Coffee: we drink it or we get angry.

Sourness also has this weird/bad dehydrating effect on your palate after a sip, makes you feel like pounding a shit load of water. Basically, anything that leads to under extraction will produce sourness, so low water temp but also grind size (grind too coarse and it's harder to break down and get a full extraction, also why lighter roasts often need finer grinding or hotter water, cause their cell walls break down less as a function of less roasting and therefore are more difficult to extract).

The other flavor I'm not a fan of that doesn't pertain as much to extraction but to how beans are roasted is uh roastiness. Even respectable places have coffees that taste roastie, eg, blue bottle has a few.

Awesome coffee recs... gotta try some of those Ethiopians, love the taste of berries in their coffees.

 

@brencho just got angry. And sour.

 

All work and no play makes me a sour boy

 

Speaking of affordable and portable manual burr grinder, I was going to get Porlex when I stumbled on a Hario mini mod.

Spoiler: Hario Mini Mod

Basically 7-12 rounds of magic tapes around the outer grinder ring to minimize (or even nullify) gap between the ring and plastic case. Some says the result is comparable to Baratza Encore. I can't verify because I don't own Encore.

 

If I was going to buy a hand grinder on the cheap this is definitely the one that I'd try first:
https://kuissential.com/product/evengrind-coffee-grinder/

It's like the basic Skerton but with a stabilizer cage and lower bearing at a much lower cost than other hand grinders that have a lower bearing. This is a big key to even grinding in a hand grinder.

https://kuissential.com/product/evengrind-coffee-grinder/

 

I did the same thing with my Porlex. Coarse is still inconsistent but medium-coarse and smaller looks good to me.

 

I've heard of this mod before and considered doing it to my mini mill, which I sometimes use while traveling. However, I've heard people that have performed this mod say that eventually the tape disappears and you have to reapply it. So, it may help the grind quality, but there's a chance that you'll be gradually consuming the tape, which to me isn't worth it.

 

I haven't seen this, but the design seems sound and grind consistency is supposed to be very good: https://handground.com/

It is the poor man's HG-1

 

CoffeCon this weekend if you are in LA: http://www.coffee-con.com

 

Ordered! Thanks! Finishing off the last of my Hub Roasters Konga. Old beans and still good.

 

This looks nice
https://www.instagram.com/p/BROAZsajolC/

 

Our local coffee brewer has a very nice selection of freshly roasted coffees from all over the world, so it's great to be ample to sample such a wide variety. They also have a cat, appropriately named Sidamo, that is a coffee connoisseur who knows exactly what decaf is good for!


My favourite coffees are mainly from Guatemala and Rwanda, though I like some of the stronger Colombian varieties as well. For those that love citrussy coffees, I can definitely recommend checking out varieties from East Africa such as Tanzania and Malawi.

 

finally brought some stuff to work, tired of buying shit coffee from the coffee bean

 

hey man! this is my second bonavita, i have the non-temp-PID version at home. i've used that one for a lot longer, and there's no rust around the lid area. both, however, have little spots that developed on the bottom, but once visible, they don't seem to worsen or become rusty. i've also read folks that had bad experiences with the bonavita but so far both the non-PID version and this one at the office have been fine. that said, there are a few new electric kettles popping up, including one by Hario (non-PID only, though there's a PID version available in Japan that will eventually make its way over here) as well as Stagg (called the EKG, they did a kickstarter for their new electric PID kettle and that will be available by summer or something). Both of these alternatives are quite a bit more expensive though, but seem totally good as well.

 

Great setup! Next step is an Aeropress, then a Lido... IMHO. Each addition will take you to a new level of gustatory experience.

 

I've had 3 of the Bonavita variable temp gooseneck kettles. FWIW Bonavita does not refer to them as "PID" unless y'all are talking about some you've modded yourselves with PID. There's about 2 degrees of deadband on each side of whatever temp you set. I've been super happy with them usage-wise and no rust but here's why I've had 3:

1st one - I dropped it onto my tile floor and it bent the gooseneck and broke the weld where it meets the body. I suppose if I knew welding I could have fixed it.

2nd one - I still have it and use it for travel. I got a good deal on it but I noticed that the temp would seem to vary until I kind of rotated it on the bottom to find a sweet spot in the connection or something. I emailed Bonavita about this with one day left on my warranty and they sent me a new one, end of story. I was amazed.

3rd one - in use daily, no probs so far.

 

Indeed! I have an aeropress at home and because it can only be destroyed by the fires of Mt Doom I take it back and forth sometimes.

As for the grinders, I played with a Lido for a while and they're very nice indeed but I opted to hold onto a Helor 101 (the silver looking one in the pic) and a feldgrind (the black one in the pic) because I liked the design, materials, and finish. They're super consistent and run circles around my baratza grinders which I've since sold. Kept one at home if I ever want to do like an 8 cup French press and don't want to crank that long!

Agreed they're not really PID. To be honest the temperature function is useless to me cause I always use water right off a boil and then calibrate all the other variables when dialing in but never water temp. Honestly the only reason they're useful is because you can program them to "hold"a set temp so it'll stay hot while you do all of your prepping.

 

Do you guys have good recommendations for a manual grinder that won't break the bank?

The couple in @brencho's post look nice, but I need something in the sub-$100 range.