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Coffee Anyone?


MauriceMynah

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Not wishing to de-rail the thread on HW's new boats, I've decided to start a new one to discuss this most important subject.

On Nyx, I use a cafetieres. They serve me well and I have four on board. 2x single mug and 2x 3 mug. I have two of each as I use 2 (1 large and one small ) for loose leaf tea. These two are clearly marked as such so as not to mix them with the coffee ones. However, I am thinking of adding an Italian  style hob top coffee espresso pot as pictured below (if I attached the image right.)

Now, my questions are... which in your opinions makes the better coffee? and also why is there such a massive variation in prices for the pictured style? The one I show is advertised at £17 + P&P yet I have seen them at £40 or more.

 

image_647324c9-653c-4bf4-8deb-259cb1be1af0_1024x1024.png

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Just a little further info for anyone interested.

I use loose leaf tea on board because the flavour is so much better than tea bags. Using a cafetiere for tea is a recent discovery for me, and it has the advantage that if one pushes down the plunger after approx. 4 mins 32.7 seconds or whatever your preference is, the tea stops brewing and remains at a consistent strength. You never get that "stewed" flavour.

Tesco sell the two sizes of cafetiere I use at sensible prices. These have plastic handles and lids so a "T" or "C" can be burned on, using a soldering iron.

In my opinion the magnitude of difference in loose leaf tea over tea bags is much the same as the difference between a cheap instant coffee against a good ground coffee. I don't yet have the facilities for grinding the beans myself, but I shall be looking into this.

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I love coffee, but at work we have a boy who used to own his own coffee shop, so now his job first thing in a morning is getting the coffees on.

He uses one of these

20181020_111746.jpg.0d8d69be51436c19eb4b655fb575324b.jpg

Paper in the top with coffee and let it filter, I forget what coffee he uses now though, but it's the best coffee I've ever had.

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Lidl's best for me! I have all the posh gear but it resides in a cupboard for when guests come round but even then I wonder if it's really and honestly worth the aggro. 

I once visited the home of a very wealthy newspaper owner whose wife came from Chile and by heck that lady could brew as fine a cup of coffee as I've ever had. Apparently she went home once a year to see her family and stocked up on her local market. Her coffee was definitely worth the aggro!

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Filter coffee is usually not quite as strong as cafetiere coffee, which in turn is rarely quite as strong as espresso coffee. (given the same ground coffee in each). I think my leanings go towards strength. The other problem I find with filter coffee, is that by the time the process is done, and the coffee is ready to drink, filter coffee is never quite hot enough. As with everything else on this thread,  this is just to my taste.

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11 minutes ago, MauriceMynah said:

Filter coffee is usually not quite as strong as cafetiere coffee, which in turn is rarely quite as strong as espresso coffee. (given the same ground coffee in each). I think my leanings go towards strength. The other problem I find with filter coffee, is that by the time the process is done, and the coffee is ready to drink, filter coffee is never quite hot enough. As with everything else on this thread,  this is just to my taste.

That's what microwaves are for!

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21 minutes ago, MauriceMynah said:

Filter coffee is usually not quite as strong as cafetiere coffee, which in turn is rarely quite as strong as espresso coffee. (given the same ground coffee in each). I think my leanings go towards strength. The other problem I find with filter coffee, is that by the time the process is done, and the coffee is ready to drink, filter coffee is never quite hot enough. As with everything else on this thread,  this is just to my taste.

It is true with filter coffee it takes too long and gets cold too quickly, I use a stainless steel coffee pot which I warm along with the mug that the coffee is going into,grind the beans add to the warmed pot give a good stir let it brew for five minutes and then pour it through a fine mesh tea strainer, and there, in my opinion, you have a good hot mug of coffee that you can sip slowly and will stay at a perfect temperature for a good 10/15 minutes.

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I actually posted asking about these expresso coffee pots on this thread!

https://forum.norfolkbroadsnetwork.com/topic/15736-that-first-coffee/?tab=comments#comment-262107

 

I persevered with the pot and enjoyed the coffee although it did take me quite a few goes and trying quite a few different coffees before I was satisfied. But!!! It got to be a bit of a pallaver to do every morning and I actually found some "microground" instant coffee purely by mistake (I did actually think I was buying coffee for the expresso maker!! It made a very acceptable mug in seconds!!! I'm a lazy git at times!

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Coffee snobs, when I need coffee which is very often, Instant will do, I haven't the patience to wait.

When I had one of those fancy machines that take very expensive pod things I would make an instant coffee to have while waiting for the damn thing to make coffee. It was very nice coffee but was costing me about £5 a day in pods ( I said I drink a lot of coffee).

So long as I can have 3 mugs before 9am I am quite a reasonable person, prevent that 3rd and*********..

paul

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2 hours ago, MauriceMynah said:

Thank you CC, next time we meet we must try a pot of Tesco's French (Strength 5) or Taylors Lava Java with a Pernod chaser. That should get the morning off to a good start. With luck I should have an espresso by then. :) 

It’s very true good unless you forget about it on the stove - then the coffee goes everywhere  :default_dunce:

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28 minutes ago, ZimbiIV said:

So long as I can have 3 mugs before 9am I am quite a reasonable person, prevent that 3rd and*********

I'm exactly the same, only with booze, rather than coffee :default_smiley-angelic002:

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Dear Cecil,
I have two of the above mentioned 'coffee engines' at home. Or I 'had' two of the coffee engines. They produce superb coffee and one is able to detect the slightest nuance of the coffee blend used. They suit a more robust blend of beans and their design makes getting rid of the coffee grounds much much easier. 

My dearest Cecil, were you to purchase a coffee engine then prepare for steamy...coffee...as the engine produces coffee that is still hot when brewed and remains hot well into your second cup...unlike the cafetiere! 

The drawback of the coffee engine, Cecil, is that it does not like 'hard' water. The bottom pot and the pressure valve can quickly clog with limescale...and if the valve blocks then BANG!

My current state of being 'engineless' is due to my former house-elf George, who took it upon herself to clean both my one mug and two mug engine of limescale by pouring undiluted bleach into the aluminium pots. She left the pots to soak at the back of a cupboard. Now George is famous for 'putting my things in a safe place so I can easily find them'. For example, she took my false teeth out of the pot in the bathroom and placed them in the kitchen cupboard next to the pickled onions, because 'you like to eat pickled onions'. Ahem!

Back to the coffee pots. After a week of hunting for my coffee engines and unable to find them I purchased a cafetiere. Several months went by and my coffee engines reappeared. So I made a pot of coffee. Now Martin may be able to tell us exactly what happened chemically but I am lead to believe that...

Chlorine and aluminium do not react until aluminium is heated. George had not emptied the aluminium engine, the bleach had dried to the inner surface. When you heat aluminium and chlorine...by putting the coffee pot on the stove then a vigorous reaction occurs. A white powder formed on the surfaces of parts of the engine which I am lead to believe is called aluminium chloride which fumes in the air, forming a white powder which reacts with water and forms HCI gas and aluminium oxide.

So Cecil dearest, the coffee is wonderful. Just don't let George clean the pots...I will get another coffee engine just as soon as I have bought a new cooker!

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Claude my dear fellow,

I am distraught on hearing George's failure to adhere to the basic cleaning routine for these devices and the unfortunate losses suffered as a result. One should always look at the positives when such disasters effect ones life, so I advise you to consider just how awful that coffee would have tasted had you tried it, possibly even worse than Maxwell House.

I am looking to procure such a machine for use on the waterways of our favourite National Park, and yes, I might even use it on the broads too. (we must remember that on this forum, no thread is complete without mention of that park, that man and that bridge.) I have come to the conclusion that the only way to compare the two methods of coffee production is to try both in the same caffeine absorption session.

This, my dearest Claud, has lead me to my next dilemma. There are so many of these hob top espresso machines available that I find myself quite vexed. Some are aluminium, others are stainless steel. Prices vary from just under a tenner to over 80 pounds, I even saw one at over £100.    There are stainless steel ones under twenty quid and aluminium ones for over sixty. I am perplexed and fail to comprehend reasons for this price differential.

Another problem that confronts me is the volume of liquid nectar produced by these machines. do I need one that produces 9 cups, 6 cups or even 12 cups. I use mugs!

Further I ask, If for example I purchase a 9 cup version, is it satisfactory for me to put in sufficient water and ground coffee for just 6 cups? or should it always be used to its maximum capacity? 

Our dear member Katie has observed that failure to take the machine off the hob when the coffee making process has completed results in a coffee production overflow situation. Do I take it from this that the makers of these machines did not work out that the lower reservoir should be of a lesser capacity than the upper coffee containing vessel? or is there some other reason for this catastrophic failure?

So many questions, so many worries. Perhaps Maxwell House isn't such a bad option after all.

I remain your obedient servant Cecil Featherstonewaugh. (First cousin three times removed to (or by) Maurice Mynah OXO IPA and bar.    

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7 minutes ago, MauriceMynah said:

So many questions, so many worries. Perhaps Maxwell House isn't such a bad option after all.

I remain your obedient servant Cecil Featherstonewaugh. (First cousin three times removed to (or by) Maurice Mynah OXO IPA and bar.    

 

Oi, You leave my house out of this! You have about 5000 bars too few by the way.

:)

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