7 ms·

I love how the coffee enthusiasts scene is more and more looking like the audiophile scene.

samwillis 4y ago
My best mate from uni was a massive audiophile, he had the most insane set of home built kit in our house. Now in our mid thirties he's become a massive coffee enthusiast, the attention to detail making coffee is brilliant. It's really good coffee! Immediately sent this post to him, I'm sure his wife won't be pleased to see the inevitable outcome...
- futurecat 4y ago
  I don’t share the same attention to details and I love passionate people spending time on improving their craft / setups. Great vibe :)
atoav 4y ago
True. But as an audio engineer I have to say, that just because audiophiles are naive and gullible, doesn't mean there are no other, real, physical aspects that affect actual sound and reproducability. Same for Espresso. A PID that keeps the brewing temperature steady is superior to a thermostat where the temperature ramps up and down constantly and your brewing temperature depends on experience or luck (people who know their machine would call this "temperature surfing" because you will have to wait for the thermostat to switch on). To which degree brewing temperature affects the result can be discussed, but this could be tested quite easily. So if you are a coffee afficionado, the number one reason you would like to have a PID is probably convenience. One variable less to care about if you wanna get reproducably (good) results. I'd also prefer the faders of my mixing desk to keep their levels where I set them instead of fluctuating around.
- futurecat 4y ago
  I own a vintage hifi setup (NAD3020 + AudioReference HR50) that costed me a few hundred bucks. I own a espresso machine that is a clone of the Lelit PL41 with PID and my grinder is a Barazza Encore with M2 burr. My comment came from a place of love. I’m happy to see people going the extra mile. Myself, I just want to be chill at home and aim for a balanced providing me joy without headaches. But I’m weird. Example: I love playing vinyls not because it sounds better but because it lacks dynamics and I find that… relaxing!
  - atoav 4y ago
    > My comment came from a place of love. I’m happy to see people going the extra mile. Myself, I just want to be chill at home and aim for a balanced providing me joy without headaches. Reasonable, I am similar in those regards. I just wanted to highlight that the border between reasonable technical features and audiophile snakeoil is at times not totally clear to draw. There are e.g. quite expensive audio cables in pro audio as well, but there you pay for reliability and not for esoteric materials.
  - margalabargala 4y ago
    I like playing vinyls because there's something neat about interacting with a physical object representing the music. It gives a satisfaction that digital music, or even CDs, do not. I could not care less about the minutiae of the sound quality coming out of it. And that's okay.
    - futurecat 4y ago
      Your comment makes me happy as I strongly believe interacting with analog enriches our senses and gives satisfaction.
    - OJFord 3y ago
      I love the few seconds to minutes of fiduh-fiduh before someone realised and gets up to flip to the B side, or choose the next record. I think that's a nicer, more relaxing transition than any playlist or DJ could muster.
  - maayank 4y ago
    What’s the clone? Do you recommend it?
benoliver999 4y ago
90% of 'improving' your average setup is just grinding the beans right before you use them. Even old beans are fine. Brew it how you want to brew it. Everything else is just chasing the final improvements, which is great but I feel like a lot of people get sold stuff they don't need. A £40 hand grinder might change your life as much as a £700 machine you got because reddit said so.
- criddell 4y ago
  Espresso is a little different. When you grind is important but how you grind is just as important. An inexpensive hand grinder can work but cheap electric grinders generally cannot.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    Yes. I was shocked at how much a good grinder improved my coffee. I thought it might be a slight improvement, and I felt potentially stupid spending the money. But it was a 2x or 3x improvement. The only other variable that has a similar impact are the beans themselves. I'm not entirely convinced that the espresso maker itself has a huge impact, but given my (proved-wrong) skepticism about the grinder's impact, it may be worth looking into. Or, as I see the mountain of stuff required to make high-quality specialty coffee at home, I may do what James Hoffman does and just do drip coffee. There is wisdom in the old, simple ways, and the $4k you can easily spend on a full setup is 1000 espressos made by a professional with bar better, more consistent equipment and tons of practice.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - dfxm12 4y ago
      espressos made by a professional with bar better, more consistent equipment and tons of practice. There are a lot of coffee shops near me. I'm surprised at how bad some of the espressos are, a lot too sour, some too bitter. Prices keep going up. You can count the break even point in terms of money, sure, but in my house, the espresso machine paid for itself almost instantly in terms of satisfaction.
ubermonkey 4y ago
This seems like a bad take. I have yet to see any assertions in the coffee world that approach the sheer amount of overt dishonesty and grift that characterizes high-end audio.
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  have you seen the $200 espresso baskets? I don't know if it's a grift but it is absurd
  - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    That is most likely grift. There's no reason the basket should cost that much to make.
    - ubermonkey 4y ago
      The difference in coffee is that the fancier geegaws are presented for aesthetic reasons, not improvements to the coffee. No one is arguing -- or at least I haven't seen it argued -- that a $200 basket, or a $100 distribution tool, or a super-expensive knock box make better coffee that the basic models. There's just a certain subset of home espresso people who want fancier things, or prettier things, for reasons external to efficacy. How does it look on the counter when I'm not using it? How pleasant is it to hold? Does it tickle that "finely machined object" thing in my brain? For example, lots of people use the Weiss Distribution Technique on their espresso grounds. Simply put, you stir the coffee in the portafilter using a tool with several fine needles on it to reduce clumping and more evenly distribute the grounds. This has been experimentally proven to produce improvements in the shot. BUT, critically, it doesn't matter how expensive the tool is. The DIY crowd buys acupuncture needles on Amazon and sticks 'em into a wine cork, which costs almost nothing. That works every bit as well as a $150 fancy one with a hand-tooled wooden handle and matching base, and no one argues differently. It's just that some people value aesthetics enough to pony up for the fancy option.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
ycombinete 4y ago
Last time I saw someone make this assertion on HN, they summoned a horde of really chill coffeephiles. They were kind enough to tell him how, actually he was wrong and everything about coffee is totally legit and there’s no woo at all.
- futurecat 4y ago
  My comment originated from a place of love :)
- juve1996 4y ago
  Honestly it is different. There is a point of diminishing returns. But the fact is you can make great coffee with simple pourovers or aeropress and that is well respected in the coffee community. Espresso is a lot easier to understand too, it's an entirely physical process, and everyone has had bitter, bad tasting espresso, so it's easier to know what "good" tastes like, vs some arbitrary chart or subjective POV in the audiophile world talking about how your house needs rewired because it puts noise into your setup.
tomatotomato37 4y ago
I blame espresso. The sweet spot between horribly bitter and horribly sour is small even for a non-enthusiast, let alone a connoisseur. Leads to lots of tinkering & tweaking
- dboreham 4y ago
  If you don't already, I recommend roasting your own beans. I never got good consistent results from store bought beans, but now I roast (which is surprisingly easy) I can achieve great results. Store coffee beans are usually way over-roasted for my taste.
  - anon84873628 4y ago
    But... There is an entire world of "third wave" specialty roasters selling quality light roasts...
    - LesZedCB 4y ago
      i roast my own coffee and besides the roaster cost (which isn't negligible, but can be considered a hobby expense instead of a consumable expense, so not 1-1), it is 50-75% cheaper to roast your own coffee. i order green coffee from sweetmarias.com and it's $5-8/lb which makes a good deal more than what's in the $15-25+ 10oz bags from 3rd wave roasters. plus i learn a new skill and can roast to my preference every time!
  - H1Supreme 4y ago
    Or find a local coffee shop that roasts their own. I used to buy from various sources and the roasts were all over the place. Thus, I was changing my grinder settings fairly dramatically with each new bag. Having switched to a local shop's medium roast, I very rarely have to adjust my grinder after buying a new batch of beans.
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
The relatively small amount of money I have put into my espresso setup has made a noticeable difference: * Breville Bambino * Niche Zero * IMS 20mm baskets for Breville portafilters I can get within spitting distance of most third-wave coffee shops most days. Still a lot to learn but I can tell I'm nearing the point of rapidly diminishing returns. I'll probably look to upgrade the Bambino when it dies, but I'm not really jonesing for much more at this point.
- tashoecraft 4y ago
  My flair pro combined with a high end hand grinder has led me to never having a better espresso outside of my house. It's a decent amount of manual effort (start to finish time is about 10-15 minutes) but the only reason is to reduce that effort for the same quality.
  - polishdude20 4y ago
    Got a flair as well and it pulls some great shots! The process is also kind of fun.
  - explaininjs 4y ago
    Those are rookie numbers, you gotta pump those numbers... down! After years of honing my flow, the TTE (time to espresso) is 6 minutes on gas, it'd probably be closer to 5 with an electric kettle. (I use a Comandante)
    - tashoecraft 4y ago
      A quicker kettle would help. But triple heating the flair's chamber, then clean up and it's longer than I'd like for TTE.
      - gabrielhidasy 4y ago
        The trick is getting a kettle that fits the brew chamber on top, so it steams while the water boils, I use a bonavitta with a mesh strainer as it's mouth is a bit too wide, but it seems like the fellow is almost a perfect fit. https://www.reddit.com/r/FlairEspresso/comments/j53vy0/fellow_kettle_and_flair_pro_2_preheating_a_steamy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FlairEspresso/comments/j53vy0/fello...
stronglikedan 4y ago
I though I knew a lot about coffee. Enough to know that the simplest processes work best for me. Then I recently learned about green (unroasted) coffee beans. And down the next rabbit hole I go!

My best mate from uni was a massive audiophile, he had the most insane set of home built kit in our house. Now in our mid thirties he's become a massive coffee enthusiast, the attention to detail making coffee is brilliant. It's really good coffee! Immediately sent this post to him, I'm sure his wife won't be pleased to see the inevitable outcome...

futurecat 4y ago
I don’t share the same attention to details and I love passionate people spending time on improving their craft / setups. Great vibe :)

atoav 4y ago

True. But as an audio engineer I have to say, that just because audiophiles are naive and gullible, doesn't mean there are no other, real, physical aspects that affect actual sound and reproducability. Same for Espresso. A PID that keeps the brewing temperature steady is superior to a thermostat where the temperature ramps up and down constantly and your brewing temperature depends on experience or luck (people who know their machine would call this "temperature surfing" because you will have to wait for the thermostat to switch on). To which degree brewing temperature affects the result can be discussed, but this could be tested quite easily. So if you are a coffee afficionado, the number one reason you would like to have a PID is probably convenience. One variable less to care about if you wanna get reproducably (good) results. I'd also prefer the faders of my mixing desk to keep their levels where I set them instead of fluctuating around.

futurecat 4y ago
I own a vintage hifi setup (NAD3020 + AudioReference HR50) that costed me a few hundred bucks. I own a espresso machine that is a clone of the Lelit PL41 with PID and my grinder is a Barazza Encore with M2 burr. My comment came from a place of love. I’m happy to see people going the extra mile. Myself, I just want to be chill at home and aim for a balanced providing me joy without headaches. But I’m weird. Example: I love playing vinyls not because it sounds better but because it lacks dynamics and I find that… relaxing!
- atoav 4y ago
  > My comment came from a place of love. I’m happy to see people going the extra mile. Myself, I just want to be chill at home and aim for a balanced providing me joy without headaches. Reasonable, I am similar in those regards. I just wanted to highlight that the border between reasonable technical features and audiophile snakeoil is at times not totally clear to draw. There are e.g. quite expensive audio cables in pro audio as well, but there you pay for reliability and not for esoteric materials.
- margalabargala 4y ago
  I like playing vinyls because there's something neat about interacting with a physical object representing the music. It gives a satisfaction that digital music, or even CDs, do not. I could not care less about the minutiae of the sound quality coming out of it. And that's okay.
  - futurecat 4y ago
    Your comment makes me happy as I strongly believe interacting with analog enriches our senses and gives satisfaction.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    I love the few seconds to minutes of fiduh-fiduh before someone realised and gets up to flip to the B side, or choose the next record. I think that's a nicer, more relaxing transition than any playlist or DJ could muster.
- maayank 4y ago
  What’s the clone? Do you recommend it?

benoliver999 4y ago

90% of 'improving' your average setup is just grinding the beans right before you use them. Even old beans are fine. Brew it how you want to brew it. Everything else is just chasing the final improvements, which is great but I feel like a lot of people get sold stuff they don't need. A £40 hand grinder might change your life as much as a £700 machine you got because reddit said so.

criddell 4y ago
Espresso is a little different. When you grind is important but how you grind is just as important. An inexpensive hand grinder can work but cheap electric grinders generally cannot.
- javajosh 4y ago
  Yes. I was shocked at how much a good grinder improved my coffee. I thought it might be a slight improvement, and I felt potentially stupid spending the money. But it was a 2x or 3x improvement. The only other variable that has a similar impact are the beans themselves. I'm not entirely convinced that the espresso maker itself has a huge impact, but given my (proved-wrong) skepticism about the grinder's impact, it may be worth looking into. Or, as I see the mountain of stuff required to make high-quality specialty coffee at home, I may do what James Hoffman does and just do drip coffee. There is wisdom in the old, simple ways, and the $4k you can easily spend on a full setup is 1000 espressos made by a professional with bar better, more consistent equipment and tons of practice.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dfxm12 4y ago
    espressos made by a professional with bar better, more consistent equipment and tons of practice. There are a lot of coffee shops near me. I'm surprised at how bad some of the espressos are, a lot too sour, some too bitter. Prices keep going up. You can count the break even point in terms of money, sure, but in my house, the espresso machine paid for itself almost instantly in terms of satisfaction.

ubermonkey 4y ago

This seems like a bad take. I have yet to see any assertions in the coffee world that approach the sheer amount of overt dishonesty and grift that characterizes high-end audio.

LesZedCB 4y ago
have you seen the $200 espresso baskets? I don't know if it's a grift but it is absurd
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  That is most likely grift. There's no reason the basket should cost that much to make.
  - ubermonkey 4y ago
    The difference in coffee is that the fancier geegaws are presented for aesthetic reasons, not improvements to the coffee. No one is arguing -- or at least I haven't seen it argued -- that a $200 basket, or a $100 distribution tool, or a super-expensive knock box make better coffee that the basic models. There's just a certain subset of home espresso people who want fancier things, or prettier things, for reasons external to efficacy. How does it look on the counter when I'm not using it? How pleasant is it to hold? Does it tickle that "finely machined object" thing in my brain? For example, lots of people use the Weiss Distribution Technique on their espresso grounds. Simply put, you stir the coffee in the portafilter using a tool with several fine needles on it to reduce clumping and more evenly distribute the grounds. This has been experimentally proven to produce improvements in the shot. BUT, critically, it doesn't matter how expensive the tool is. The DIY crowd buys acupuncture needles on Amazon and sticks 'em into a wine cork, which costs almost nothing. That works every bit as well as a $150 fancy one with a hand-tooled wooden handle and matching base, and no one argues differently. It's just that some people value aesthetics enough to pony up for the fancy option.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

ycombinete 4y ago

Last time I saw someone make this assertion on HN, they summoned a horde of really chill coffeephiles. They were kind enough to tell him how, actually he was wrong and everything about coffee is totally legit and there’s no woo at all.

futurecat 4y ago
My comment originated from a place of love :)
juve1996 4y ago
Honestly it is different. There is a point of diminishing returns. But the fact is you can make great coffee with simple pourovers or aeropress and that is well respected in the coffee community. Espresso is a lot easier to understand too, it's an entirely physical process, and everyone has had bitter, bad tasting espresso, so it's easier to know what "good" tastes like, vs some arbitrary chart or subjective POV in the audiophile world talking about how your house needs rewired because it puts noise into your setup.

tomatotomato37 4y ago

I blame espresso. The sweet spot between horribly bitter and horribly sour is small even for a non-enthusiast, let alone a connoisseur. Leads to lots of tinkering & tweaking

dboreham 4y ago
If you don't already, I recommend roasting your own beans. I never got good consistent results from store bought beans, but now I roast (which is surprisingly easy) I can achieve great results. Store coffee beans are usually way over-roasted for my taste.
- anon84873628 4y ago
  But... There is an entire world of "third wave" specialty roasters selling quality light roasts...
  - LesZedCB 4y ago
    i roast my own coffee and besides the roaster cost (which isn't negligible, but can be considered a hobby expense instead of a consumable expense, so not 1-1), it is 50-75% cheaper to roast your own coffee. i order green coffee from sweetmarias.com and it's $5-8/lb which makes a good deal more than what's in the $15-25+ 10oz bags from 3rd wave roasters. plus i learn a new skill and can roast to my preference every time!
- H1Supreme 4y ago
  Or find a local coffee shop that roasts their own. I used to buy from various sources and the roasts were all over the place. Thus, I was changing my grinder settings fairly dramatically with each new bag. Having switched to a local shop's medium roast, I very rarely have to adjust my grinder after buying a new batch of beans.

mattgreenrocks 4y ago

The relatively small amount of money I have put into my espresso setup has made a noticeable difference: * Breville Bambino * Niche Zero * IMS 20mm baskets for Breville portafilters I can get within spitting distance of most third-wave coffee shops most days. Still a lot to learn but I can tell I'm nearing the point of rapidly diminishing returns. I'll probably look to upgrade the Bambino when it dies, but I'm not really jonesing for much more at this point.

tashoecraft 4y ago
My flair pro combined with a high end hand grinder has led me to never having a better espresso outside of my house. It's a decent amount of manual effort (start to finish time is about 10-15 minutes) but the only reason is to reduce that effort for the same quality.
- polishdude20 4y ago
  Got a flair as well and it pulls some great shots! The process is also kind of fun.
- explaininjs 4y ago
  Those are rookie numbers, you gotta pump those numbers... down! After years of honing my flow, the TTE (time to espresso) is 6 minutes on gas, it'd probably be closer to 5 with an electric kettle. (I use a Comandante)
  - tashoecraft 4y ago
    A quicker kettle would help. But triple heating the flair's chamber, then clean up and it's longer than I'd like for TTE.
    - gabrielhidasy 4y ago
      The trick is getting a kettle that fits the brew chamber on top, so it steams while the water boils, I use a bonavitta with a mesh strainer as it's mouth is a bit too wide, but it seems like the fellow is almost a perfect fit. https://www.reddit.com/r/FlairEspresso/comments/j53vy0/fellow_kettle_and_flair_pro_2_preheating_a_steamy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FlairEspresso/comments/j53vy0/fello...

stronglikedan 4y ago

I though I knew a lot about coffee. Enough to know that the simplest processes work best for me. Then I recently learned about green (unroasted) coffee beans. And down the next rabbit hole I go!