Australian Members - Page 1210

This is an excellent way of getting in to home roasting, did that for quite a while. Biggest downside is the small quantities you can do at one time and the chaff that goes everywhere, so you end up standing outside carefully watching a popcorn maker rather a lot.

In certain circles, it will kill you, socially.

Also, if reliability is all your number one priority when looking for a watch, then why would you buy a Chinese tourbillon? The idea of a tourbillon (or any mechanical watch) in this day and age is to show off the "precision and the finish of the pieces". If you don't have that, you have a gaudy wrist weight.

Get a $10 quartz, it will be more reliable and accurate. And it won't be trying to be something it is not.

And forget the Chery, buy one of these:

Now you really don't strike me as the kind of guy who will waste his money on a cheap watch. Save up for something decent son.

The quality may or may not be there, but there is definitely psychology aspect to it as people regard their own creations higher than they objectively should - that's one reason why Ikea is so successful.

My homebrew is the best beer on earth.

You certainly can't get the same quality that a good commercial roaster can, but you'll likely surpass a lot of cheap commercial beans, certainly in freshness if nothing else. And freshness is the biggest quality variable.
The actual beans can tend to be rather over-emphasised in the process too. Variations in the brewing process in many cases completely swamp bean subtleties.

(Enough coffee gasbagging from me. Oh and Geoffrey I hope you realised my original comment was tongue in cheek and not intended to be disparaging).

Has anyone tried the salt in coffee thing?

Improves bad coffee immensely...

I bought one of those Aldi pod machines while back. Works a treat on the rare occasion that I make coffee at home (mostly when someone comes for a visit on a rainy weekend and we can't be bothered walking 50m to all the cafes). I am no coffee aficionado, but it tastes pretty good to me.

what does it do, exactly? enhances the flavour? removes the bitterness?

I have the nespresso and i like it. I must admit im saving my pennies for a proper machine. Although my pennies keep getting spent on shoes. 

See, I don't understand this philosophy... how much was your Nespresso? $200? For that price you can get a basic Sunbeam espresso machine with steam head, which will make extremely good coffee, if you have a quality grinder, good beans and don't use $2 Coles milk loaded with permeate.

Life is too short to drink bad coffee, and for that matter cheap Pinot Noir.

When I was child one of my mates dad brewed his own alcoholic ginger beer that was untill a batch expolded and destroyed the hall cupboard door.

I've had a proper machine in the past and, to my (admittedly unrefined) taste-buds, the gap in quality of coffee between that and what the Aldi pod machine serves up is small. The mess, time, cleanup and ease of use gap is much larger.

I guess I am quite lucky though in the sense that I basically use it as my instant coffee - if I want a nice one I only have to walk 50m down the road and there are ~15 highly rated cafes within a stones throw of each other. If good coffee is harder to come by in your neighbourhood, then I can definitely see the advantage of having a proper roasting set up.

My experience is limited to bad coffee only.  With good coffee, I do not add anything.  The saltiness smooths out the roughness of bad coffee, making it drinkable instead of feeling like you are swallowing chunks of steel.  IMO it will probably not do anything to enhance coffee flavours, as the beauty of good coffee lies in the aroma (smell) rather than taste.