Coffee

[Bryn]

Know what you mean, ff, cream and coffee complement are however far worse!

When I was working for the horribly named Technical Indexes, they had what was a Douwe Egberts blend, with added fig flavouring. It was pretty disgusting. Put me off that brand ever since.

[gradus]

It may be made from coffee, but with all the life taken out if spray-dried, and much of it if freeze-dried. That said, I am quite partial to Illy instant when feeling lazy.



100% Arabica with a dash of fine ground to give the illusion of the real thing.

Well ok but I prefer Instant most of the time because the majority of 'proper' coffee I drink out tastes lousy imv. Oddly enough the best cup of proper coffee I ever had was in a pub in Westbourne Grove.

[vinteuil]

Don't understand the learned debate about boiling point of water - please don't explain

... we were in the land of the absolute / kelvin and rankine.

Why did we abandon réaumur anyway?

[ ... I see that Herr Fahrenheit devised his scale in 1724, M Réaumur in 1730, and Herr Celsius his in 1742. ]

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[french frank]

... we were in the land of the absolute / kelvin and rankine.

Oh, I see. I thought people would understand that 212º was Fahrenheit without my stating it

[Bryn]

Oh, I see. I thought people would understand that 212º was Fahrenheit without my stating it

Well if you will use the American temperature measurement system rather than that of the UK.

[Thropplenoggin]

We invested in a bean-to-cup machine late last year (reduced by a staggering £500 on Black Friday); it has proved to be a very sound investment indeed. Coffee is a strange thing in 2017. Independent coffee shops provide an intriguing experiences - they are all weirdly homogenised in terms of aesthetics (pre-loathed tables and chairs from a local comprehensive, etc.) and coffee that has been hipsterised to death ('single estate', etc.) You can get a decent cup but not always. The best coffee experiences tend to be the simple ones, say, in Paris, when un café is an espresso thrown at you by the surly waiter/waitress, or in Italy, where the ludicrously cheap cappuccino is a third of the size of its British cousin, and three hundred times tastier.

[jayne lee wilson]

Well I'll soon be making one of my #318 JLW SPECIALS, crammed full of chocolate and sugar (bit early & not cold enough for the brandy) to set me up for The Big Match...have to cope with the nervous apprehension somehow...

I do like a first-thing combo of frothy Hot Chocolate and black coffee, each in its own cup. Or black coffee X 2, with a separate cup of hot jersey milk (I'm probably more of a milk snob than a coffee snob YEO!).
The last time I had one of those towering-whipped-cream extravaganzas was in a cafe inside Fazackerly Hospital on one of Mum's consultation trips late last year. OK, the coffee itself (far, far beneath the various layers of topping) was mediocre, but it was hot and sweet, and the occasion and the company made it special. (When the women behind the counter learned of Mum's age they were all over us with spoons and top-ups )

As for temperature, my catchphrase is:
IF IT'S NOT HOT THEN COFFEE IT'S NOT. I'll trade some flavour for searing temperatures ANY day of the week.
Mind you, those iced Starbucks Espresso Shots are OK if it's warm weather. Maybe best not to have 2 though, unless you really need to stay awake...!

[Dave2002]

?

373.15

or possibly 671.69....


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Nope - that’s equivalent to 100C - not what ff intended I think.

[french frank]

Nope - that’s equivalent to 100C - not what ff intended I think.

Eh? Goodness knows what ff intended. I just checked up on an article about water needing to be 'off the boil' before it was poured on to the coffee (the article suggested 205º F). People can insert their own temperatures as it pleases them!

[vinteuil]

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... café cortado / noisette / macchiato most of the time.

At home the lavazza black serves; I haven't found the oro to be vfm.

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[johnb]

I post this with some trepidation but the best coffee I have ever had is an Ethiopian natural (as opposed to washed) from Extract Coffee Roasters (their "Gugi Gigesa" single origin Natural Ethiopian). It is very fruity, has an amazing blueberry aroma and is absolutely wonderful. Sadly they have now run out of these beans but I still have 500g from their last roasting on the 8th January.

I use a cafetiere or filter as I am not very fond of espresso. There is something satisfyingly simple about a cafetiere, though the resulting flavour, etc can vary considerably depending on exactly how you brew and how you pour.

In autumn of last year I got fed up with supermarket packs of ground coffee - they somehow all seemed rather bland so I started to look around and experiment. I bought a grinder and started to buy beans from two local independent roasters (Two Day Coffee and Extract Coffee Roasters).

[french frank]

I use a cafetiere or filter as I am not very fond of espresso. There is something satisfyingly simple about a cafetiere, though the resulting flavour, etc can vary considerably depending on exactly how you brew and how you pour.

What method is another point for consideration. I'm not keen on a cafetière (the experts tend to favour it). My home equivalent of espresso is stovetop which is a proper digestif after a satisfying meal. But for routine coffee times I use a single-cup stainless steel drip thing (this one apparently comes from Vietnam, but you used to be able to get them in Europe):

[Braunschlag]

What method is another point for consideration. I'm not keen on a cafetière (the experts tend to favour it). My home equivalent of espresso is stovetop which is a proper digestif after a satisfying meal. But for routine coffee times I use a single-cup stainless steel drip thing (this one apparently comes from Vietnam, but you used to be able to get them in Europe):

Indeed it is a Vietnamese device, my daughter came back with three from her travels there. However, you seem to have a rather nice version, the Vietnam ones are aluminium - they don’t travel well stuffed in a rucksack.
I find it a handy standby if one needs a quick cup. The coffee served over there tends to be flavoured with condensed milk or sometimes with egg, try ordering that in Starbucks.

[Keraulophone]

We have had our Delonghi Magnifica Bean to Cup machine for a couple of years and I don't know how we previously lived without it.

When our Magnifica machine went in for a (very efficient) service for a top boiler renewal after ten years of blissful use, I did a back-of-an envelope calculation comparing the cost per cup with today’s coffee shop prices. I was astonished that the notional sum ‘saved’ easily ran into five figures (excluding pence!).

I’m not sure it my current favourite everyday beans have been mentioned. I’ve compared them favourably to peaberries at twice the price: Sainsbury’s Tanzanian Peaberry Fairtrade Taste the Difference whole beans 227g @ £3.50, but often reduced to around £2.75; a big but subtle taste experience.

https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/gb/groceries/sainsburys-tanzanian-peaberry-beans--taste-the-difference-227g?langId=44&storeId=10151&krypto=cE3NvFcKBk5y53FTGmrjgTN56pkgn42jHzmwcFsSIJsx4DNlA0XJA4SVYuauh%2F5yFql13gmTHHVmLoTvrB%2BXKEjMSSpZ9teQgvUd7RwOk%2BMdSvkE9sNjad%2FqYWyGnBWDsY%2FeA2X6BtzEG%2FJerJ0OGQ%2BleUxSzUJAQXj0UMm2uYk%3D&ddkey=https%3Agb%2Fgroceries%2Fsainsburys-tanzanian-peaberry-beans--taste-the-difference-227g

(For ancient geographers only: my favourite American A-level geog textbook (1971) included a game theoretic solution to a dilemma faced by the Chagga farmers, who grew coffee on the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro. If they sprayed their coffee bushes with a copper solution in dry years, more leaves would be retained and yields would increase. However, if they sprayed and it rained, yields decreased. Prof Peter Gould, then of Penn State Uni, showed how game theory could provide a mimimax or ‘saddle-point’ spraying strategy which produced optimum yields over a given period at varying altitudes up the mountain. I drink Sainsbury’s Peaberry coffee while imagining the Chagga farmers successfully using the minimax solution to produce it.)

https://imgur.com/a/8R7beVA

[Dave2002]

When our Magnifica machine went in for a (very efficient) service for a top boiler renewal after ten years of blissful use, I did a back-of-an envelope calculation comparing the cost per cup with today’s coffee shop prices. I was astonished that the notional sum ‘saved’ easily ran into five figures (excluding pence!).

I can believe that. We have one of those De Longhi machines - bought on an offer I believe - must have been shortly after this thread started, as I bought an Aeropress which was discussed on these pages to give as a present, and I got a De Longhi in return (Christmas - so didn't know what was going to happen ...). I thought it was expensive at the time, but we use it several times a day, even though I'm now trying to cut down on caffeine a bit. Now have a collection of Starbucks (mostly) black and white city mugs to be filled up - once or twice with a double portion in the mornings. I'm not so bothered about froth, but we have found that LIDL's fairly cheap frothing machine is good, and ours is still going after several years - using skimmed milk as it seems to make better froth. We had several other varieties which fell apart, and were sent back for refunds.

At one time I used Nespresso pods - as we had a machine at work. I rather liked those, but they were a lot pricier than using beans in the Magnifica. On the other hand they still worked out cheaper than having bought cups of coffee. One advantage was that it was possible to have different flavours during the day. Now we have a cheap alternative which works with pods, which we use occasionally - though mostly we use the De Longhi.

We did use a Senseo machine for quite a while, but sometimes that caused a mess if the pod thingies weren't put in right. The pods for that are now quite hard to get in the UK, though sometimes supermarkets in France still have them. We have used that for decaffeinated pods to drink in the evening. Recently though I read that we should not be fooled into thinking that decaffeinated equates to no caffeine - it doesn't, though a cup of decaff might have only 30% of the caffeine of a same sized cup of regular coffee.