4 ms·

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. Everythin

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.
- Reason077 4y ago
  Cheap electric grinders with spinning blades (ie: spice grinders) make poor espresso coffee because they do not produce consistent sized grounds. You will tend to have a mix of small and big chunks in your grounds. But for not much more money you can get an affordable electric burr grinder (like the Delonghi KG79) which will give a good, consistent grind with much less effort than a hand grinder.
ip26 4y ago
Espresso is different from other coffee types. There is a tight sweet spot where all the variables are just right, and you get amazing coffee. Espresso equipment is therefore all about making the variables easier to control, because you can’t solve a 12-variable problem if the variables have random values for every iteration. Lower grade equipment can make great espresso, but maybe you are managing good results only 1/10 instead of 5/10.
- stonemetal12 4y ago
  >There is a tight sweet spot where all the variables are just right, and you get amazing coffee. In double blind trials or audiophile I can hear the gold plating sort of way?
  - fatnoah 4y ago
    > In double blind trials or audiophile I can hear the gold plating sort of way? I think this type of comparison with espresso is comparing the differences of far different orders of magnitude. i.e. Impact of a bad grinder, poor bean distribution, or tamping force is orders of magnitude larger than the difference cable connectors makes. The difference in the end result is also (and I'm committing audiophile heresy according to some) far more apparent with espresso.
    - H1Supreme 4y ago
      As someone who brews espresso at home, and is a bit of an audiophile (mostly in the home recording domain), this is spot on. If your grind is too coarse for an espresso, it's very very obvious.
  - czinck 4y ago
    No, it's very obvious. There is some audiophile tendencies at the very expensive end of the espresso home setups, but there's a pretty noticeable difference between a good shot and the same shot ground ever so slightly finer. Because espresso is so strong, any off flavors are very strong and noticeable. Maybe an analogy here is gold plated wires don't make any difference in a home setup (well, they make zero difference in a digital setup), but when you're AC/DC blowing the roof off an arena with your speakers turned up to 11 bad equipment can be pretty noticeable.
hagbarth 4y ago
Isn't that what parent is saying? They (we) spend a lot of money chasing diminishing returns.
- benoliver999 4y ago
  Yeah that was my point and sure enough the thread dives deeper and deeper into different elements you have to control. I guess I should have made it clearer that I really was talking about coffee in general, not just espresso.
chongli 4y ago
90% of 'improving' your average setup is just grinding the beans right before you use them Roast level is also a big deal. Dark roasts have a much wider sweet spot on the grinding dial. The beans are brittle so they tend to shatter and produce a lot of fines. As long as you don’t grind too fine that the machine chokes during the shot, you’re going to be able to find the sweet spot. The lighter you go in roast, the more challenging everything becomes. Lighter roasts are less brittle so the grinder tends to cut rather than shatter. This often allows you to grind way finer on the dial. It also makes the coffee much more difficult to extract, requiring higher temperatures and a narrow grind sweet spot. Loads of people complain of sour, weak extractions with no body. This is where you can get into spending loads of money on a high-end flat burr grinder and a pressure profiling machine with PID temperature controls (and even temperature profiling during the shot). Light roasted single origin coffee beans can smell absolutely amazing, so people know there is potential there for unbelievably good coffee. All of the disappointment in the cup is what leads to the big spending (or giving up and going back to darker roasts).
Reason077 4y ago
> "Even old beans are fine." Fine as in drinkable? Sure. But if you want delicious coffee, with great aroma, crema, etc, there is a big difference between fresh roasted beans and something that has been sitting on a shelf for a few months.
- benoliver999 4y ago
  "Fine" as in "worlds better than the pre-ground stuff 95% of people buy off the shelf in the supermarket"

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.
Reason077 4y ago
Cheap electric grinders with spinning blades (ie: spice grinders) make poor espresso coffee because they do not produce consistent sized grounds. You will tend to have a mix of small and big chunks in your grounds. But for not much more money you can get an affordable electric burr grinder (like the Delonghi KG79) which will give a good, consistent grind with much less effort than a hand grinder.

ip26 4y ago

Espresso is different from other coffee types. There is a tight sweet spot where all the variables are just right, and you get amazing coffee. Espresso equipment is therefore all about making the variables easier to control, because you can’t solve a 12-variable problem if the variables have random values for every iteration. Lower grade equipment can make great espresso, but maybe you are managing good results only 1/10 instead of 5/10.

stonemetal12 4y ago
>There is a tight sweet spot where all the variables are just right, and you get amazing coffee. In double blind trials or audiophile I can hear the gold plating sort of way?
- fatnoah 4y ago
  > In double blind trials or audiophile I can hear the gold plating sort of way? I think this type of comparison with espresso is comparing the differences of far different orders of magnitude. i.e. Impact of a bad grinder, poor bean distribution, or tamping force is orders of magnitude larger than the difference cable connectors makes. The difference in the end result is also (and I'm committing audiophile heresy according to some) far more apparent with espresso.
  - H1Supreme 4y ago
    As someone who brews espresso at home, and is a bit of an audiophile (mostly in the home recording domain), this is spot on. If your grind is too coarse for an espresso, it's very very obvious.
- czinck 4y ago
  No, it's very obvious. There is some audiophile tendencies at the very expensive end of the espresso home setups, but there's a pretty noticeable difference between a good shot and the same shot ground ever so slightly finer. Because espresso is so strong, any off flavors are very strong and noticeable. Maybe an analogy here is gold plated wires don't make any difference in a home setup (well, they make zero difference in a digital setup), but when you're AC/DC blowing the roof off an arena with your speakers turned up to 11 bad equipment can be pretty noticeable.

hagbarth 4y ago

Isn't that what parent is saying? They (we) spend a lot of money chasing diminishing returns.

benoliver999 4y ago
Yeah that was my point and sure enough the thread dives deeper and deeper into different elements you have to control. I guess I should have made it clearer that I really was talking about coffee in general, not just espresso.

chongli 4y ago

90% of 'improving' your average setup is just grinding the beans right before you use them Roast level is also a big deal. Dark roasts have a much wider sweet spot on the grinding dial. The beans are brittle so they tend to shatter and produce a lot of fines. As long as you don’t grind too fine that the machine chokes during the shot, you’re going to be able to find the sweet spot. The lighter you go in roast, the more challenging everything becomes. Lighter roasts are less brittle so the grinder tends to cut rather than shatter. This often allows you to grind way finer on the dial. It also makes the coffee much more difficult to extract, requiring higher temperatures and a narrow grind sweet spot. Loads of people complain of sour, weak extractions with no body. This is where you can get into spending loads of money on a high-end flat burr grinder and a pressure profiling machine with PID temperature controls (and even temperature profiling during the shot). Light roasted single origin coffee beans can smell absolutely amazing, so people know there is potential there for unbelievably good coffee. All of the disappointment in the cup is what leads to the big spending (or giving up and going back to darker roasts).

Reason077 4y ago

> "Even old beans are fine." Fine as in drinkable? Sure. But if you want delicious coffee, with great aroma, crema, etc, there is a big difference between fresh roasted beans and something that has been sitting on a shelf for a few months.

benoliver999 4y ago
"Fine" as in "worlds better than the pre-ground stuff 95% of people buy off the shelf in the supermarket"