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Stilly

By Stilly,
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Blue

Blue

Posted
Posted
17 minutes ago, morcs said:

 

It arrived, it's delightful 😊

 

I must make a pilgrimage to Algerian Coffee Stores next time I'm in London. Was it @milko that got us all on to it?

Glad you like it. I think I've tried all their coffees at this point and now mainly alternate between bourbon and huey. I just stumbled upon ACS about 10 years ago and fell in love with it. Have been ordering my coffee from it ever since and always visit when I'm in London. 

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milko

milko

Posted
Posted

Hmm. Not sure I'm feeling these Brazilian Bourbon things. The beans themselves look so dark that they've probably been cursed with some ancient evil. That's kind of cool, I guess, just unsettling also. But yeah, the burnt taste I'm also finding a bit strong, I need to find a way to reduce that somehow. I don't remember having this with the ol' Formula Rossa! Maybe I'm grinding too fine, that'll be my first thing to try.

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Thor

Thor

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, milko said:

Hmm. Not sure I'm feeling these Brazilian Bourbon things. The beans themselves look so dark that they've probably been cursed with some ancient evil.

curiosity-curious.gif

 

After trying various beans from supermarkets and mail order like Hasbean and Coaltown, my favourite beans are still, would you believe it, Starbucks Dark Roast. I find so long as the production date on them is within two months, then they're excellent beans for espresso-based drinks like flat whites etc. along with just espresso on its own. But I've always fancied trying other beans of a similar roast level. These beans, well ...

 

ALGERIANCOFFEESTORES_154_BRAZILB.jpg

 

... now those are proper roasted coffee beans. I've just ordered a 500g bag, will report back. :) 

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Blue

Blue

Posted
Posted
20 hours ago, milko said:

Hmm. Not sure I'm feeling these Brazilian Bourbon things. The beans themselves look so dark that they've probably been cursed with some ancient evil. That's kind of cool, I guess, just unsettling also. But yeah, the burnt taste I'm also finding a bit strong, I need to find a way to reduce that somehow. I don't remember having this with the ol' Formula Rossa! Maybe I'm grinding too fine, that'll be my first thing to try.

 

Taste in coffee, as with all things, is subjective. We all like different things, and that's fine, of course. I just can't respect anyone who doesn't like Brazillian Bourbon. :D

 

J/K of course. Some people like coffee with shades of elderflower/chocolate/hazelnuts or hints of black grape etc. To me, those things are all signs of a poor (under-roasted) coffee. I like my coffee to be in your face strong COFFEE and nothing else. 

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milko

milko

Posted
Posted
Just now, Blue said:

J/K of course. Some people like coffee with shades of elderflower/chocolate/hazelnuts or hints of black grape etc. To me, those things all signs of a poor (under-roasted) coffee. I like my coffee to be in your face strong COFFEE and nothing else. 

 

I'm finding the burniness is hiding the coffee rather, I'm normally a dark roast type 'n all. I haven't decided altogether yet though, some more experimentation to be done.

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Blue

Blue

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, milko said:

 

I'm finding the burniness is hiding the coffee rather, I'm normally a dark roast type 'n all. I haven't decided altogether yet though, some more experimentation to be done.

 

I don't have any sense of BB being burnt at all. Either that or burnt is what I like. 

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milko

milko

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Backing off the grind has definitely helped (sidenote; man, I need to get quicker at dialling in these things. These need a fair bit coarser grind than the last few bags I've had). It's still a LOT, but I've enjoyed the latest attempt this morning a lot more. Weighed and timed it like a true nerd.

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Gotters

Gotters

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Mind blown at the latest Hoffman video on caffeine, the same weight of coffee extracted to the same % tested filter v espresso.

 

More caffeine in the filter than the espresso by a considerable margin (almost 50% more).

 

All them coffee hard nuts sipping their thimbles of thick bitter water and its the filter drinkers that are the hardcore all along. 

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milko

milko

Posted
Posted
On 10/12/2022 at 20:25, Thor said:

Yeah, I learned from watching a Lance Hedrick vid that actually going coarser instead of finer is the way to go. 

 

it's a balance innit, if I had this setting with some of the other beans I've bought lately it'd be a mug of vaguely coffee-scented ditchwater as a result.

 

While I'm quite happy with the result now I'm not sure I'll do these exact ones again, time to retry some of my old favourites from these guys.

 

15 minutes ago, Gotters said:

Mind blown at the latest Hoffman video on caffeine, the same weight of coffee extracted to the same % tested filter v espresso.

 

More caffeine in the filter than the espresso by a considerable margin (almost 50% more).

 

All them coffee hard nuts sipping their thimbles of thick bitter water and its the filter drinkers that are the hardcore all along. 

 

I've long assumed this - I had to stop using my V60 filter as I was feeling horrible afterwards a lot of the time, now it only comes out rarely.

 

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HarryBizzle

HarryBizzle

Posted
Posted
29 minutes ago, Gotters said:

Mind blown at the latest Hoffman video on caffeine, the same weight of coffee extracted to the same % tested filter v espresso.

 

More caffeine in the filter than the espresso by a considerable margin (almost 50% more).

 

All them coffee hard nuts sipping their thimbles of thick bitter water and its the filter drinkers that are the hardcore all along. 

 

Lighter roasts also have much more caffeine, which isn't really what people tend to think. Darker = "stronger."

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HarryBizzle

HarryBizzle

Posted
Posted

The more you roast a coffee, the less you can taste the underlying characteristics of the coffee itself. 
 

I don’t really know how to say this without sounding condescending but I think if most people who drink dark roasts with milk tried a specialty, light roast brewed well as black filter, they might find that they’ve been adding milk to get to where they could have without the milk if they had they used a lighter roast.

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Blue

Blue

Posted
Posted

Light/medium roasts taste raw to me, with a literal grassy element to them that I find most unpleasant, with or without milk.

It doesn't seem surprising to me, with the vast diversity of coffees and the manner in which they are roasted and prepared, that individuals will develop their own preferences. 

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Gotters

Gotters

Posted
Posted

yeah it all exists for a reason and we all taste it differently, there isn't any right or wrong.

 

it's like when people lecture on how your steak should be cooked.

 

I'm somewhere in the middle on roast levels, but definitely learnt that I tend towards the more chocolate/nut side of the taste spectrum over the lighter african stuff. That said had a couple of blends recently that mix the two to great effect, had one called Stable Blend from Skylark which was lovely once I got it dialled in to get all the notes out of it.

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HarryBizzle

HarryBizzle

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, Blue said:

Light/medium roasts taste raw to me, with a literal grassy element to them that I find most unpleasant, with or without milk.

It doesn't seem surprising to me, with the vast diversity of coffees and the manner in which they are roasted and prepared, that individuals will develop their own preferences. 


I don’t dispute the fact that some people will gravitate to darker, just that the difficulty in properly extracting lighter roasts probably skews things. To me, a Brazilian coffee medium roasted usually has all the boldness, strength and smoothness that people might expect from a “darker roast,” with added complexity. 
 

Grassy is an interesting descriptor, and not one I’ve heard before. I personally don’t like floral coffees like a lot of West African coffees tend to be, but I wouldn’t describe any of them as grassy. Not sure what you mean about that but I wonder if it’s either overly acidic or astringent brews, rather than the coffee itself. 

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Blue

Blue

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, HarryBizzle said:

I personally don’t like floral coffees like a lot of West African coffees tend to be, but I wouldn’t describe any of them as grassy. Not sure what you mean about that

Have you ever tasted grass? Lawn grass, that is. That's the taste I get from lighter roasts. Not the only taste but they are invariably tainted with that, for me. 

At any rate, all I can tell you is that, for me and my little bean to cup machine, Huehuetenango and Brazilian bourbon provide exactly the cup of coffee that I like. 

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Hawklord

Hawklord

Posted
Posted

Finally got a chance yesterday to visit the roastery that opened nearby last year. Turns out they are actually closed on a Friday as it's roasting day and they forgot to put the shutters down! The owner was happy to sell me a few bags of beans though and chat away while he was working his "magic" with the roaster. Sneaked a photo of the roaster (I probably could have got a better one if I'd just asked lol). This was the final batch of his Xmas "special", a whisky infused Guatemalan.

 

https://www.fowercoffee.com/product/scotch-whisky-infused-guatemalan

 

PXL_20221216_143608931_MP.thumb.jpg.f5cf6f4c067449c5079a9393846ddf6a.jpg

 

Didn't buy any as it still had to rest but smelled amazing. Roaster was plugged into a laptop showing various settings & timings. At one point he looked at the screen and said you'll hear the first crack any second and sure enough it started to sound like popcorn. Glad I can support a local business and get good coffee at the same time

 

PXL_20221217_124302527.thumb.jpg.7c86cc56a60e2bf95b1db3d0a5ff7ba4.jpg

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