Coffee makers

[GhostHawk]

I recently experienced a change in my coffee brewing. For 5 years I have been a die hard Aeropress fan with the Metal mesh instead of paper filter.

Well the Aeropress works fine for a single 6 to 12 oz cup but at times I would like to be able to share and make a bigger pot.
So I bought one of these.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

At 24$ it seemed pretty reasonable. While looking at those I noticed these.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

@ 16$ it was even more reasonable. So in the process of testing these 2 new devices I discovered that I liked the last one best of all.

Aeropress got washed and put away. I have been making my morning coffee with it for 10 days now and the flavor is even better than the Aeropress.

Also I noticed with the Aeropress and the glass carafe I had a dark spot of sediment in the bottom of my cup. But with the double mesh pour over filter I do not see this sediment.

I use an old Corelle teapot on the stove to heat one measured 11 oz cup of water.
These are the cups I prefer.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They run about 10$ ea, I have 4. They just feel elegant, and I like being able to see the color and level of coffee remaining.

The Filter sits on top of the cup nicely. And I only have one item to wash when the coffee is done. Dump the filter, wash it well inside and out and set it ready for the next use.
With the Aeropress it was 4 parts to wash plus what I pressed it into.

So this system is faster and easier to clean up.

The Carafe is cool, and great for when I have extra cups to make.
But for daily use it is IMO hard to beat the little pour over filter.

The other thing I noticed is that it takes a little longer for the water to seep out of the grounds.
So I was able to reduce the amount of coffee I was grinding slightly. 70 to 80 turns of the hand crank grinder down to 55-60 turns is not a lot. But it tastes the same and it does save me coffee long term.

[DougGuy]

While looking at those I noticed these.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

@ 16$ it was even more reasonable. So in the process of testing these 2 new devices I discovered that I liked the last one best of all.

Also I noticed with the Aeropress and the glass carafe I had a dark spot of sediment in the bottom of my cup. But with the double mesh pour over filter I do not see this sediment.


The other thing I noticed is that it takes a little longer for the water to seep out of the grounds.
So I was able to reduce the amount of coffee I was grinding slightly.

You could likely grind finer, at least until it starts leaving sediment then back off just a bit, this would probably use less coffee as well, which in turn would again slow the infusion.

[DougGuy]

While looking at the links GhostHawk posted, this one drew my attention:

https://www.amazon.com/Dripper-Stain..._t1_B09WR1FLX3

Check out the video!

At $19.98 it's also in the very affordable group, but it has an interesting design, it has an inverted cone within the infusion cone that extends the area of the filter. I thought it was a pretty clever design and may ask Santa for one!

The maker also has a no-return 180 day guarantee, if you don't like it they will give you a 100% refund and you keep the product.

[scattershot]

Mr. Coffee, for years now.Tried a Keurig, and besides being terribly expensive, I didn’t like the coffee it made. Moot point now, it broke after a couple of months

[Mint]

If anyone in this thread is not familiar with Aeropress........ I *highly* recommend it as my ultimate highest recommendation I could ever give. If all you have ever had is a french press or drip coffee, and you don't really care much about coffee other than making it or drinking it (if you already know coffee you will know everything below).. let me just say as an analogy this might be like buying factory ammo and never realizing there is an entire world that is orders of magnitude better. Not just a LITTLE noticeable, but a LOT.

True coffee when made right will not be bitter at ALL. In fact, it will almost taste like tea. It will be wild and full of all kinds of notes, flavors. I'm not the type of person who has a "wine tasting palette" ... I'm not that sophisticated. When I taste wine, I just taste wine. But coffee is different, you literally CAN taste the difference.

The biggest thing outside these videos to learn is how coffee beans release flavor, and what ORDER the 3 flavors are released in the 'extraction' phase: sour, sweet, bitter. The key to bad coffee is stopping right between sweet and bitter. It's important to keep all variables the same during extraction: temperature, percolation, grind size, and brew time. This is the magic of the Aeropress, is that it does this for you, better than you could do by hand unless you have 500 pour overs worth of practice.

First, coffee extraction releases sour / acidity. If you stopped brewing a good light roast coffee too early it would literally taste like lemon water, so sour your teeth would hurt. It is like pure battery acid (no joke). After the sour comes all the sweet and flavor notes. As you keep extracting (time passing), then you get to bitter. This is ideally where you want to stop, RIGHT before bitter starts. Often times, 99.999999% of the time, all bad coffee is poorly ground or brewed way too long. In fact, in all my entire life I've never had a cup of non bitter coffee until I brewed it the proper way (the way they do at coffee championships etc)... it literally blew my mind.

The easiest variable to control in what I said above, is grind size (with all other variables staying the same). The aeropress formula uses the same coffee/water ratio, brew time, water temperature. With the below aeropress formula, grind size will allow darker/lighter roasts to be extracted at different speeds (think of 1 chunk of ice melting vs breaking it into 1000 chunks and watching those melt in the same amount of time). A finer grind size means you will approach the bitter wall FASTER. So... you need a nice hand grinder like the hario skerton.

A Good grinder is THE most important thing for this. This hand grinder I used for a year before getting a fellow ode with expensive burr upgrade. If you use a cheap coffee grinder that doesn't use the same grinding method as this hand grinder (burrs), then all your grinds will be different sizes. This hand grinder is as good as a $500+ non-burr grinder and it only costs $50. This is critical, because think of the ice example above. A cheap grinder will grind inconsistently, so SOME coffee pieces melt fully (over extracted) and some dont melt enough (sour). So what you get is a very SOUR BITTER cup of coffee with very little sweetness. You want all ice pieces ot melt consistently, which means they HAVE to be the same size. Only burr grinders will attain this. Considering most burr grinders are $300+, a hand grinder is a perfect starter grinder that is really quite fun.

You will also need a weighing scale, ideally one made for coffee. This is a cheap one, but any kitchen scale will do that can see .1g accuracy. Search amazon for "Timemore coffee scale"

First, watch these videos (in this order) to see what the fuss is about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aidvrssMSGo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VlT_jUVPc

My only variation to this video is I prefer 15.0g coffee to 250-255g water, depending. This is because I use sugar and cream, and I like my coffee to be more intense, to bite through the sugar/cream.

I have tried pour overs maybe 50-100 times. Once you get into it, you see how even the SLIGHTEST change in variables (2 degrees of water temperature, stirring 5 less times, 6 g/s pour rate instead of 10) make surprisingly noticeable changes in the taste of your coffee.

With this realization is.... if its really THAT hard to make a cup of coffee, where (literally) 5 stirs will make a difference, or a 5 grams per second pour rate variance... then how is someone at starbucks or a gas station going to nail it? They wont, and thats mostly why unless you really look into coffee to look at these variables, you might not even realize they exist and you just have had bad coffee.

Thats why the Aeropress is so amazing (or I wouldnt be writing all this). Its really the first device (and I've tried a lot of them), where it handles ALL these variables perfectly to very consistent tolerances. Its quite forgiving and STILL makes better coffee than a pour over unless you truly are master coffee maker. Like I said, even after half a year of making pour overs, I just stopped right then and there when I tried aeropress for the very first time. It absolutely stomped me.

Also.. as far as coffee. This all works best with light roasts. I've tried every light roast from our local organic store, and if I placed them on a scale from 1 to 10, I would say they never get higher than a 3. To taste the truly 10 out of 10 coffees with this, sign up for fellow drops:

https://drops.fellowproducts.com/

Fellow is a maker of high end coffee brewing equipment, and they really know their stuff. They text your phone once a week with an exotic bag of single origin coffee thats most pure/ripe around the world. You have to text back "1" (how many bags you want) within like 2 hours or so as they sell out every week. THe price of the bags are the same as whats at the store so there is NO REASON NOT TO DO THIS. Also they do a new coffee every week, so you really start to very rapidly tune your palette. All the coffees they send are nearly the same lightness, so you won't even have to change or adjust your coffee grinder 90% of the time. If you go buy coffee from the store, it varies so wildly you will need to adjust it every single bag to not remain bitter.

[GhostHawk]

Doug I already grind quite fine, which is why I had some sediment before.

But I will agree that is an interesting looking product. I think I will hold off a few weeks for financial considerations. But I do intend to give it a try.

[trebor44]

Buy 'em cheap and throw them away when they go TU. Filters are your friend and the 'grind' gives you the 'flavor' along with the quality of the water and temp of the water! Who really drinks poofy coffee? Stick to the cowboy method!

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

SNIP>>>

True coffee when made right will not be acidic at ALL. In fact, it will almost taste like tea. It will be wild and full of all kinds of notes, flavors. I'm not the type of person who has a "wine tasting palette" ... I'm not that sophisticated. When I taste wine, I just taste wine. But coffee is different, you literally CAN taste the difference.

This is humorous to me, as I have a Wine tasting palette, but coffee? I just taste coffee.

Folgers...vintage Gevalia drip with cone shape Metal filter (no paper filter)
works every time.

[Mint]

This is humorous to me, as I have a Wine tasting palette, but coffee? I just taste coffee.

Folgers...vintage Gevalia drip with cone shape Metal filter (no paper filter)
works every time.

Sorry I meant to type "bitter" there not acidic. Good coffee should have a hint of acidity

[GhostHawk]

While looking at the links GhostHawk posted, this one drew my attention:

https://www.amazon.com/Dripper-Stain..._t1_B09WR1FLX3

Check out the video!

At $19.98 it's also in the very affordable group, but it has an interesting design, it has an inverted cone within the infusion cone that extends the area of the filter. I thought it was a pretty clever design and may ask Santa for one!

The maker also has a no-return 180 day guarantee, if you don't like it they will give you a 100% refund and you keep the product.

Well it arrived yesterday. So this morning I swapped it into the lineup and tried it.

Same amount of coffee as normal, burr hand grinder, 30 turns with each hand. For kicks I compared what I ground with the scoop that came with the new filter. Almost a perfect match!

Proceeded to pour almost boiling water over the grounds. Instantly noted that the interior cone = much more filter. So it is faster than the other one I have by at least half.

Silicone ring around the top so you don't burn your fingers. Nice touch.

The real proof comes with the pour. No sediment. Another plus.

The second real proof comes with the first sip. WOW is the only thing that works.

Now this is the same roasted bean blend I've been drinking since early Sept.
But today I'm tasting things I did not taste before.

So triple win in my book. I will be buying a second for backup. (2 is 1 and 1 is none)

Good eyes doug!

[pworley1]

Just a cheap drip maker with auto on. We wake up each morning to hot coffee.

[jonp]

Grandmother used a perc for as long as I remember. Farber probably, plugged it into the stove and set the timer for 0430. Best coffee. We have tried a ton of different coffee makers and settled on a Bunn. Keeps the water hot in a reservoir so it comes out nice and hot and very fast. Works great for us.

[Good Cheer]

Anybody remember the 1960's dripolator?

[jonp]

Anybody remember the 1960's dripolator?

No but I've put a number of cans of soup, beans and ravioli on the engine of my semi to heat up while going down the road for a hot lunch

[HollandNut]

Bunns for more years than I can tell you , drink too much to go with the Keurig crap , besides they rarely have "coffee" , always some funky fancy smancy named garbage ..

[winelover]

Anybody remember the 1960's dripolator?

What I learned to make coffee with when I was a kid. Yours looks like Revere Ware brand. The one we had, the bottom carafe was shaped like the restaurant carafes. The top, where the grounds go, was sort of funnel shaped. No copper bottom.
There was a glass rod that held the grounds in the top. Also, there was a rubber gasket, on the outer top, that firmly held two pieces together. We used that in our house till it was replaced with a stovetop Corning Ware Percolator........... could no longer get the rubber gasket.

Winelover

[Good Cheer]

Yes sir, a never used Revere Ware purchased in a charity resale shop for pocket change.

[Scrounge]

We’ve had every variety of coffee making appliance except the K Cup brewer. That’s where I draw the line, convenient or not.
The last 20 years we’ve returned to percolators.
The drip (Mr. Coffee) type seem to require 50% more coffee grounds to make a reasonably strong coffee. Daughter bought us a quality French press model but between the excess grounds in my cup and the fact a second cup isn’t hot enough I’m not impressed.
Our percolator will brew 6 cups in less than 5 minutes, and it stays hot. Plus you can’t beat it for the aroma it releases while brewing.
What method do you guys use?

I don't actually drink coffee, but have been in charge of making it in a number of places, since I was knee-high to a short sheep. Dad was fond of what we called "Cowboy Coffee." Throw a couple of fists full of coffee grounds into a pan full of water, bring it to a boil. Throw a handful of cold water in the pan to settle the grounds, and pour. It was supposed to be strong enough to hold the spoon upright while you stirred you choice of adulterants in. Not that he used such. When I drank it as a kid, it was more cafe con leche. Lots of leche! And heaping tablespoons of sugar! While I was waiting for my security clearance to come through after I enlisted in the USAF, I was the designated coffee guy for the OMS Yellow Section hangar. 40-cup percolator. They freaked out when I scrubbed the inside of that thing with cleanser, but even the Chief liked the coffee I brewed in it afterwards. About double what they used before, in the way of grounds, and refreshed several times through the day. Nowadays, I still make coffee, though I don't drink it. SWMBO fell in love with Turkish coffee when we were stationed there in the mid-80's. It's kind of hard to find, and expensive when you find it here in OKC, but Amazon carries both the Turkish coffee grounds, the spices they put in coffee over in that part of the world, and a coffee maker like our friend Mehmet used to make her coffee at the diner in Ripoff Alley, outside Incirlik AS. A single coffee is 2 level tablespoons of the fine Turkish coffee grounds, a couple of sprinkles of the spice mix, and a tablespoon of the Demerara sugar she likes. Bring it to a boil, and let it stop boiling three times, then serve. The Turks tell fortunes in the coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup, and they use demitasse cups. Some days she wants a double. Same amount of water, and 5 tablespoons of the coffee grounds.

https://www.amazon.com/Kurukahveci-M.../dp/B003WLY4HO

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZKWSWR7

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K0BBSCC

You cannot walk away and leave it, so it's not really convenient, but it only takes about 5 minutes to make a cup of coffee this way.

Amazon has a variety of the little Turkish coffee pots in a variety of sizes, as well. We've thrown away several Mr. Coffees and some other drip coffee makers, and a couple of French Presses, since SWMBO didn't always remember to clean them out after use. She's not able to stand long enough to do it herself anymore, and this works for us. YMMV!

Bill

[Scrounge]

Yes sir, a never used Revere Ware purchased in a charity resale shop for pocket change.

Been looking for one of those for years. About 50 of them. Even though I don't drink coffee, I'd like to have one around for visitors who do.

[deces]

The only coffer maker that I will go out of my to buy is one of the battery powered ones that using batteries from cordless tools.