A video showing beans being poured into a cup sitting atop of a scale, atop of another scale. Both scales measure the beans concurrently.

What is your expeience with the Porlex Mini II manual grinder?
It's the only grinder I've ever used, I find it quite handy and consistent in the grinding but I have actually no benchmark to judge it objectively. Is it actually good?
@coffee@lemmy.world

Well, maybe not, but a new study suggests drinking it only in the morning can reduce the risk of heart disease and all-cause mortality. so that's something, right?

We've been using that little red thing that says 42 to keep track of the grind setting on our hand grinder - just thought I'd share since it's been super useful.

It's a row counter for knitting. They're super cheap and at craft stores. I used them originally to count life in the Magic The Gathering card game.

Anyway, our hand grinder doesn't have any way to tell what setting it's on, and as we dial in new beans we write on the bag what setting worked well. For a while, we'd just reset to 40 after every grind, but that was annoying and I regularly would lose track of what setting it was on.

I bounce between decaf and caffinated beans a lot, so my grind setting changes regularly. This has been working super well for my wife and I though!

tl;dr: I was raised without any caffeine; the first black coffee I tried nearly made me choke; my wife's espresso-milk drinks never strongly appealed to me; for a few years, if I walked into a coffee shop I wouldn't know what to order or what I liked; but now I adore pour-over and care deeply about making a good cup of coffee. Also, I'm a bit sensitive to caffeine.

Alternate title: some of the differences my coffee journey taught me about loving coffee, vs having coffee as a hobby.

Photo: Shows the majority of our (my wife, dog, and I) brewing equipment. You may notice one of the mugs has our dog's ears on it! And that the coffee bar is on the dog's crate. And there's some coffee plant sprouts in the corner.

Disclaimer: I'm particular and have some strong preferences - I don't mean to sound like any of my preferences are “correct” or “superior." :)

For a long time coffee was a contentious point between my wife and I. I was raised in a religion that believes the

Just an update on my travels with the Pipamoka portable siphon-style brewer.
I recently forgot my mini coffee scale (17.5g seems about the sweet spot for this device) but since my Q2 grinder maxes out around 20g, it's not a difficult eye-ball job. By packing the grinder into the pipamoka it makes for a very tight little package:

This is everything I need minus the beans. Unlike my aeropress, this brews into itself - an insulated travel mug. Dosing is also aided by the grounds puck that you basically fill maximally. I'll still probably bring my scale if I remember next time, but no panics if the batteries run out.

I haven't had any regrets since switching from the aeropress. I will comment that if throwing this in a carry-on, it could get flagged by TSA. Twice now they've done

I saw this in a flee market and found it simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. I'm curious about how something like this might have come to be?

So this is what I have found as a working solution

Boil about a quarter cup of water. It must be as hot as possible.

Add a heaped tea spoon or two (depending on your preference).

Let it steep for a few minutes, the filter/sieve.

You end up with black liquid as indicated.

I top mine off with hot milk.

That's it. That is what is working for me.

Thanks for the tips.

My default coffee making is to heat milk, add coffee and steep it for a couple of minutes before I sieve it and voila.

This does not seem to work for this coffee. I have tried water, boiling it with the water or milk and it simply will not mix. What am I missing?

Edit: I know about grinding, I have a burr grinder, a French press and I know the various ways to make coffee. None of the methods I know, work.

Burr grinder = bar grinder. I made that mistake.

Who joined in? How was your experience? Planning to follow along later / async?

I have been discovering the joy of mixing different types of whole bean coffees before preparing them in my French press. I find that as long as you don’t do something crazy like mix a very light roast with a very dark roast you can end up with a lot of extra depth and roundness to the flavor. Thoughts? Am I insane? A heretic??? Have you tried it?

I live in a super hard water region. So hard in fact that it destroys every appliance despite regular descaling. I've remineralized 5l jugs of demineralized water for years but I feel it's not very sustainable in the long term. Plus demineralized water is not supposed to be safe for human consumption.

I'm looking for an affordable RO system that removes most if not all TDS so I can remineralize it using my favorite recipe.

Do you use any? What are your thoughts? Thanks !

Because I don't have a espresso machine I bought some cold brew in a bottle. I got some nice tonic water too and ice cubes, and now I can make a nice Coffee Tonic every morning to enjoy. Ok I agree that it's better during summer, but every now and then during winter I still want to have a refreshing glass of fruity coffee.

Over the past few years I've gotten a small handheld blade grinder, an Aeropress, a French Press, and started roasting my own beans.

The problem is that while some changes stick (like the grinder and the bean roasting), some changes just take up space (I usually use my Mr. Coffee over the Aeropress or French Press).

With that in mind, I'm looking for an espresso maker that is low budget, since I may not use it that often; but is still nice enough that I'm not going to hate espresso making because the machine is bad (ie: low pressure, low heat, leaks, etc).

Most espresso makers I've seen are a few hundred to a thousand USD; but since I'm worried I may end up almost never using it (or just using it to froth hot chocolate), I'm looking for one that's around 100 USD or less.

While I expect you all have loftier targets for your espresso machines than that, I am hopeful if you don't have any specific recommendations you can tell me what signs to look for that an espresso machine is of d

Trigger warning: animal cruelty adjacent

A friend of mine was gifted an 18g bag of Kopi luwak and asked me to brew it for them.

I would never buy it myself. The bag makes claims of being “processed naturally in the wild,” which sounds just like the thing where caged chickens that briefly touch dirt are basically well treated.

I will be educating my friend about this, but the bag was gifted to them and they take that very seriously. The way I see it is this is going to be brewed either way and I have some change of showing it’s just coffee and this should be a one-time thing that only happened because it was a gift.

With all that said… I’m thinking AeroPress no-dial recipe. I could conceivably make two 9g brews to have a second chance or I could take my chances on the 18g.

What should I expect in terms of roast level? Would this generally be a hard coffee to brew? Is the AeroPress no-dial recipe a safe bet or is there a new option out there to get it right on the first and only tr

Does any one have any experience of this low cost conical burr grinder? I'm getting sick of my (rather good Timemore C2) hand grinder.

Need to talk about coffee stuff today guys. Gotta keep my mind off the news as much as I can.

I still use my chemex for washed multicup brews. I think it excels at this, and I love the asthetic. I have a handmade wool cozy for it and a 3d printed lid to keep these larger brews warm though and while the cozy is protective, I do worry about breaking this fragile brewer.

It seems like the Miir directly addresses the thermal and fragility concerns and still allows use of the chemex filters. Seems hard to argue with that.

Other than nostalgia and maybe not wanting to spend a cool $80 right now, any reason to hold on to the Chemex?

• $5 over $39: AECD05
• $10 over $79: AECD10
• $15 over $119: AECD15
• $30 over $229: AECD30
• $50 over $349: AECD50

I’ve been pretty happy with my home setup for a while. I have progressed from the Sage Barista Express to the Sage Oracle and never had any issues at all. I recently bought a hand grinder for when I have a speciality blend or am on the road and so purchased a KinGrinder K6. I have found that it is actually a lot better than the grinder built into the Sage.

I am now looking at upgrading to a separate grinder and maybe swapping to a more manual Espresso machine also.

I have looked at Niche and Eureka as well as the Df83 grinders but honestly am a little lost. I only drink Espresso based drinks and am UK based.

I have also looked at the La Pavoni and Eureka machines for Espresso.

Just really looking for some guidance. I have an independent coffee roaster that I get my beans from and like a darker roast and am happy with what I get. I very rarely change blends or if I do I switch between one or two blends.

Lately I've had some obviously inaccurate measurements from my Timemore Black Mirror scale. That would happen occasionally but not always. I was charging it today and as luck would have it, I was sitting beside it. I typically charge it unattended. I noticed that it took a very long time to charge and multiple times it seemed to restart charging. I grabbed it to check the cable and noticed it was quite warm in one spot. I though - that's alright, it's likely where the battery cell is, it's charging, lithium cells get warm during charging. Later I took it off the charger and while handling it I examined the hot spot a bit more. I noticed that when I squeezed the scale at that corner, the top plate wouldn't sink towards the bottom as it does in the other corners. A few mental calculations later I figured this could be a swollen cell that has grown so large that it impacts the plates and doesn't let them come together as they do normally. I took it apart. Lo and behold this spicy pillow: