Good Coffee

[TGregg]

Quote from bigmoose:

Nice thread! Thanks for the tips. You got me thinking how to design a little lab roaster to get those beans to 420 Deg using my industrial heat gun... a little Microchip micro to control the roast with a couple of IR thermocouples ought to do the trick...

Be sure to allow for the smoke (which'll settle into cloth and get rancid) and the chaff (which can get sucked into the heatgun and catch fire). I've got one of my wife's socks over my heatgun to keep the chaff out, and I roast outside. You'll want to design a system that on one hand keeps a lot of the heat in the roasting chamber but on the other blows the smoke out.

 

[Nanook]

Quote from trendlover:

Nanook, crema is the light creamy foam on top of espresso. Nothing extra, it is part of the process. If you make a cup and do not drink it soon, the crema goes away. Very hard to serve espresso with crema if you try to serve a large amount of people.

Exactly! Thanks /lover (or \lover)

Now, how can a barrista consistently make the crema on my coffee? (which was my original question posted on page 4)

Thanks. (not trying to be difficult, just want to know the technique -- sometimes I get crema and sometimes not)

 

[TGregg]

Quote from Nanook:

Now, how can a barrista consistently make the crema on my coffee? (which was my original question posted on page 4)

Thanks. (not trying to be difficult, just want to know the technique -- sometimes I get crema and sometimes not)

I'm not a shot expert, but is your water hot enough, your beans roasted recently, and just ground? I suspect part of the crema results in the right oils being present in proper amounts - and if they dry up then it won't work.

Also Espresso roasts are darker than regular, and you have to grind it pretty fine. It's more like powder than the chunky sand you use for drip. You don't want to use a drip grind in an espresso because it will be flavorless. A finer grind allows for the faster saturation required by espresso makers. Likewise, a drip is a compromise between a french press and an espresso machine. It soaks the coffee for a bit, so you want bigger chunks of coffee.

When you brew, the initial extraction tastes much better than what comes later. What comes out of the grind first is what we love about coffee. The longer the coffee soaks, the more of the bitterness is extracted. So that's the theory behind espresso - grind it pretty fine and push the water right on through very quickly. But it's a fairly complex affair.

On the other side is a press, where the coffee is soaked for several minutes. This will give you a more complex brew, but it does have the tendency to draw out more bitterness. This also explains why one uses a very coarse grind for a press - you want to keep as much of the late extraction stuff in the coffee and not in the brew.

If you use an espresso grind in a proper drip machine, it will be a bitter brew as you extract more of the "yuck" part of coffee.

Also, getting water hot enough can be a challenge for many systems, especially drip.

And if you really want something pretty cool, look up vacuum brewers. I might get one of these some day.

To reach people who are insane-nutso about coffee, check out the forums at CoffeeGeeks.com. Also, here's a good post:

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/09/espresso-crema-shots.html

 

[trendlover]

Quote from Nanook:

Exactly! Thanks /lover (or \lover)

Now, how can a barrista consistently make the crema on my coffee? (which was my original question posted on page 4)

Thanks. (not trying to be difficult, just want to know the technique -- sometimes I get crema and sometimes not)


[http://www.sweetmarias.com/espresso-crema.html/QUOTE]


I am not good at this, I drink my coffee in the morning and leave for the day. But here in the link are ways to do this. If your are business owner, and want the barristas to always make a perfect crema for many people at one time, then a good machine is what you need maybe? Good luck!

 

[trendlover]

http://www.sweetmarias.com/espresso-crema.html

Sorry, the other link was not good. Maybe this one will work for you Nanook.

 

[Banjo]

Nanook is crema not the result of making esspresso, so you have to have esspresso to have real crema? Are you talking about some independent product from esspresso?

 

[Banjo]

Great thread by the way. Tgregg, sheesh , talk about taking it to an art form, nice research and work. Dr Z, will try the Costa Rican beans. Blue mountain or Kona my present fav.

 

[TGregg]

Quote from Banjo:

Great thread by the way. Tgregg, sheesh , talk about taking it to an art form, nice research and work. Dr Z, will try the Costa Rican beans. Blue mountain or Kona my present fav.

Thanks. It's amazing how much better your coffee can be with just a little more effort and knowledge. You don't have to buy $50 a pound coffee and brew it in a $5000 machine. With a bit of ingenuity and common sense, you can make coffee that's as good or better than any retail coffee house for less than buying it preground at the store.

Check out CoffeeGeeks.com for people that make anybody on this thread look like a piker.

I roasted some Costa Rican yesterday, we'll see how it tastes in a couple days.

 

[omegapoint]

This sounds like where the idea for trickle down economics came from.

Quote from TGregg:

Even more highly prized and much more expensive coffee is (and you won't believe this unless you've already seen The Bucket List):

<A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak">Cat Poop Coffee</a>

I am not making this up.

 

[acronym]

Quote from nutmeg:

Thanks ac, I'm going to try that.

Obviously, if you actually have a coffee grinder......don't bother with the tea towel and hammer.
Evidently we have some budding barristas here, i should point out, it was GREEK coffee i meant to goog, super strong and super sweet to match, traditional turkish is different i think? No matter.

Personally, i find the greek coffee a bit much, hence my version of a saucepan variation works well, just don't skimp on ingredient, as others have stated.
In short, one tablespoon per cup of water-most settles , its supposed to, but it is still intense.
Fantastic with cream, honey etc. Not traditionally brewed, but pretty darn good in a pinch.