Todays' Coffee

[superflyguy]

@Shlong
the Exchange Coffee shop in Skipton (should you be anywhere near there) is rather good. The Sumatra Blue is excellent; strong, rich, deep and complex - much like your good self!

[benshep]

What scum? Espresso machines have no such filters and there is no scum - and I do not leave it sitting - I instantly squash/pour. And paper filters - taste of wet paper. But I guess we all like what we are used to - my parents used to grind their own coffee, but then use a stove-top machine that "cooks" the ground coffee as it brings the water up to boiling point.

You get a bit of a head on it with a cafetière don't you. Whereas with an aeropress you get a much cleaner flavour because there's none of that residue. It doesn't taste of paper if you wet the filter paper first with the hot water. (Espresso does have the scum - people call it crema, but it's not nice tasting in a tall drink like an americano or filter coffee.)

If using a stove top machine it should be taken off the heat as soon as you hear the bubbling up of the steam rising and the coffee condensing through. The coffee will keep coming but it will not burn, which is what happens if you keep the water boiling on the heat.

[Vampire]

If using a stove top machine it should be taken off the heat as soon as you hear the bubbling up of the steam rising and the coffee condensing through. The coffee will keep coming but it will not burn, which is what happens if you keep the water boiling on the heat.

I usually forget and then melt the rubber seal, and get brews tasting of burning tyres,

[Graham Breeze]

Espresso does have the scum - people call it crema, but it's not nice tasting in a tall drink like an americano or filter coffee.

Scum!

The only way to drink coffee at home is espresso with a lovely crema from very expensive Illy coffee pods, freshly removed from their individual foil wrapping, with the paper container acting as a filter plus the tiny holes the coffee has to flow through to your pre-warmed cup.

[Mike T]

"If using a stove top machine it should be taken off the heat as soon as you hear the bubbling up of the steam rising and the coffee condensing through. The coffee will keep coming but it will not burn, which is what happens if you keep the water boiling on the heat."

This is standard practice, but the grounds still get "cooked" to an extent and this adversely affects the flavour.

[Mike T]

We recently bought some coffee beans from a new local roaster - within seconds my electric grinder was blocked. I went through the palaver of unblocking it only for this to happen twice more. As soon as I changed to some other beans the problem was solved. I did not realise that there was such a thing as "ungrindable" beans, but apparently it happens occasionally with lightly roasted beans grown at high altitude. Certainly these beans are very pale. Commercial grinders are of course more powerful than most domestic grinders and this does not happen with them.

You don't know what you don't know.