the 500-700 micron range for pour over and this was not as expensive as the more well known Kruve sifter. The included 500um and 800um filters seemed perfect. In addition to helping me to calibrate across grinders, I was curious to see what my fines and boulder amounts looked like. In short, for $30 I was able to accomplish this fairly well. I had tried eye-balling my grind sizes (there are laser cut guides you can use, but with a high-res printer you can also just download pdfs and print these guides for free which is what I did) before, and found it really difficult to tell if something was 400um or 700um even. Immediately after filtering the boulders and fines with this thing it was so much more obvious what my grind sizes actually were. The irregularity of the raw grinder output really threw me off before this, even though, as you’ll see below, the actual noise in the mix was relatively low. After faffing around as a calibration tool was done (didn’t really take long), I threw it in the dishwasher (nice) and later decided to play with it to see if it had any longer-term value.
The next thing I did was to see how much fines a couple of my grinders were producing on typical pour-over grinds. With a 20g bean load in the ode gen 2, I had a surprising 2g of fines (10% by mass, much higher by particle number). My Commadante did better with about 1.5g per 20g. I typically only use the ode for bigger grind volumes though, and interestingly when I tried 60g in it and ran that through the Shelbru, I only came up with about 3.5g of fines, so it seems the fines production does not ramp linearlly. Now for the big question: Is there any value in the effort of sifting for brew-taste? Let’s start with an easy answer – at least with my equipment, for bigger brews (60g grinds), both academically due to the lower fines ratio produced, and emperically from brewing with it a few times, no way – it’s just not a noticeable difference as compared to brewing without sifting. From here, read with skepticism if you will as I didn’t do any proper blind taste testing. For single cup brews I had done enough sifting at this point that at least for the beans I was using, I was getting a pretty consistent 2g loss with the sifter, so I simiply weighed out 2g more beans at this point. I did feel like I lost a little bit of depth with sifting on the ode gen 2 grinds. I am an avid subscriber to the concept of grinding down to the penultimate grind size of what Hoffman refers to as the “wall of bitter”. I found that sifting let me (or almost forced me, due to the taste profile) grind down a click lower on the ode. This was very theoretically attractive to me as I felt like I had just pushed the wall back, and my cups were turning out nicley, but I’m not so certain I had achieved an obvious level of taste superiority. The effects were, as expected, more subtle on the Commadante, and the Shelbru didn’t really allow me to push the grind-size wall back here. Ultimately, it has not become part of my brewing routine; it’s pretty next level faff, and will take you a good extra minute or so to integrate into your workflow not to mention cleaning (dishwasher is nice, but there is a rubber seal that would eventually wear down a bit) and storage.
I did not try this with lesser grinders, but I will leave you with this thought. If you currently have a mediocre grinder, and are hesitant about the value of investing in a better grinder, or simply have a bit more time than you do money for such an investment currently, I think I would consider giving this a try as something that might genuinely do a decent job of immitating a more consitent grinder at a low cost. If brewing competitvely, I think I might employ this in an effort to really maximize my brew with less boulders and fines, but it’s not a daily driver for me.

~ the coffee soldier φ

Found this in a tourist trap in Temple Bar, brought it home to give away but when I realized what a cute demitasse(?) it makes for small drinks, I had to keep it!

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/31845117

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak

My kids got me a cold brew coffee maker for Christmas. Basically a 2 quart mason jar with a mesh filter in the middle. I ground some beans and brewed my first batch and it was delicious. However, I only had flavored beans at the time and while it was tasty, I wasn't going to chug half of a gallon of flavored coffee in one sitting. How long can we keep cold brew in the fridge and still have it retain its peak "freshness" ?

Do you know roasteries that sell decaf coffee beans?
I’d like to brew coffee more often, occasionally in the evening, but I can’t because of caffeine, also I know people who definitely feel much worse effect I would be glad to offer a good pour over to sometimes, so I’m looking for some websites which sell a decent selection of decaf beans, preferably treated with the Swiss water process. Also I live in Italy so due to recent events it would much more convenient to buy from European sources

@coffee@lemmy.world
@coffee@a.gup.pe
#coffee #decafCoffee

A video showing beans being poured into a cup sitting atop of a scale, atop of another scale. Both scales measure the beans concurrently.

What is your expeience with the Porlex Mini II manual grinder?
It's the only grinder I've ever used, I find it quite handy and consistent in the grinding but I have actually no benchmark to judge it objectively. Is it actually good?
@coffee@lemmy.world

Well, maybe not, but a new study suggests drinking it only in the morning can reduce the risk of heart disease and all-cause mortality. so that's something, right?

We've been using that little red thing that says 42 to keep track of the grind setting on our hand grinder - just thought I'd share since it's been super useful.

It's a row counter for knitting. They're super cheap and at craft stores. I used them originally to count life in the Magic The Gathering card game.

Anyway, our hand grinder doesn't have any way to tell what setting it's on, and as we dial in new beans we write on the bag what setting worked well. For a while, we'd just reset to 40 after every grind, but that was annoying and I regularly would lose track of what setting it was on.

I bounce between decaf and caffinated beans a lot, so my grind setting changes regularly. This has been working super well for my wife and I though!

tl;dr: I was raised without any caffeine; the first black coffee I tried nearly made me choke; my wife's espresso-milk drinks never strongly appealed to me; for a few years, if I walked into a coffee shop I wouldn't know what to order or what I liked; but now I adore pour-over and care deeply about making a good cup of coffee. Also, I'm a bit sensitive to caffeine.

Alternate title: some of the differences my coffee journey taught me about loving coffee, vs having coffee as a hobby.

Photo: Shows the majority of our (my wife, dog, and I) brewing equipment. You may notice one of the mugs has our dog's ears on it! And that the coffee bar is on the dog's crate. And there's some coffee plant sprouts in the corner.

Disclaimer: I'm particular and have some strong preferences - I don't mean to sound like any of my preferences are “correct” or “superior." :)

For a long time coffee was a contentious point between my wife and I. I was raised in a religion that believes there is some hidden aspect of coffee and tea that is bad for you. Growing up, my family assumed that bad thing was caffeine - though the Mormon church has since clarified that caffeine is not actually what they care about (so now it's a bit surreal to see my family members have energy drinks and caffeinated soda and then assure me that my coffee/tea is unhealthy). Growing up with this indoctrination really turned me off of coffee/tea. I had a strong belief that people would be better off without either. I left the Mormon church as a freshman in college, but never got into coffee.

Then comes my wife; her parents don't drink coffee, but her grandparents drink more coffee than water [bit of an exaggeration]. And as kids, her and her siblings wanted to drink coffee with them, so they'd put a splash of coffee in hot cocoa. When they got older, her siblings and her tried out new coffee gear and experimented and covered a lot of ground for teenagers investing in a hobby on their own.

In our first few years together, I'd complain if she wanted to make a coffee before leaving the house, or suggest she should limit how many cups she had a day, or to avoid it before bed. Nothing too unreasonable, but I was definitely coming at it from the perspective of wishing she'd drop coffee and sell all her equipment. To me, it was a drug that tasted bad and the whole goal was to try and make it as pallet-able as possible. She insisted she liked the taste and the ritual.

One bit of friction between us was I always felt like she was forcing me to try her coffee. Many times it was a new drink that I'd never tried, but most of the time it was the same result - too harsh, or too sweet for me. Some of the drinks really were great, but I didn't see much of a difference between a milkshake and a flavored latte - so it just wasn't something I wanted to start my day with. It was a bit annoying to me - if I didn't like something, why keep encouraging me to try it? In reality, I think she knew there was a drink out there for me, and she was just searching for it. I remember once she got some black coffee from a grocery store and it tasted so bad to me that I felt like it wasn't actually safe to be drinking. It was super dark and chemically. It's what I imagine used motor oil taste like.

Eventually she introduced me to chai tea and london fogs and that was a bit of a turning point in my frustrations. She'd make me something nice on the weekends, and a coffee for herself, and we'd chat on the porch while we drank. And if we ended up in a coffee shop, there was actually something for me to order, even if shops made them way sweeter than I preferred. Fun fact, sometimes if you ask for half-sweetness in a drink, they'll mistakenly double your sweetness. That's happened half a dozen times to us. And sadly, my wife and I aren't the kind of people to ask for a new drink when a mistake was made. Anyway, I think the difference for me with those drinks is they felt less like they were covering up a bad flavor, and more like they were enhancing a flavor (I didn't know at this point that coffee could taste good without milk and sugar).

Some months later my wife got a pistachio latte from a shop and I think it was the first coffee drink that I'd actually order if I were in the right mood. She was excited I liked it and made some pistachio syrup for us and that became my new weekend drink that she'd make for me. Not sure why it seemed so different to me, but if I had to guess I'd say something like the pistachio adds complexity that pairs well or lifts up the coffee and covers up some of the milk flavor. My wife tuned in my preferences and we learned that I like some bitterness, not a lot of milk, and I don't like the milk too foamy. Basically a flavored cortado.

Still though, it wasn't really a drink I was excited to have regularly. It was a bit too rich and sweet for me to feel like I'd ever want a second cup. The caffeine buzz was all that kept me drinking them on weekends.

Some time later, my wife and I were in L.A. and she took me to a Blue Bottle Coffee shop. It was somewhere that'd been on her bucket list. She got a cold brew and after I tried it I went back and ordered one for myself. I loved it. It wasn't very sweet, wasn't harsh at all, and had some great flavors. It was complex. The flavors evolved from the start of the sip to the aftertaste. It wasn't just brown water like I was expecting. When we got home my wife found an imitation recipe (it has chicory in it, which now seems odd to me) and that became my weekend drink. Cold brew also became my go-to when at a coffee shop.

My wife and I had fun with some experimentation, different cold foams, adding cinnamon or other holiday spices, etc. But learning to make cold brew myself never really appealed to me. Something to do with requiring foresight I think. Plus, it seemed complicated and I had my wife around to make it for me anyway.

Then months later, I see this post: https://lemmy.world/post/22062403 - it makes me chuckle, and I wonder what pour over taste like (I use Arch, BTW). I asked my wife, and she made me some. It was great. Not harsh like I expected. A lot of the complexity that we were getting with cold brew. Nothing like the black coffees I'd tried in the past. This surprised my wife, since I'd had such bad reactions to black coffee in the past. I guess she put a little cinnamon and sage in it that first time. The next time she made it I watched and asked questions on why certain things were done, and how it compared to other types of black coffee. I wanted to learn to make it myself so I could make it for some of my family members that also left the Mormon church (they liked coffee a lot more than me). That led me to doing a LOT of research.

The research went on for weeks (it's still going on, really). There are so many variables to coffee. It's been fun to wade through. Every cup turned out so different at first. And I didn't yet know why. I was motivated to improve. I took notes, got my own pour over equipment (I really like my metal Hario v60). I invested in a nice hand grinder since I'd always disliked how loud my wife's electric grinder is. The only problem was I couldn't really handle three cups of coffee in a row while I experimented/practiced.

I would have never guessed how much I'd enjoy some of the cups we made. I had no idea about things like bean freshness, grind size, the difference between strength and extraction, or how insanely different beans from different roasters were. As of late, I find myself surprised that I'm investigating how minerals in water affect coffee; or helping my wife portion, vacuum seal, and freeze beans. I shouldn't be super surprised - when it comes to cooking, this is how I am. I sort of dive deep, and do a lot of research, experimentation, and practice. But with coffee, I never expected to enjoy it enough to even want to make it myself.

My wife and I had a blast trying new beans. We recently bought six types from a roaster in a nearby town and they're all super different. It was fun trying to dial them all in, and picking out notes, and comparing them. My favorite so far distinctly reminds me of hiking in the woods in winter in the snow. I'm not exactly sure why, but something about the cold air, tiny bit of pine, and what I think is bearded lichen. The winter part might just be because the forest has a lot more smells in summer, but in winter there's just a bit of earthiness that remains.

Searching for a good decaf bean has been fun too. And wow is brewing good pour-over decaf hard. I constantly was over-extracting. I wondered if it was even possible. But we found a good decaf bean and a recent video I watched by Lance Hedrick talked about doing your bloom with lower temperature water. My last few cups of decaf have been super good. When the kettle's heating up, I take out some water as it gets to 170F, then wait for the kettle to get to 190F, do my 30 second bloom with the 170 degree water, and the rest of the pour with 190 degree water. Going lower than 170F for the bloom, I found I could even under-extract decaf. And different decaf beans from different roasters require big changes sometimes.

One day I thought to myself “so this is why people like coffee.” It's complex and versatile. I was excited for Thanksgiving to chat with family (mostly on my wife's side) about how they liked their coffee, how they prepared it, what tips they had, what beans they liked, etc. I sort of assumed everyone was like my wife and had loads of equipment and knowledge. It was a bit of a let down.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine who also left the Mormon church. I knew they loved coffee, they were drinking it before they even left. I was excited to talk about my process, and to learn from them since they were years ahead of me and my journey. But they kind of chastised me a bit. They thought coffee wasn't really meant to be all that good. A bit of “bad” was one of its qualities. That it was supposed to be grungy and harsh. Coffee was a vice to get you through finals week. An experience. A friend. Good memories. But not really a treat. When they wanted to make a special drink, they made Cowboy Coffee, which I'm told taste kind of awful (though research I just did says that if done right, it can make a smooth cup). My friend went on a bit of a rant, it was kind of romantic or maybe idealistic, and I'm not doing it any justice. I understood where they were coming from, and that coffee to them was different than it is to me, but yeah, generally, I didn't relate much. I want an interesting and pleasant cup with a lot of flavor evolution and tasting notes.

I asked another friend for tips and found myself biting my tongue as I realized that they knew nothing about grind size or extraction amounts. Even my wife's siblings seemed perfectly content with some quick and convenient coffee rather than putting in work for a finer cup. Everyone did things by feel, not even measuring out how much coffee or water they were using. I felt like a snob. I didn't want to insult anyone or point out what they might want to consider changing. And I didn't enjoy the cups they made for me.

It was weird because the research I did (and my wife) made me think everyone went through a complicated morning process. But there obviously aren't any ASMR coffee preparation videos where someone literally just turns on a machine and waits. Still, some of these people who I think are missing out on high quality coffee - probably love coffee more than I do. The distinction I've made in my head is that some people love coffee, and others have coffee as a hobby. I wrongly assumed that if you love coffee, you'd be drawn farther and farther down the rabbit hole until it was a hobby for you. Just a funny observation to reflect on.

So for the holidays I wanted to make some coffee for people, and hopefully impress/enlighten them. I packed my pour-over things, and… was wildly unsuccessful… I'm not sure what made the biggest difference, but I think not having a goose-neck kettle was a big issue (I was causing too much agitation when pouring?), also the scale I used definitely wasn't very sensitive. And there was a big altitude change (over a thousand feet). By our last day visiting, I was able to make adjustments to get a cup that showed some of the tasting notes of the coffee, but it still had some harshness and wasn't something I'd ever describe as delectable. I was worried the beans were bad or something, but now that we're home I'm getting good cups again. Hopefully with more practice I'll be able to make a good cup while away from home. Or hopefully make some for them when they visit us. But I don't feel strongly that they'd get as into it as me. Most likely they'd just say to me, “yeah, that's a pretty good cup of coffee.” But still, I want to impress!

I've heard people say that coffee is an acquired taste, maybe it is, but I don't really think my taste for it has changed. My perspective definitely has, but I think I just found a type of coffee that's fun to brew and is interesting/pleasant to taste. Maybe I'm more tolerant to bad/not-specialty coffee now, but I wouldn't say by very much. And I don't enjoy bad coffee any more than before. A problem with coffee I think is that it's hard to get into because there's just so much to it.

Overall, what I've learned is that some people see coffee as a hobby. My wife, coffee influencers online, and now myself. It's just kind of fun, interesting, and if you do a good job - rewarding. To other people coffee is a productivity thing. To others it's a social thing. A ritual. A meditation. Or a sweet treat. And to the Mormons, it's a gateway drug that will make you lose your good standing with the church, preventing you from entering the temple, draining the light from your eyes, and marking your unwillingness to be obedient. (That's a joke, but it's also kind of true).

Bonus section - my experience with caffeine as someone who rarely had it until they were an adult: Caffeine gives me a pretty noticeable buzz. It makes me super talkative and puts me in a great mood. Even before I had drinks that I enjoyed, I still loved getting a caffeine buzz with my wife while we chatted. Whenever we were going on a road trip, I'd make sure we had coffees and it'd make the drive a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I'm a bit sensitive to caffeine. I can't really have more than one cup, or I feel some anxiousness and tightness in my chest (something I've never felt before or felt without caffeine). And it lasts a LONG time for me. I think I'm one of those people who metabolizes caffeine slowly. A buzz can last me around 2.5 hours, and having too much caffeine lasts longer than that. And even one cup seems to have a large effect on my sleep, no matter how early in the morning I drink it. Most people can stop having caffeine at like 2PM and their sleep will be fine, but I find that if I have any after 10AM then that night I'll be lying in bed awake (even if I exercise that day). And even if I have caffeine earlier than that, I still sleep poorly and wake often through the night. I've never had any sleep issues my whole life, so it's a pretty noticeable trade off for me. For a while, I thought if I just had caffeine every day my body would get used to it. Maybe it did in some aspects, but my sleep was getting worse and worse as I went on. One night I got less than four hours of sleep and decided I should just drink decaf. Fortunately, my decaf is pretty good. Not as good as my normal coffee, but I do think my decaf is better than any black coffee I've gotten from a shop (humble brag). When I have caffeinated coffee, I usually get a small, or share it with my wife, to limit my caffeine. I do wish I were fine having a few cups of normal coffee a day, but for now I think caffeine will just be a special treat for me.

Some other loose notes of mine:

• After thanksgiving, my uncle made some drip coffee and wow was it nice to sip on after a heavy meal. Kept me up until 1AM though.
• I hope decaf gets taken more seriously - there's just tons more options at a roaster for caffeinated beans. But usually only one decaf. I've found some good ones, but exploring beans is fun for me.
• Maybe it's just differences in coffee, but I think there's been times where I order cold brew and they give me iced coffee? I'm not confident enough with my discernment skills to be sure, but I'm pretty sure I can tell the difference. I'm not super picky about it, but it feels a little bit crummy if so.
• I wanna try other drinks from around the world now (on my list are Yerba Matte, matcha, some strange teas, guarana, and a bunch more types of coffee - let me know if you know of any cool drinks!)
• A bit ago I tried Starbucks drip coffee and it was very meh to me. I probably should have added cream and sugar, but I never need to do that for my cups (the ones that come out well, at least). I've had plenty of good brewed coffee from other shops, I think I just maybe expected Starbucks to have higher quality. I'd describe it as too dark for me (even though I got the medium roast) and a bit empty and tiny bit harsh. Not really bitter, but more like it stung the back of your throat - which happens to my pour-overs when I over-extract them.
• I also tried some gas station coffee to see if I'd think higher of it now that I like other coffee - and I did not. I was able to finish it, but only barely. They actually had a bunch of options and someone noticed I was reading all of them and they convinced me to try their favorite blend. I'mma sound crazy trying to explain it - it's like it was somehow weak/watery, while also being strong and harsh. Like I could tell it was coffee, but I wondered if there was some food-fraud going on because something seemed wrong. Like some fundamental piece of the coffee was missing and replaced with unpleasant things.
• My wife says this post makes it sound like she only drinks sweet coffees - but really that's just because those were the ones she was most likely to have me try in the hopes I'd find a drink I liked.

Thanks for reading!

Just an update on my travels with the Pipamoka portable siphon-style brewer.
I recently forgot my mini coffee scale (17.5g seems about the sweet spot for this device) but since my Q2 grinder maxes out around 20g, it's not a difficult eye-ball job. By packing the grinder into the pipamoka it makes for a very tight little package:

This is everything I need minus the beans. Unlike my aeropress, this brews into itself - an insulated travel mug. Dosing is also aided by the grounds puck that you basically fill maximally. I'll still probably bring my scale if I remember next time, but no panics if the batteries run out.

I haven't had any regrets since switching from the aeropress. I will comment that if throwing this in a carry-on, it could get flagged by TSA. Twice now they've done a bag search for not being able to identify what this is.

I saw this in a flee market and found it simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. I'm curious about how something like this might have come to be?

So this is what I have found as a working solution

Boil about a quarter cup of water. It must be as hot as possible.

Add a heaped tea spoon or two (depending on your preference).

Let it steep for a few minutes, the filter/sieve.

You end up with black liquid as indicated.

I top mine off with hot milk.

That's it. That is what is working for me.

Thanks for the tips.

My default coffee making is to heat milk, add coffee and steep it for a couple of minutes before I sieve it and voila.

This does not seem to work for this coffee. I have tried water, boiling it with the water or milk and it simply will not mix. What am I missing?

Edit: I know about grinding, I have a burr grinder, a French press and I know the various ways to make coffee. None of the methods I know, work.

Burr grinder = bar grinder. I made that mistake.

Who joined in? How was your experience? Planning to follow along later / async?

I have been discovering the joy of mixing different types of whole bean coffees before preparing them in my French press. I find that as long as you don’t do something crazy like mix a very light roast with a very dark roast you can end up with a lot of extra depth and roundness to the flavor. Thoughts? Am I insane? A heretic??? Have you tried it?

I live in a super hard water region. So hard in fact that it destroys every appliance despite regular descaling. I've remineralized 5l jugs of demineralized water for years but I feel it's not very sustainable in the long term. Plus demineralized water is not supposed to be safe for human consumption.

I'm looking for an affordable RO system that removes most if not all TDS so I can remineralize it using my favorite recipe.

Do you use any? What are your thoughts? Thanks !