busybee Food Coffee Talk

As much as I was enjoying my cheap home-roasting setup, the coffee I was getting out of it was a bit one-note, especially when doing processes which were easily-replicable. The best coffee I’d gotten was when I didn’t know what I was doing and was trying all sorts of random things.

After reading up a bunch more about what I was doing wrong, all conclusions were that having the popper going at full-blast from the beginning was really limiting my ability to get good, consistent, developed roasts, and after considering adding a PID controller to my popper or other means of temperature control, I decided the easiest next step would be to buy a Popper¹.

As much as I appreciated my Sette 270, there were a few things I didn’t like about it:

• The fine adjustment mechanism is weird and unpredictable (due to the dual-ring thing)
• It is incredibly loud
• Grinding for espresso usually took 3-4 cycles due to popcorning
• The dang felt pretty huge (relative to my tiny kitchen)
• It’s built for keeping stuff in the hopper rather than single-dosing

I was considering a number of other grinders (most notably the Option-O Lagom Mini) but then in April, Timemore announced the Timemore Sculptor series, in a number of sizes and grind profiles. And the requisite Kickstarter had it on a pretty deep discount.

So anyway, I backed the 064s (64mm stepless variant) and expected to wait.

And wait I did! But the lovely new grinder arrived today.

I love the flavor of coffee, but don’t really care much for caffeine. Unfortunately, finding good roasters that treat decaffeinated coffee with respect is difficult, and the ones which are out there tend to either default to a dark roast, or cost enormous amounts.

But with a $20 popcorn air popper you can roast your own coffee at home, and save a lot of money doing it!

I’ve been doing it.

I recently bought some Colombian EA decaf from S&W Craft Roasting, as well as their sampler pack and a bag of cascara tea. The order shipped immediately and got to me within just a few days, and I am pretty happy with the decaf.

But let’s talk about the cascara!

A pretty simple recipe for a very nice cold drink.

Update: See the update to this post.

I’m still learning how to do good espresso, and my current technique seems to generate better, more repeatable results than before.

1. Let your beans outgas before grinding them

   Inspired, as usual, by a James Hoffmann video, I’ve started doing this much more regularly after noticing that super-fresh-roasted beans keep on resulting in horrible channeling. So now when I get a new bag of beans I put it into my countertop storage and let it sit there while I finish off the previous bag.

   Relatedly, rather than keeping my current beans in an airtight container, I’m actually using the hopper on my grinder instead of single-dosing stuff.

2. Target 15g of ground espresso

   I’ve settled on a 15-gram dose. Since I’m now using the hopper instead of single-dosing, I’m continuously adjusting my grind timer; I first tare my scale with the dosing cup, then put the dosing cup under the grinder, run it for my set time, then weigh the ground beans and then adjust the timer based on targeting 15 grams (for example, if my grind time is set to 4.5 seconds and I get 13 grams ground, I adjust the timer to \(4.5s \times 15g/13g = 5.19s\)), and then also grind a bit more until I get to 15 grams. If my initial grind was too much I just go ahead and use a larger dose.

3. Sideways-tap level, then WDT, then sideways-tap again

   I’m no longer using the spinny-spinny leveler, unless I’m having a really difficult time getting the puck level before tamping. I am using a WDT for declumping. I’m still using the crappy WDT but I will someday get around to printing one of the acupuncture-needle ones that everyone’s in love with now.

4. Calibrated tamper, but go extra

   Instead of trying to get a precise pressure-based tamp, I’m using the calibrated tamper by Decent to indicate the minimum force to pack it down by. Apparently it’s easy to undertamp a puck but pretty much impossible to overtamp, and the depth-based tamping I was doing before was way too inconsistent, especially when using lighter roasts (which tend to grind denser).

   (If you don’t want to pay the premium for the Decent tamper, this one on Amazon looks pretty okay.)

5. Extract based on time, not ratio

   This is a thing that’s made a huge difference to the quality of my output. Instead of targeting a 1:2 in:out ratio and adjusting the grind to get it closer to 25 seconds, I brew for 25 seconds and then adjust the grind to get it closer to a 1:2 ratio. Extraction time is the primary driver of flavor profile, and a 25-second extraction seems to get pretty close to the peak. So if my grind is too fine I might get a 1:1 ristretto, or if it’s too coarse I might get a 1:3 lungo, but either way I’ll end up with some pretty good-tasting espresso (although a lungo will tend to be a bit more bitter than I like).

For the last few months (since mid-July) I’ve been going through a lot of upgrades and troubleshooting on my coffee setup, especially as far as espresso is involved. I’m finally at the point where I’m happy with both the equipment and technique I have… or at least I think I am.

Here are the products I currently use, and the techniques I’ve found to get the most out of them. As usual, I have affiliate links for many of the products on display, but feel free to search for the best deal or the vendors you prefer.