Coffee: we drink it or we get angry.

I assume you mean Vancouver, Canada and not Vancouver Washington (if you mean the latter though I do have an excellent rec there). 49th Parallel is hands down the most internationally famous craft coffee roaster/shop in Canada and they are out of Vancouver. For others I often start with Sprudge, which is a blog for third wave coffee lovers and often has individual city guides like this https://sprudge.com/vancouver-bc-coffee-guide-125867.html

 

Def more than one way to skin a cat!

 

Do you have experience with this device? I am a French press user. I am curious.

 

Grinder is dialed back in, getting reacquainted with Silvia. She pulls a good shot.

 

My new grinder, surprisingly good.





I just measured/weighed the amount of coffee I use for my French press. 20 grammes.

Is that a lot? I like my coffee strong.

 

Calling @Lyander, for when you can get out of the house to buy coffee beans.

I use 12g of beans to extract 50g of coffee with my 1-cup Bialetti at work, and 19.5g for a 36g ristretto on the weekends.

 

depends on how much water you use. Many of us use a ratio of water:coffee somewhere around 17:1. I use 16:1 or sometimes I end up even a tad stronger. Weigh or measure the ml of water you are using and divide by your 50g of coffee for your ratio. The lower the number the stronger the coffee. If you want to try 16:1 just divide ml by 16 and use that much coffee. Of course with immersion methods like press you’ve also got the immersion time affecting strength.

 

For shots I go 2:1 - 22g of beans, 44g final shot weight. Chemex is 35g of beans and 3 euro cups of coffee (I use an Ottomatic so I measure water by the volume lines on the reservoir and not by weight). For v60 I do 14:1 - 25g of coffee to 350g of water.

 

The 20 grammes are used for two small cups of coffee, so about 10 grammes per smallish lungo/americano if you have to count the shots/cups. Thing is, the French press is excellent to extract extra flavour from a good grind. It is only a matter of patience once you get it right.

The medium grind was beautiful to look at. I was happy with that grind.

 

@DigMe You mentioned Trade Coffee earlier-- do you do their subscription? How is it? I've been looking at going into a subscription recently and they keep coming up as having a pretty diverse offering.

Also @ whoever, any roaster recs in/around north DC? I moved to the city this summer, but haven't really been out and about since pandemic and all. Nothing in my neighborhood that's easy to drop in on, hence me looking at subscriptions.

 

This machine does good coffee, for real?

 

@DigMe

I am thinking one of these should do. It seems Virtuoso is maybe not optimal for Espresso, hard to tell really.

1. Baratza Sette 30 https://baratza.com/grinder/sette-30/
2. Rancilio Rocky
3. Baratza Virtuoso
4. Something from Lelit.. Cheaper options start around 200-300.


One legit option would be a manual grinder. These go for around 100 to 300 too so no big difference in price.

 

I’ve heard good things about the Sette. Had a friend who used a Virtuoso a long time before upgrading to a Vario and I believe it served him pretty well. The Rocky has some shortcomings that cause me to avoid it. I believe it is a stepped grinding adjustment for one.


You can definitely get better grind for the dollar with a hand grinder like an OE or one of the other high end ones but I would get tired of the daily grind so to speak. I have gone long periods with only a hand grinder but I’d rather go with a lower cost electric that still has a good grind even if it’s not quite as good.

 

On the cost part I think I can pay the premium and buy it once, even when I get a higher end espresso machine, (mine is quit good so do not feel the urge) I dont need to buy the damn grinder again. I dig the manual option, might be annoying at some point but you get a good grind.

 

Baratza is a good choice IMO if you do go electric and I like their customer service philosophy. You can also get them at a discount sometimes directly from Baratza if you keep an eye on their refurbished stock.

 

Fwiw I put steel burrs in my vario and use it just for drip or pourover or other large grinds

Bought a nice kinu phoenix hand grinder for expresso and use that for one latte every morning

This works well for me. No regrets. Better grind from kinu and takes a min or two to grind 16 gr for a shot. My morning workout. Lol
If I had to do a bunch of shots it would be annoying though

 

I also have the SS burrs on my Vario. If I ever did get an espresso setup of some kind again I could always use my OE Lido E for espresso. I probably won’t though as good coffee shops are now so numerous that I can almost always scratch my espresso itch wherever I find myself when it arises.it wasn’t always that way!