Coffee

I have been experimenting with cheaper brands of wholebean coffee. Just got the Trader Joe's columbian supremo whatever -- man it's so thin, it's like coffee water. Bleh. You have to use more to get it to taste any good, so the savings are pretty null.

Per Dayo's rec in the artisanal thread I'm going to check out Target's Archer farms SO beans

At this point it's just kind of an experiment, to see what's out there that's affordable and not terrible. So far the Peet's Major Dickason's Blend is about the best. it's always on sale at Safeway or Savemart.

go to yer supermarket, get a bag of whole bean coffee, and use their grinders set to an espresso grind setting

I had done that. But it wasn't fine enough. Maybe their grinder sucked. I got some Caribou French Roast and it was okay. But I need something darker. I wish the Keurig would just have a setting to do it slower.

well... what you're talking about it sounds like is that the grind size is not fine enough, the finer the grind the more time it takes for the water to go through the grinds

so yeah sounds like yer supermarket has a shitty grinder... there's a lot of variability in ground coffee that you buy in bags, different companies have different ideas about how fine the grind should be, but invariably it's always still relatively coarse

what's the second?
― frogbs, Thursday, March 28, 2013 12:56 PM

throw away the keurig

it belongs to my boss

$6.50 for 16 oz is not much more than canned Starbucks.

― nickn, Thursday, March 28, 2013 12:51 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no it isn't and who cares

I mean these are three for $8 and they have all kinds of other crap besides black coffee in them:

http://www.campusdepot.com/#/item/starbucks_doubleshot_mocha_15fl-zs-oz_3ct

But anyway, what's sort of neat is that I notice a very different flavor from the water, bc it's brewed in Raleigh instead of here.

man if this takes off then maybe they can expand their product line and just sell the tap water separately

It gave me this idea to host an expensive coffee tasting with cold brews from around the country, called "Like Water for Coffee"

Would also like tips for good k-cup coffee as my friend has a keurig machine and makes me coffee a lot.

Also: I fucking love my AeroPress

A good trick for improving your results with the keurig is to pour HOT filtered water into the chamber to start, tilt the machine forward, and push it into the garbage can.

ha

hurting, did you buy cold brew concentrate? can't wait to start making that again (via Toddy) this summer.

no it was just regular ready-to-drink cold brew

i assume the concentrate is more expensive?

I imagine so

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/21-to-drink-coffee/275621/

There are of course a ton of extremely successful, healthy people who drink inordinate amounts of coffee. Voltaire was rumored to have drunk 40 to 50 cups per day. Meanwhile the FDA has set a pretty arbitrary limit of 400 milligrams of caffeine per day as healthy, which is like one Starbucks venti or two 5-Hour Energies. A huge number of people are drinking a lot more than that. When it's in our oatmeal, though, that's a call to action.

voltaire otm

coffee is my only real dietary vice. i don't like sweet things or heavy/salty things, but i crave caffeine pretty much constantly, and drink coffee pretty much constantly. i don't want to hear anything bad about caffeine because, really, i don't feel i should deprive myself of such a modest pleasure.

Ordered a Bialetti Moka Express this morning. Still searching for that best tasting/easiest to prepare/easiest to clean sweet spot.

got a pile of sbux vias from Costo for cheap, they've been getting me through the draggy afternoons. It's ok. Kind of a baseline for average coffee.

but I still look forward to the weekend and homemade lattes.

http://www.yowazzup.com/coffee/images/vietnamese-drip-coffee.jpg

anyone ever have this? it's vietnamese drip coffee. it takes forever to make but it has a unique flavor to it. almost toffee-like, but i think this flavor actually inheres in the coffee somehow: it's not flavored. it's pretty cheap too you can buy the stuff on amazon but my parents picked it up for me in asia.

mr veg raves about it but I have never tried it

the condensed milk is the key to that drink, also using either cafe du monde or trung nguyen coffee xp

i had it with the trung nguyen. didn't know about the condensed milk, obviously not an expert. thanks for the tip.

yeah I heard the condensed milk is the best part. dying to give it a go, sounds amazing

i think i'm going to try out the condensed milk thing tonight. give a full report.

Still searching for that best tasting/easiest to prepare/easiest to clean sweet spot.

I think a good old cone filter does pretty well on all three requirements.

French press with pre ground coffee is pretty easy.

french presses are kinda bullshit to clean though

or maybe i'm just easily annoyed

what differentiates vietnamese drip coffee from any other drip coffee besides condensed milk?

French press is a bit more cleanup than a cone filter. It gives a different flavor profile too, so it might depend on your preferences. If the only coffee you have available is coarse ground though, a cone filter is not going to produce a very good result, so you'd be better off with the french press.

i had it with the trung nguyen. didn't know about the condensed milk, obviously not an expert. thanks for the tip.

― Treeship, Wednesday, May 8, 2013 5:43 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

well if youre raving about the toffee-like taste that comes from the condensed milk

i recommend http://i.imgur.com/uZMp9W4.jpg

what differentiates vietnamese drip coffee from any other drip coffee besides condensed milk?

― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, May 8, 2013 5:52 PM (57 seconds ago) Bookmark

usually has robusta beans, cafe du monde version adds chicory

i was just talking/speculating with my coffee buddy at work whether there might actually be something worthwhile in the flavor of robusta beans and whether the "100% arabica" thing was legit or just a marketing ploy that had created a standard

need to investigate I guess

i just drank this black and i thought it tasted sort of toffeeish. i assume the condensed milk will make it sweeter, and i will look for that brand at the asian grocery store.

anyone ever have turkish coffee? that stuff is good. i can't go to the only local place that serves it though because i used to be an employee there and was fired (not for drinking too much turkish coffee).

but yeah, they leave the grounds in that and so it is like espresso but thicker, with a silty bottom. we used to tell everyone who ordered it not to swallow the grounds.

omg I love turkish coffee

my friend's roommate used to make it all the time. definitely a rookie lesson: don't drink all the way to the bottom or you get the mud bleeeeggggggghhhhhhhh

Turkish coffee is good when it's made well I guess? I would say out of maybe 10 places I've tried, it, two made it very well. The rest it was still an enjoyable enough after dinner thing though. It's often made too sweet imo.

yeah i had it without sugar once and it was better, tbh. i'm a coffee veteran though.

yeah it's gotta be made well, otherwise it's not v impressive

and DEF no sugar, that would ruin it

i was just talking/speculating with my coffee buddy at work whether there might actually be something worthwhile in the flavor of robusta beans and whether the "100% arabica" thing was legit or just a marketing ploy that had created a standard

― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, May 8, 2013 5:55 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

iirc higher caffeine content to robusta, therefore more bitter

we're all gonna be drinking robusta beans in like 20 years anyway, thanks global warming

i read a book about starbucks that implied that robusta beans have a duller taste, and "good" coffee is always comprised mostly of arabica beans. probably a dubious source.

incorrect, xp, caffiene itself is tasteless

the very first line of the wikipedia article says otherwise? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine

i know i'm addicted because i don't want to not be addicted