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Lets talk about COFFEE

Despos

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What I had at #7 was worth it but check out the menu and you can decide. Most eccentric combinations for sandwiches but they work. Problem is only 3 people can actually eat there due to the confines of the space, so you have to take it with you and eat elsewhere. Lots go to the park down the street.
 

indesertum

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I just re-brewed and I let the water sit a little longer before pouring over the grinds. It actually helped a lot. I think I get in my head so many people saying that drip machines never brew hot enough so I consequently over do it. I also have generally poured it all in, waited about 20 seconds then stirred.
I have also found that if the beans are slightly on the old side it tastes better to grind finer and let it brew for less time. I think probably because the oxidation affects the outermost portion of the beans first and breaking it up more exposes more of the untarshined bean to the water.
I actually like Gimme Coffee much more than Stumptown, but for some reason I can't seem to find beans at their cafes that are under a week old so I don't bother.


ask them when their shipments come in. should be able to get fresher beans.

:) gimme is my favorite as well. they have a relatively new bean that's quite delicious

you should also try and pour a controlled stream in circles to let the coffee bloom for 30 secondsish before you pour the rest of the water in. that might help a little.
 

A Y

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No the texture is ok, it just tastes bitter. The beans are from Stumptown.


Bitter is usually a sign of overextraction. You can solve it in one (or some combination) of these ways:

1. Lower water temperature
2. Stir less
3. Coarser grind
4. Shorter steep time
 

patrickBOOTH

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It is probably more than when you get coffee out it is brewed and sits on a burner, or hot plate to keep it warm. It generally burns already made coffee.
 

MikeDT

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Here in China we take our coffee very seriously.

...and always insist on the best.
 

A Y

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This is one of my favorite coffee blogs:

http://caffeinatedcalm.blogspot.com/

He's sometimes curmudgeonly, but it seems to come from a very informed perspective and a real love of coffee. And it's always nice to get a counterpoint to the 3rd wave coffee geekery that pervades many of the boutique brands today

For example, there are lots of interesting stories in this post:

http://caffeinatedcalm.blogspot.com/2011/11/retail-coffee-revival-and-some-ancient.html

My first exposure to really great coffee was on a visit to Starbucks' Pike Place store in 1977, where as luck would have it some employees had brewed up a plunger pot of Yemen Mocha behind the bar to drink. T'hey offered me a sample cup (no brewed coffee of any sort in the store, of course) and for the first time there was total correlation between smell and taste, with over-the-top complexity of flavor. Starbucks was 6 years old at that point, and was Starbucks Coffee, Tea & Spice (they had saffron and Tellicherry peppercorns, whole leaf tea and catnip for your kitty, at a time when none of those things were available anywhere else in town!).

...

The classic Starbucks employee was an over-educated artist and/or liberal arts major, and I well remember how the old employee questionnaire insisted that you describe (in writing) the best meal you'd ever eaten, the best one you'd ever cooked and so on - a way of screening out people who didn't already know and love food and have some palate education.

...

It's probably hard to believe today, but when I started with Starbucks there was a box of index cards kept near the register filled with custom blends of coffee developed for and with long-time customers over the years, and avid discussions on daily basis about whether the new crop of Guatemala was better than the previous year's, or whether the Hao Ya A Keemun was as viable a choice for breakfast as the second flush Assam that had just arrived.

...

Another thing that ought to have been written in stone were the simple espresso bar menus of those days: espresso, cappuccino, caffe macchiato, caffe latte and caffe mocha - small or large (8 or 12 oz!), whole milk or 2% (and the latter grudgingly, with much talk about whether it was too much of a compromise of our standards) and almond syrup as the only other permissible additive (though it was mostly used for "steamers" for children, as an alternative to hot chocolate).

Here's one where he's hating on Intelligentsia and another 3rd wave place in LA:

http://caffeinatedcalm.blogspot.com/2011/11/luddite-regression-brief-taste-of-la.html

From the look and flavor it was the now-standard 20+ grams of coffee with a bare one-ounce yield: thick, bitter uber-ristretto that is the coffee equivalent of Herb Caen’s old joke about the ideal cocaine substitute (smear the inside of your nose with battery acid and burn a hundred dollar bill).

...

Intelligentsia is for me perhaps the extreme example of the snobbery, hypocrisy and narcissism of today’s third wave coffee scene at its worst. The spare menu (and insufferably pretentious web site) purports to feature only “seasonal” coffees, yet the coffees on offer were no more seasonal than many others that could easily have been available, from top quality Central Americans to Indonesians to Yemens or Ethiopians.

...

The sad theater of employees painstakingly brewing individual cups of drip coffee when that method's whole raison d'etre is to efficiently brew a pot of coffee to be shared among friends perfectly mirrors the alone together isolation of the customers on their iPhones and Macbooks (all with ear phones!) sitting at the bar during my visit, drinking coffee together while communing with invisible others in the virtual world. This 21st century café is as removed as one could imagine from the rich tradition of the coffeehouse as a place for lively exchange of ideas and with it the creation of community.
 

lefty

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Last paragraph is pretty bang on. I can't stomach the coffee culture in SF and only drink in my home.

lefty
 
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hhenryhhh

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Used to be that a mug of regular dark French roast would get me pretty wired up but now I have to tell them to add a shot of espresso. Caffeine tolerance really does build up quickly. I try to keep it under control by not ingesting any caffeine over the weekend and it kinda works I guess.

And don't get me started on the heartburn, I am totally regretting eating that slice of pizza this morning. **** is killing me.
 

patrickBOOTH

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Last paragraph is pretty bang on. I can't stomach the coffee culture in SF and only drink in my home.

lefty


Yeah, we have a Blue Bottle in Williamsburg now where they do that whole pourover for each customer. Not only do I not like pourover (filters out too much flavor) the environment kind of sucks. Like you said the paragraph is bang on. It is like everybody in there is so anti-social. I much prefer the Stumptown bean cafes that make a **** load of French Press coffee, pour it into an insulated vat and serve. Also, blue bottle I feel over-roasts their beans making them all taste, more or less the same. They also updose like crazy. Might be the reason why everything is so damn expensive there. The must make killer profits roasting, serving and pocketing all of the extra dough.

Used to be that a mug of regular dark French roast would get me pretty wired up but now I have to tell them to add a shot of espresso. Caffeine tolerance really does build up quickly. I try to keep it under control by not ingesting any caffeine over the weekend and it kinda works I guess.
And don't get me started on the heartburn, I am totally regretting eating that slice of pizza this morning. **** is killing me.


Yeah, I eat very little during the day at work, but drink a lot of coffee. There is nothing like being hungry and caffeinated with an ulcer.


Thanks for those blogs AY!
 
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Axelman 17

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Recently sprung for a bag of Heartbreaker Espresso blend from Cafe Grumpy in Chelsea. At $16 for twelve ounces, way more expensive than my usual $5 at Porto Rico but well worth it. Amazing coffee, brewed it this morning in the Hario.

7518552.jpg


IMG_1051.jpg


IMG_1054.jpg
 

A Y

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edit: this is in response to Axelman 17's post above.

I'm curious what kind of grinder you use --- is it a whirly-blade design? The ground sizes don't look very uniform, and that can do bad things to your coffee.
 
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