What’s on your coffee bench?

[tctyres]

Riiight... I should have known that there was a James Hoffmann video on this.
Perfect. Thanks, guys!

I agree on the aeropress (and I have one) but that's a different cup of coffee.

[JedB]

Apparently my coffee game needs to step up.

The Black & Decker drip and the Bialetti French press are lacking.

[jkbrwn]

It's really easy to make great coffee without spending lots on equipment. Sorry if you know this already but to get started with really great filter coffee. Don't bother with espresso unless you're ready to spend lots of cash. I would take a look at the following for cheap but great stuff:

V60 dripper

Filters

Hand grinder - this is probably the most important part so I would be tempted to spend more.

And of course buying fresh coffee from a good roasters is the final part.

[tctyres]

Originally Posted by jkbrwn

Hand grinder - this is probably the most important part so I would be tempted to spend more.

And of course buying fresh coffee from a good roasters is the final part.

^ These are the most important parts. The grind is critical. I bought a Baratza Encore grinder last year, and I was surprised at how much more I could do with simple equipment once I could reliably control the fineness of the grind. It makes a big difference.

James Hoffmann also put up a video on how to use a blade grinder, recently, too; so I think the entrance to really great coffee is somewhere around $20 + beans. (A second rate drip machine does no one any favors ... I've done that. I'm not going back.)

[Gsinill]

This old Europiccola popped up a little while ago semi-local on CL.
I thought for $50 I can’t go wrong and picked it up.
Figured out it was the 230V version imported by the owner’s Italian grandfather from Bella Italia.
After some googling, I found a guy in Hungary who has a source for brand new 110V heating elements.
With shipping it actually cost me more than the machine itself but after rebuilding it with new gaskets and seals the thing is
almost like new.
Must have seen very little use, guess the 230V part was too much hassle after all...

All manual, no pressure stat which turns the process of making espresso almost into a little science.
Even more Zen than with my other (newer) La Pavoni.

[froze]

Originally Posted by johnnylarue

Moka pot coffee gives me panic attacks these days but my move was always to put it on low heat and bring it to a boil as slowly and gently as possible. Presumably this minimized the burning of the grounds, though the coffee is still being brewed at too high a temp any way you slice it.

Fwiw, for a $20-$30 investment, I think an Aeropress makes vastly superior coffee (though the process can be slightly more involved.)

Like Goonster said you have to watch it closely and as soon as it begins to come out of the top tube you take it off the heat. What I do is fill it with boiling water, which means you'll need to wear a oven mitt so you can screw the bottom on or else burn your fingers, then put it on a medium flame, the flame thing you will have to experiment, because what you want is just enough heat to make ebb out slowly of the top tube instead of squirting or gushing out, when it's ebbing out slowly you don't have to turn off the flame as soon as it starts, instead just wait till it hisses the remove from the heat. It also uses a grind similar to what table salt looks like, not a fine grind or it will come out bitter, once the grinds are in the basket shake it a bit to evenly distribute the coffee.

A Moka Pot is an old traditional way that's been around for about 87 years used a lot in Italy. If done correctly you can get a bit of crema with it that you can't get with the AeroPress. AeroPress has I think a lighter taste to it, not as strong as the Moka. When it comes down to it the taste is a personal thing, I like them both because they both taste a bit different so I may use the AeroPress for a week or so then I'll use the Moka Pot for a week or two, I get bored with the same taste all the time so I switch up from several different ways of making coffee. But I kind of think the AeroPress is closer in taste to what a French Press makes and not as close to an espresso, the Moka is closer to an espresso vs those other two; neither are a true espresso though.

This video is the best video I've found, I follow this method, it seems to work the best, also if you grind it to a table salt grind and it still taste bitter then simply grind it one step larger than table salt; anyway watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpyB...nnel=ChefSteps