Coffee Advice

You're overdosing the basket, so reduce it by 1 or 2 grams and then grind finer to compensate.
Yeah, I figured that, but when tamped it's actually below the suggested tamping line, by quite some way :unsure:

Also when I put less in it ends up like a watery puck, or sticks to the basket when I try to tap it out.

Knocking out a good puck is quite satisfying, once of my favourite parts of the experience I think.
 
You'll just have to experiment, expensive I know. Grind finer and don't tamp so hard. It's a bit of a myth about so many pounds of pressure, being level is more important than compressing the life out of the puck.
 
You'll just have to experiment, expensive I know. Grind finer and don't tamp so hard. It's a bit of a myth about so many pounds of pressure, being level is more important than compressing the life out of the puck.
Yeah, I need to get back into it and will do once I worked my way through the last of this 1kg of cheap beans I got, for when the builders were working on the house :LOL:

No way was I dishing out Rave every day :LOL:
 
I thought I was really pushing the boat out with my Taylors Lava and a filter. Looks like I need to source myself a Barista!
 
I've mentioned before that I have been in the coffee business for over 30 years and it's also a passion of mine as I have a roaster in my garage and an unlimited access to green coffee from all corners of the planet.

The beans are everything, you can't turn poor coffee into a remarkable espresso.

Try to get the SCA rating for the coffee you are buying. 90+ is called Presidential and the best coffees available but also quite rare, think of them as like your Messi, Maradonna, Pele etc. Most of my coffee is between 85-90 but I do also roast some coffees 80-85 but never below 80.

Union Hand Roasted display the quality scores and offer terrific coffee. https://unionroasted.com/collections/microlots

For exceptional coffee look out for Gesha (sometimes also spelt Geisha), that is usually a mark of something very special. I also like Honey coffees such as from Nicaragua.

Don't continuously buy from the same roaster, they have their preferences when it comes to origins and roast profiles so you will get some repetition after a while.

Water quality is incredibly important, always try to use filtered water and not straight from the tap.

Most blends (90%+) are just a way of introducing cheap inferior beans, I avoid them completely.

I never buy ground beans as you don't know how old it is, it can be very stale by the time you use it.

I never buy from supermarkets, it's on those shelves for a reason.

Grinding beans to perfection is something for barista competitions and not home coffee, try to buy a bean to cup machine with a generic grind, it will serve you perfectly and removes something that you don't need to stress about.

Don't waste your money buying expensive Jamaican Blue Mountain it's good coffee but nowhere near worth what you will pay, it's a gimmick.

Kopi Luwak is cruel and should be outlawed, it's a stain on the coffee industry

For a great day out head to the London Coffee Festival where you will get to try some amazing coffee and some average too, surprisingly) https://www.londoncoffeefestival.com/
 
You'll just have to experiment, expensive I know. Grind finer and don't tamp so hard. It's a bit of a myth about so many pounds of pressure, being level is more important than compressing the life out of the puck.
It's not really a myth when it comes to espresso, you need a certain amount of pump pressure for premium extraction rather than compacting the coffee
 
I've mentioned before that I have been in the coffee business for over 30 years and it's also a passion of mine as I have a roaster in my garage and an unlimited access to green coffee from all corners of the planet.

The beans are everything, you can't turn poor coffee into a remarkable espresso.

Try to get the SCA rating for the coffee you are buying. 90+ is called Presidential and the best coffees available but also quite rare, think of them as like your Messi, Maradonna, Pele etc. Most of my coffee is between 85-90 but I do also roast some coffees 80-85 but never below 80.

Union Hand Roasted display the quality scores and offer terrific coffee. https://unionroasted.com/collections/microlots

For exceptional coffee look out for Gesha (sometimes also spelt Geisha), that is usually a mark of something very special. I also like Honey coffees such as from Nicaragua.

Don't continuously buy from the same roaster, they have their preferences when it comes to origins and roast profiles so you will get some repetition after a while.

Water quality is incredibly important, always try to use filtered water and not straight from the tap.

Most blends (90%+) are just a way of introducing cheap inferior beans, I avoid them completely.

I never buy ground beans as you don't know how old it is, it can be very stale by the time you use it.

I never buy from supermarkets, it's on those shelves for a reason.

Grinding beans to perfection is something for barista competitions and not home coffee, try to buy a bean to cup machine with a generic grind, it will serve you perfectly and removes something that you don't need to stress about.

Don't waste your money buying expensive Jamaican Blue Mountain it's good coffee but nowhere near worth what you will pay, it's a gimmick.

Kopi Luwak is cruel and should be outlawed, it's a stain on the coffee industry

For a great day out head to the London Coffee Festival where you will get to try some amazing coffee and some average too, surprisingly) https://www.londoncoffeefestival.com/
Some good info there BM 👍
 
Coffee is a bit like food. You can't make coffee at home as good as a barista on a specialist machine with their selected ingredients can make with domestic equipment like you can't make Michelin star level food at home. You can make something that is an approximation of it and is better than the majority of people that wouldn't put that much thought it effort into it can make.

It would be pointless spending a fortune on the best beans if you're not going to get everything right on terms of equipment and dialing them all in perfectly just like it would be pointless buying A5 Kobe beef and cooking it in a microwave.
 
Coffee is a bit like food. You can't make coffee at home as good as a barista on a specialist machine with their selected ingredients can make with domestic equipment like you can't make Michelin star level food at home. You can make something that is an approximation of it and is better than the majority of people that wouldn't put that much thought it effort into it can make.

It would be pointless spending a fortune on the best beans if you're not going to get everything right on terms of equipment and dialing them all in perfectly just like it would be pointless buying A5 Kobe beef and cooking it in a microwave.

You're completely wrong with everything you have just written. Don't think for one minute that the coffee you are buying on the high street is the equivalent of Michelin star food as 99% of it isn't.

Greggs, Pret, McDonalds, Nero, Lavazza, Starbucks and Costa etc churn out coffee which is awful to average, a lot of it is undrinkable as an espresso. You can serve better coffee on a £300 bean to cup machine with decent delivered roasted beans than any of them mentioned above, the same goes for a lot of independent coffee shops too.
 
You're completely wrong with everything you have just written. Don't think for one minute that the coffee you are buying on the high street is the equivalent of Michelin star food as 99% of it isn't.

Greggs, Pret, McDonalds, Nero, Lavazza, Starbucks and Costa etc churn out coffee which is awful to average, a lot of it is undrinkable as an espresso. You can serve better coffee on a £300 bean to cup machine with decent delivered roasted beans than any of them mentioned above, the same goes for a lot of independent coffee shops too.
I wasn't talking about the chains obviously. They might have the capability via the machinery to make Michelin star coffee but the people operating it don't have the knowledge. That would be the same as sticking an employee from McDonald's into a Michelin star restaurant and thinking the food was Michelin quality. I would trust James Hoffman making an instant coffee to make a better brew than someone pushing the button in Gregg's.

I was more making the point that domestic setups can only be so good.
 
I wasn't talking about the chains obviously. They might have the capability via the machinery to make Michelin star coffee but the people operating it don't have the knowledge. That would be the same as sticking an employee from McDonald's into a Michelin star restaurant and thinking the food was Michelin quality. I would trust James Hoffman making an instant coffee to make a better brew than someone pushing the button in Gregg's.

I was more making the point that domestic setups can only be so good.
Domestic machines can make excellent coffee and pound for pound a lot nearer to professional machines than they ought to be.

Steam wands tend to be a bigger difference, but overall you can make much better coffee at home, with a reasonably decent machine, a bit of knowhow and decent beans, than any of the chains.
 
I wasn't talking about the chains obviously. They might have the capability via the machinery to make Michelin star coffee but the people operating it don't have the knowledge. That would be the same as sticking an employee from McDonald's into a Michelin star restaurant and thinking the food was Michelin quality. I would trust James Hoffman making an instant coffee to make a better brew than someone pushing the button in Gregg's.

I was more making the point that domestic setups can only be so good.

They don't have the quality beans, it's not about the machinery. They buy garbage coffee, roast garbage coffee and sell garbage coffee.
 
They don't have the quality beans, it's not about the machinery. They buy garbage coffee, roast garbage coffee and sell garbage coffee.
To ge fair they are miles off decent coffee, but I would say neros are the best of a average bunch , at least it seems to taste like it was roasted since Carrick took over
 
I have a decent bean to cup machine but every now and then I still use my moka pot, after years of practice and using a paper filter it's not bad.
Also a sucker for coffee gadgets , this one below is great for camping trips, excellent extraction

 
They don't have the quality beans, it's not about the machinery. They buy garbage coffee, roast garbage coffee and sell garbage coffee.
I'm also not arguing that they do. They potentially could but they are mass market so they don't. I'm merely saying that making coffee at home will always be limited by equipment no matter how good the beans are because you can't grind as precisely as you would want etc. I never said, or at least I never meant, that all coffee purchased on the high street would be the best possible coffee.
 

These guys are good and they also do bery popular Barista classes aimed at people who have spent a fortune on good machines but don’t really have the expertise to make the most of them.
What you trying to say? :)

Sounds right up my street to be fair.
 
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