Nice choice of machine Alex! The Rocket machines look great & are very reliable. Here is my coffee rig which includes an Izzo Alex Duetto MkIII (plumbed into a Brita commercial grade water filter) & Macap M4D grinder. In terms of beans, I buy all my coffee from this roastery in Melbourne & use biodynamic full cream milk for latte's, machiato's etc..
Loving all the snobbish comments!! Really funny, a last minute addition to the thread’s title. But seriously, all coffee is great if you say you enjoy it!!!
I like a wide variety. There are some great espresso blends out there, and they vary a lot more in profile these days with lighter roasts being used for espresso more frequently. Some, like Dragonfly's Leam Hammer Espresso is as challenging to pull right vs a typical single origin light roast. But if done right it tasted like a chocolate and cherry pastry, it's amazing.
Light roast single origins can vary quite a bit in how they taste but are fun to try, and within this there are higher and lower grade beans. Sometimes lower grade beans can produce excellent results, but over time you get a feel for why beans are more expensive. Occasionally I'll try something exotic, Traction just put out a Colombia Sudan Rume that was incredible, but $35/8 oz with very little markup. These can set the bar for what coffee can be, kind of like hearing a top end stereo. Intelligentsia recently had a Bolivia for $30/8 oz and comparing it to the Sudan Rume would be like horns vs boxes.
Coffee is part culture. I inherited it not from the hipster cafe culture of the 90’s but when I was just 4 our neighbours in the small country town I lived in were Greek and I used to have lunch all the time with them and they’d all be drinking Greek coffee and I had my first sip of a shot of short black then. Then the older Greek women would tip the inky sludge left at the bottom and read the coffee cups. So drinking ‘not instant’ coffee was an earthy and natural right of passage with a mystical twist.
When 5 we moved to the big smoke and luckily we moved into the multicultural centre of the city so Italian cafes with cool older Italian dudes drinking short blacks playing dominoes and the smell of espresso (and cigarettes) was intoxicating. And yes... gelato instead of ice cream... new food heaven. But it was all so fascinating and culturally rich for a 5 year old from the country.
I even inherited some short black coffee cups from the 50’s and 60’s from my grandparents which I still use. So for me it is also a cultural thing and my very first exposure to coffee was that rich dark spicy sometimes bitter sludge that signified meeting at home or in a cafe with family and friends to talk and laugh and enjoy the company of others.
Like you I’m a bit of a fanatic. However my obsession involves only one cup of espresso per day and that’s in the morning. It has to be perfect in every way. IMO it is. That’s the only cup of coffee I drink each day.
I serve it in a standard espresso glass cup. I use glass to make sure all 3 layers are present
How coarse or how fine are you all grinding your beans. I find this is a bit of art as well as too fine the coffee can be oily and very bitter whereas too coarse can result in lost flavor
And of course even what you grind with makes a difference
I find that the art of coffee can be every bit as addicting as high end audio where indeed everything matters. So also is the case with espresso
By way of comparison the bean is the original and from it (IOW how you make it into the best espresso ) the music comes forward. You want to get the best copy of that bean and everything out of its grooves.
When everything is perfect your coffee soundstage is as good as it gets.
Thank you Ack and DaveC for your bean suggestions and where to buy. That was for me immediately a pearl
Finally for my palette it is the best taste of that bean that I can create
That feat results in a “colorless” copy because I insist
1. No sugar or artificial sweeteners
2, No milk cream or other dairy products
3. No flavored coffee. To me hickory flavored or vanilla flavored etc is IMHO not a true copy of the bean. In audio terms it is colored
So my motto when asked how I like my espresso the answer is right out of Twin Peaks where Agent Cooper said
Steve, I’m pretty laid back (read slack) in my coffee technique. I have a mate who roasts his own beans (small amounts different origins at a time) then weighs each dose and tracks his grind constantly from sample to sample. He has a selection of tampers and uses a tamper grind tool to level it all back all extracted to perfection on his lever machine that he can turn on remotely to get up to temperature before getting home... just love the commitment and his coffees are amazing.
I’m way less spesh about it and tend to only check the grind on a new batch of beans and just vary it to get the grind texture to make the coffee so that it pours like a dragons tail as it pours and snakes down into the cup... and then I just count the pour out in my head to time it out. My coffees are not as good but I am a bit more middle of the road in my approach to most everything now. The beans, the grind, the thermal stability of the group head and the timing of the pour all add to the outcome. Being perfect makes for a fairly time consuming world but I appreciate it when people have a go at it.
I wish they'd just hurry up and get gene editing worked out so I could drink more than decaf I want to drink coffee all the time. I find I work well when I can indulge in one "vice" you might say, and coffee is a great one.
I wish they'd just hurry up and get gene editing worked out so I could drink more than decaf I want to drink coffee all the time. I find I work well when I can indulge in one "vice" you might say, and coffee is a great one.
