The Coffee Thread (Tea drinkers welcome)

[Jay 45,801]

Who else on JWFan enjoys a daily cuppa joe?  Or are you more of a tea guy?

 

 

What I really want to know is:  Is anybody here into coffee enough that you've researched and bought a "fancy" coffee maker, not just one that gets the job done?

 

Our completely basic coffee maker is on the outs and we need a new one soon, and we've both agreed that getting a good one would be worth the money. 

 

But how much money?  Which features are worth it and which are not?  I know we want one that has a built-in grinder (we like having fancy whole-bean coffee on weekends, but drink ground coffee from the supermarket on weekdays).  It looks like some have a self cleaning feature?  Some have a milk steamer?  Burr grinder, or blade grinder!?  So many other options.  Who has expertise and can help a brother out?

 

Starting to poke through lists like these:

 

https://www.thespruceeats.com/best-coffee-makers-with-grinders-4586295

 

https://people.com/home/best-coffee-makers-with-grinders/

 

https://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/tools-products/best-coffee-makers-with-grinders

 

https://www.foodandwine.com/lifestyle/kitchen/best-coffee-makers-with-grinders

[Bespin Copilot 10,731]

I'm a coffee drinker and I love an expresso or an americano, mostly when I'm at restaurant. Not enough to buy a fancy machine for home. Daily, I think nothing do a better coffee than a bodum. I usually purchase coffee beans and I have an electrical grinder, so every morning I ground fresh coffee.

 

 

[Jay 45,801]

espresso, not expresso

 

I love coffee, but always drink it black!  Especially at home, but 99% of the time if at a restaurant or cafe, too.  Occasionally I will get a latte from a place that makes a good one and enjoy it, but those are exceptions.

 

We don't want to make lattes at home or anything (turns out anything with a steamer is minimum $600 or so, yikes!), just a good drip coffee

 

We have an electric grinder too, but I'm often too sleepy / out of it in the morning to want to go through the rigamarole of using it then; I tend to grind the beans and put the water in the maker just before going to bed.  Which is why I'm looking at makers with built-in grinders, so the grind will be fresh, but I don't have to manually do it ;P

[Bespin Copilot 10,731]

Nothing awakes you better in the morning than the sound of a coffee grinder! 

[Jay 45,801]

Going through the reviews of various models, I am making a note if they mention the grinder in one is LOUD!

[Holko 12,019]

Any coffee I tried so far ended up in the sink, but tea can be nice!

[Jay 45,801]

I hate coffee until I was 30

[Richard P 5,241]

I love coffee although most of the time it's instant stuff at home, and I like it strong - 2 heaped teaspoons with milk & sugar. The only time I have it from a machine is Mondays when I'm at the office.

 

I've had about 4 cups of tea in my life - it's not for me.

[DeltaPupJux 53]

Breville makes a nice espresso machine.  The one I eyed for awhile is $495.

[bollemanneke 4,321]

I need one cup every morning. Might take another one for lunch, but that can easily be tea too. Never any coffee in the evenings because that means lying awake till 3 AM.

[Jay 45,801]

9 hours ago, DeltaPupJux said:

Breville makes a nice espresso machine.  The one I eyed for awhile is $495.

 

Yea its pretty unanimous across all the lists I find that Breville's $350 offering is the best drip coffee maker with buit-in grinder, but after comparing it to Cuisinart's offerings I can't see anything it offers that justifies the $100 increase over Cuisinart's.  

 

We both prefer drip coffee over espresso anyway, though enjoyed plenty of nice espressos while in Italy this winter.  Just don't need to make them at home.

[Disco Stu 15,517]

For the last 5 years I was drinking coffee every day (which I did ages 17-34), I was exclusively a pour-over guy.  Contrary to what you might expect, I wasn't a fussy hipster about it.  My routine has always been that I like having coffee once I've gotten to work, not at home.  Sipping coffee at the desk is just nice.  I would grind my own beans at home and keep them in a container in my office along with a relatively cheap electric kettle.  Pourover tastes great and is just more convenient for making single cups at my desk.

 

This was the dripper I used: https://a.co/7mw5BYF

 

In my opinion, no matter what method you use, the single most important thing any coffee drinker should do is grind their own beans.  That's the single biggest difference-maker for getting better tasting coffee.  Every fussy "rule" (water temp, bean source, etc.) past that makes at best a marginal difference in comparison.

 

I drink tea now though.

[Jay 45,801]

Oh damn I love a good pour over coffee, easily my favorite I suppose.  But I never have time to make one myself (unless its the weekend I guess)

 

And totally agree about grinding your own beans, and also grinding them right before brewing, too.  That's why I want to buy a coffee maker with a built-in grinder!

[Sweeping Strings 3,381]

20 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

I love coffee although most of the time it's instant stuff at home, and I like it strong - 2 heaped teaspoons with milk & sugar. The only time I have it from a machine is Mondays when I'm at the office.

 

I've had about 4 cups of tea in my life - it's not for me.

Yeah, I'm an instant guy too (although at home I'll tend to go for 'fancier' instants like Kenco Millicano ... work supplies free Nescafe Gold Blend, so that's what I drink there). All the other ways look like they're too expensive, too much faff, or both. 

For me, coffee (and also tea) are magic brown elixirs that mean shit gets done and nobody gets hurt.  

[Disco Stu 15,517]

I get the sense that instant coffee is more commonly consumed in the UK than it is here.  Not sure if that's true though.

[Jay 45,801]

49 minutes ago, Sweeping Strings said:

For me, coffee (and also tea) are magic brown elixirs that mean shit gets done and nobody gets hurt.  

 

 

 

 

40 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

I get the sense that instant coffee is more commonly consumed in the UK than it is here.  Not sure if that's true though.

 

I can't recall ever once seeing it in anyone's house here, except that one episode of Seinfeld where he offers it.  But in the UK and other parts of Europe I've been to, I definitely saw it in supermarkets often

[Richard P 5,241]

40 minutes ago, Sweeping Strings said:

Yeah, I'm an instant guy too (although at home I'll tend to go for 'fancier' instants like Kenco Millicano ... work supplies free Nescafe Gold Blend, so that's what I drink there). All the other ways look like they're too expensive, too much faff, or both. 

For me, coffee (and also tea) are magic brown elixirs that mean shit gets done and nobody gets hurt.  

 

Morning coffee is absolutely essential if I'm not going anywhere. Evening coffee (decaf essential otherwise I'm going to have a terrible sleep) also very useful sometimes.

 

I'm actually not a massive fan of the coffee I get from the machine at work nor my parents' cafetiere, so either they're just not doing it how I like it, or I just prefer instant. Having said that, the best coffee I remember having was from a very fancy machine (I think it was some Nescafe variant) in a hotel in Morocco, so who knows.

[Jay 45,801]

There's a million reasons why a cup of coffee might not taste that good even if the beans are good.  If the machine is cleaned regularly and properly, the water is filtered, and the bean-to-water ratio is right, you should be doing just fine.

 

But many people screw one or more of those things up

[Disco Stu 15,517]

This is why I finally settled on using pour-over, it doesn't get any simpler than that!

[Naïve Old Fart 12,881]

I like coffee, and I like tea, and that's all I have to say 

 

 

Actually, it isn't.

There's nothing like a lovely mug of Earl Grey to start the day.

[Jay 45,801]

Our new coffee maker is a huge massive improvement over our old one, I love it

[DeltaPupJux 53]

Jay, what make/model is your newer coffeemaker?  

 

Sidebar--one of the better coffeemakers I have had was...gonna show my age here a bit, but...one of the free ones you used to get with the Gevalia coffee subscription.  Came with a thermal carafe in addition to the standard one, to keep your coffee hotter longer.  Always loved the conical filters too, that prevented a lot of grind-overflow I've come to know with the basket style.  It lasted a-good-while.  Was rather saddened when it was time to replace it.  Grr.  Even the coffee itself, as part of the plan, was pretty good.  Moreso, if you got it tailored to your prefs.  [It was replaced with a Hamilton Beach model, with the 'joystick' on the front panel.  Worked well, until a former roommate decided it was his when he moved out].

[Jay 45,801]

I got us this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000T9XPHC

 

Does everything I wanted it to, it's great!

[Andy 7,543]

I have used this Ninja model for 5 years now.  It does a really nice job.  After years of use, I have switched to Green Tea for the health benefits.  My wife was getting heartburn with coffee, so she now uses it to make iced coffee which she tolerates better. 
 

I haven’t had a cup in months.  But in the winter, the ritual of grinding the beans and getting it all piping hot is appealing. 
 

I am trying to get at least 3-4 cups of green tea a day.  I had been doing that for a month.   After some time, I felt my general mood improving. Why am I so happy, I wondered?  Could it be the tea?

 

Turns out, it just might be. 
 

Study on Green Tea and Mood

[Jay 45,801]

I have green tea every afternoon at work! 

[Andy 7,543]

Good man!  
 

I don’t really have the patience or budget for loose leaf teas, so whatever green tea Walmart sells is what I’m sipping. 
 

Th family got me a bunch of variety teas for Christmas, and I have to say, Picard has horrible taste. Earl Grey is much too flowery for me.  
 

But like anything, I imagine you can acquire a taste for it. 

[Sweeping Strings 3,381]

I got served Earl Grey with breakfast on holiday in France, and I must say I didn't mind it (although I've never bought it for home use).

Can't stand green tea, bleurgh. 

 

[Naïve Old Fart 12,881]

"Green tea. Hot".

Doesn't quite work, does it?

 

I'll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop, sitting in my pyjamas, before my first cup of Earl Grey, than you could do in a year, in the field.

[Andy 7,543]

I add honey to the tea to sweeten it, but I’m trying to taper that off. 

[Jay 45,801]

Aw man, I always drink all my coffee and tea black

[Andy 7,543]

I once went to a tea drinking class.   There was this very zen instructor, a bunch of soccer moms, and me.  No sweeteners is his recommended method, and he had a very particular slurping method, which I couldn’t quite master, and subsequently abandoned. 

[Naïve Old Fart 12,881]

He sounds like a twat 

[Andy 7,543]

Aptly put.  It was like this scene of wine tasting from Tales of Terror. I was Peter Lorre to his Vincent Price. Scroll to 3:00. 

 

 

[Jay 45,801]

Overall very happy with our new Cuisinart coffee maker, but two minor pet peeves.

 

One is the reusable filter that comes with it in annoying to clean.  Could be solved by simply not using it and using a paper filter every day, but we're trying to be environmentally conscious, so....

 

Second is the carafe is hard to completely empty out, gotta tip the thing damn near upside-down to get the last bit of coffee out.

[Naïve Old Fart 12,881]

I like a nice cafétiere, on a Sunday morning, but I would pay someone to clean out all the coffee ground residue. It's awful, and it stinks!

[Jay 45,801]

Anyone else have trouble finding coffee they like while traveling?

 

I feel like Italy has a reputation for having great coffee, but I dunno, I had a hard time finding coffee I liked there, the entire time I was there.  Every place there seemed to have the same espresso machine (or one of 3 major ones at least) and therefore specialize in espresso, which I don't really like, at the expense of good ole drip coffee.  Lattes from those machines don't do much for me either - I like my coffee black!

 

Australia was a little different.  Melbourne had AMAZING coffee, I found two places where I got a great pour over, and plenty of good options in between.  They had something everywhere in Australia I don't recall ever seeing in Europe, a Long Black, which was closer to what I would say "regular" coffee is (again, not enjoying espressos).  But even then many places's long blacks I didn't care for either.  So Tasmania, and Cairns, eh, no good coffee to speak of.  In Sydney at least I found one place that made a great cup, and it was right across from our hotel.

 

But in general, I dunno, I seem to like what I can make at home, for barely any money, more than what I can get at coffee places and restaurants.  Is it just me?

[Bespin Copilot 10,731]

If you don't like real coffee Jay, stay in the USA! 😝😝😝

 

Or learn to ask an "allongé" or an Americano, depending where you are.

[Jay 45,801]

I never liked any Americanos I got in Italy either!

 

It's funny, I often finding myself traveling to places and trying to "real" food that we have americanized versions of here, and then preferring the real thing over our versions.  But coffee, I dunno, I haven't made that jump yet, remotely!

[Bespin Copilot 10,731]

Well americano is an espresso with too much hot water... it's to make a "cup" (as I'm concerned it's perfect for your first coffee in the morning). An "allongé", is an espresso with just a bit of more water, I don't now the english term for it.

 

I only drink allongés in restaurants, mainly as dessert.

[Jay 45,801]

Hmmm looks like maybe it'd be called a lungo here?

 

https://www.seriouseats.com/cafe-allonge-long-shot-espresso-new-coffee-trend-quebec

[Bespin Copilot 10,731]

Maybe a "long black" also?

[Jay 45,801]

Yes, that's what it seems to me too!

 

I've never seen a lungo or a long black on a menu here that I can recall, though I'll start paying attention now!

[Bespin Copilot 10,731]

3 hours ago, Jay said:

Yes, that's what it seems to me too!

 

I've never seen a lungo or a long black on a menu here that I can recall, though I'll start paying attention now!

 

The best things in life are not on the menu.

 

Ok, forget this advice comes from me, mercy! 😝😝😝

[Jay 45,801]

 

[Toillion 408]

Man, I love coffee. I spend 15-20 minutes every morning making a latte for my wife and a cappuccino for myself. 

[Jay 45,801]

Awesome.  I love starting my day by sitting down and slowly sipping some good, black coffee for like half an hour.  Mornings where I can't do that are a bummer

[Toillion 408]

The grinding of coffee beans and the screeching sound from steaming milk is probably a bit much for most people but I find the process relaxing in the morning.

[Jay 45,801]

The one thing I don't like about our new coffee maker is how loud the grinder is.  But lately we've been enjoying some good coffee (Lavazza) that's only sold ground already so I've been having to measure it out again every night, which is a nice ritual in its own way

[Toillion 408]

A new coffee roaster just opened in my town so I’m trying them out. The first batch was just okay but they are still trying to figure things out. Before that I was getting Onyx coffee which is good but kin of expensive. And before that I had a Trade coffee membership which is fun to try different things. 

[Jay 45,801]

A new independent coffee place opened near my work and I LOVE IT so much, everything I've gotten from there (usually lattes) has been phenom.  Sadly they have goofy hours and summer breaks, so the last 3 times I've tried to go there they've been closed