5 ms·

I've got a burr grinder with a large hopper I usually keep filled with beans, how do I wet the beans in that case?

by dmix 3y ago

hprotagonist 3y ago
empty your hopper, store the beans in a separate container, and weigh and grind per brew.
- alfiedotwtf 3y ago
  Was just about to comment the same thing. Keep beans air-tightly stored away from the sun but not in the fridge. When making a coffee, measure only what you need. IMHO the biggest factor is not the gear, it's the beans - I would rather "good beans and a $50 espresso machine from Aldi" than "burnt beans with a La Marzocco Linea Mini" every time.
  - dmix 3y ago
    Another thing is grinders too apparently. I watched a video once explaining why espresso machines are so expensive and they said they'd rather have a $700 espresso machine with an expensive grinder than a $4000 machine with a cheap grinder.
    - sva_ 3y ago
      I often hear the priority list being 1. Quality of beans 2. Quality of the grinder 3. Quality of the espresso machine I'm not exactly sure what sets apart some grinder from another. Some say they more evenly grind the beans (similar particle sizes) but I am not sure if that is all there is to it.
      - sweettea 3y ago
        A high quality grinder also minimally heats the beans as they grind - heat can change the volatility of the oils, resulting in changed flavor (and usually not for the better)
        FrankoDelMar 3y ago
        Correct, this is why people prefer burr mill grinders made of ceramic instead of metal since ceramic is more thermally insulating.
        roflyear 3y ago
        This isn't true in the high-end coffee community. No one uses ceramic burrs, and they are generally considered to produce worse coffee than other burrs.
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        I'd put the quality of the grinder above the quality of the beans, but that's assuming a certain minimum standard (e.g. whole beans from a supermarket brand). If someone's using a blade grinder, then the particle size are going to be all over the place and you end up with a brew that's both over-extracted and under-extracted at the same time. I'm not especially fussed about the espresso machine quality as I usually drink AeroPress coffee and as long as people aren't using boiling water, then it turns out fine (full immersion is a lot easier to get right than dialing in the specific grind for Espresso).
      - pivo 3y ago
        > I'm not exactly sure what sets apart some grinder from another. Some say they more evenly grind the beans (similar particle sizes) but I am not sure if that is all there is to it. Definitely not all there is to it. There are people who are in to swapping burrs on a grinder to experiment with different flavor profiles, or to make espresso vs filter coffee. Some grinders even cater to us, such as the Niche Duo: https://www.nichecoffee.co.uk/products/niche-duo?variant=43187239813251 https://www.nichecoffee.co.uk/products/niche-duo?variant=431... Also, some people who like more traditional, chocolaty espressos prefer grinders/burrs that produce more varied particle size. People who like cleaner, "modern" espresso prefer grinders that produce the more similar particle sizes. It's a rabbit hole.
        quaddo 3y ago
        Random: is the Niche Duo made by a US company? Asking, as I noticed the power switch on the side: the "|" symbol was at the top, which doesn't jive with the UK's "up is off, down is on" typical switch.
        pivo 3y ago
        Interesting, that never occurred to me. Niche are a UK company, the grinders are designed in the UK, but as I understand, made in China.
    - chongli 3y ago
      While it is true that a $4000 espresso machine will not get good results with a $20 blade grinder from the hardware store, I think you do see diminishing returns going above $1000 for burr grinders. On the other hand, spending more on the espresso machine can get you way more dials and knobs to tweak. Temperature and pressure profiling and all that. This may not matter if you prefer medium or dark roasted coffee, but light and Nordic roasts really benefit from the extra control over temperature and pressure. With a fancy machine you can do these very long, lower pressure extractions with higher brew ratios to extract a finicky light roast which would otherwise require an impossibly fine grind that chokes a standard 9 bar machine.
      - bch 3y ago
        > With a fancy machine you can do these very long, lower pressure extractions with higher brew ratios to extract a finicky light roast which would otherwise require[…] Or a simple machine, like a (direct-)lever[0], which is an operator controlling a piston pushing water. [0] like a La Pavoni, or Cremina - this video is of a europicolla owner who I think embodies well the joy that can be had matching a machine like this to the right person https://youtu.be/1BGB2i4Bu58 https://youtu.be/1BGB2i4Bu58
        chongli 3y ago
        My next machine is going to be a lever machine for sure! Though I will say that a direct lever machine is the ultimate tradeoff of control over precision/repeatability. Spring levers give you a ton of control with more precision because you're retarding the lever to subtract from the maximum pressure of the spring rather than modulating your muscle power in real time. Unfortunately, what the simple lever machines give you in terms of pressure control, they take away in temperature control. Getting accurate, repeatable temperature shots from a La Pavoni is a bit of a black art, and the group can easily overheat, requiring you to cool it down before making coffee. Even in the case of lever machines, you get more control if you spend more money. Take a high-end lever machine like the ACS Vesuvius Evo Levo [1]. This machine has an 11-bar dual spring group (which you can back off to your heart's content by retarding the lever) and a pump to provide selectable preinfusion between 1.5 and 5 bar. It also has 3 independently controlled (PID) heaters: 1 in the coffee boiler, 1 in the steam/service boiler, and 1 in the group itself. This allows you to do temperature profiling by, for example, setting a higher temperature in the group than in the coffee boiler, which will cause the slightly cooler water from the boiler to bring down the temperature of the group during the extraction. [1] https://www.elcor.it/en/vesuvius-evo-leva-en/ https://www.elcor.it/en/vesuvius-evo-leva-en/
    - aksss 3y ago
      Yes, and part of that is just preventing waste and saving work - I mean a blade grinder can get you a quantity of relatively consistent grounds after you sift them, regrind some, sift to separate, use the paper towel trick, etc., and now you have like a 30% return out of the beans you destroyed, and a pile of coffee dust and splinters. The amount of work saved by a good grinder and amount of waste reduced is worth a fair amount. I’m not sure $1000 grinder gives me commensurate value personally, but a $100-300 grinder I can travel with? That sounds quite fair even just being slightly down the coffee nerd rabbit hole. :)
  - tamaraaramat 3y ago
    > but not in the fridge I thought that storing them in fridge will keep them fresh longer
    - LesZedCB 3y ago
      freezer yes, fridge idk.
neverrroot 3y ago
You can likely get more out of not keeping the beans in the “open” (large hopper) than you could get out of wetting them. Assuming good quality beans, rather freshly roasted.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  If the beans are freshly roasted, it's often best to leave them two-three days to degas the CO2 from the beans.
  - neverrroot 3y ago
    Agree 100%, I didn’t mention this because the beans were resting for longer as mentioned by the user I replied to.
  - sgt 3y ago
    A professional roaster told me at least a week. I brought them green beans which they roasted and phoned me after a week (telling me that before that would be too soon and taking a chance) to come pick up.
    - robbs 3y ago
      It varies. I roast at home, and some beans are great the next day. Some are great the next week. The cafe I used to live next to would rest their beans for a week.
      - swells34 3y ago
        Same. I have noticed that the lighter the roast, the happier the beans are with less rest. That being said, the best coffee I've had was Ethiopian style, roasted dark and brewed right in front of me with no rest.
  - stouset 3y ago
    I buy 5lb bags and let them sit on the counter for a week or two. Then I set aside a week’s worth for use and freeze the remainder in gallon ziplock bags with the air pressed out. This allows me to waste less coffee and less time dialing in shots because each week’s worth will be very close in required grind setting to the previous week’s.
tomstuart 3y ago
The target audience for this hack are people who carefully weigh their beans (and then put them into the empty hopper for grinding) each time they make coffee.
- sva_ 3y ago
  Damn, literal bean counters.
  - rokkitmensch 3y ago
    Busted. My scale absolutely has a units mode that is very fun and completely caters to my precision fetish. Or at least I thought it did until I considered bean-weight variability...
    - mimischi 3y ago
      It’s infuriating when you change brands. Built up a feel for how much a bean weighs and how many are needed to go from 17.9 to 18.0g? Yeah, that other bean requires five beans, and not just one.
      - cjr 3y ago
        Or removing the right sized bean to go from 18.1g to 18g
        pseudosaid 3y ago
        of course factoring in the age and roast too
  - LesZedCB 3y ago
    there are even more niche products, literally called bean counters which dose whole beans to a certain weight. believe it or not they are well over $100. the deep end of coffee is both insane and expensive
- 3y ago
pseudosaid 3y ago
single dose

I've got a burr grinder with a large hopper I usually keep filled with beans, how do I wet the beans in that case?

by dmix 3y ago

I've got a burr grinder with a large hopper I usually keep filled with beans, how do I wet the beans in that case?

hprotagonist 3y ago

empty your hopper, store the beans in a separate container, and weigh and grind per brew.

alfiedotwtf 3y ago
Was just about to comment the same thing. Keep beans air-tightly stored away from the sun but not in the fridge. When making a coffee, measure only what you need. IMHO the biggest factor is not the gear, it's the beans - I would rather "good beans and a $50 espresso machine from Aldi" than "burnt beans with a La Marzocco Linea Mini" every time.
- dmix 3y ago
  Another thing is grinders too apparently. I watched a video once explaining why espresso machines are so expensive and they said they'd rather have a $700 espresso machine with an expensive grinder than a $4000 machine with a cheap grinder.
  - sva_ 3y ago
    I often hear the priority list being 1. Quality of beans 2. Quality of the grinder 3. Quality of the espresso machine I'm not exactly sure what sets apart some grinder from another. Some say they more evenly grind the beans (similar particle sizes) but I am not sure if that is all there is to it.
    - sweettea 3y ago
      A high quality grinder also minimally heats the beans as they grind - heat can change the volatility of the oils, resulting in changed flavor (and usually not for the better)
      - FrankoDelMar 3y ago
        Correct, this is why people prefer burr mill grinders made of ceramic instead of metal since ceramic is more thermally insulating.
        roflyear 3y ago
        This isn't true in the high-end coffee community. No one uses ceramic burrs, and they are generally considered to produce worse coffee than other burrs.
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      I'd put the quality of the grinder above the quality of the beans, but that's assuming a certain minimum standard (e.g. whole beans from a supermarket brand). If someone's using a blade grinder, then the particle size are going to be all over the place and you end up with a brew that's both over-extracted and under-extracted at the same time. I'm not especially fussed about the espresso machine quality as I usually drink AeroPress coffee and as long as people aren't using boiling water, then it turns out fine (full immersion is a lot easier to get right than dialing in the specific grind for Espresso).
    - pivo 3y ago
      > I'm not exactly sure what sets apart some grinder from another. Some say they more evenly grind the beans (similar particle sizes) but I am not sure if that is all there is to it. Definitely not all there is to it. There are people who are in to swapping burrs on a grinder to experiment with different flavor profiles, or to make espresso vs filter coffee. Some grinders even cater to us, such as the Niche Duo: https://www.nichecoffee.co.uk/products/niche-duo?variant=43187239813251 https://www.nichecoffee.co.uk/products/niche-duo?variant=431... Also, some people who like more traditional, chocolaty espressos prefer grinders/burrs that produce more varied particle size. People who like cleaner, "modern" espresso prefer grinders that produce the more similar particle sizes. It's a rabbit hole.
      - quaddo 3y ago
        Random: is the Niche Duo made by a US company? Asking, as I noticed the power switch on the side: the "|" symbol was at the top, which doesn't jive with the UK's "up is off, down is on" typical switch.
        pivo 3y ago
        Interesting, that never occurred to me. Niche are a UK company, the grinders are designed in the UK, but as I understand, made in China.
  - chongli 3y ago
    While it is true that a $4000 espresso machine will not get good results with a $20 blade grinder from the hardware store, I think you do see diminishing returns going above $1000 for burr grinders. On the other hand, spending more on the espresso machine can get you way more dials and knobs to tweak. Temperature and pressure profiling and all that. This may not matter if you prefer medium or dark roasted coffee, but light and Nordic roasts really benefit from the extra control over temperature and pressure. With a fancy machine you can do these very long, lower pressure extractions with higher brew ratios to extract a finicky light roast which would otherwise require an impossibly fine grind that chokes a standard 9 bar machine.
    - bch 3y ago
      > With a fancy machine you can do these very long, lower pressure extractions with higher brew ratios to extract a finicky light roast which would otherwise require[…] Or a simple machine, like a (direct-)lever[0], which is an operator controlling a piston pushing water. [0] like a La Pavoni, or Cremina - this video is of a europicolla owner who I think embodies well the joy that can be had matching a machine like this to the right person https://youtu.be/1BGB2i4Bu58 https://youtu.be/1BGB2i4Bu58
      - chongli 3y ago
        My next machine is going to be a lever machine for sure! Though I will say that a direct lever machine is the ultimate tradeoff of control over precision/repeatability. Spring levers give you a ton of control with more precision because you're retarding the lever to subtract from the maximum pressure of the spring rather than modulating your muscle power in real time. Unfortunately, what the simple lever machines give you in terms of pressure control, they take away in temperature control. Getting accurate, repeatable temperature shots from a La Pavoni is a bit of a black art, and the group can easily overheat, requiring you to cool it down before making coffee. Even in the case of lever machines, you get more control if you spend more money. Take a high-end lever machine like the ACS Vesuvius Evo Levo [1]. This machine has an 11-bar dual spring group (which you can back off to your heart's content by retarding the lever) and a pump to provide selectable preinfusion between 1.5 and 5 bar. It also has 3 independently controlled (PID) heaters: 1 in the coffee boiler, 1 in the steam/service boiler, and 1 in the group itself. This allows you to do temperature profiling by, for example, setting a higher temperature in the group than in the coffee boiler, which will cause the slightly cooler water from the boiler to bring down the temperature of the group during the extraction. [1] https://www.elcor.it/en/vesuvius-evo-leva-en/ https://www.elcor.it/en/vesuvius-evo-leva-en/
  - aksss 3y ago
    Yes, and part of that is just preventing waste and saving work - I mean a blade grinder can get you a quantity of relatively consistent grounds after you sift them, regrind some, sift to separate, use the paper towel trick, etc., and now you have like a 30% return out of the beans you destroyed, and a pile of coffee dust and splinters. The amount of work saved by a good grinder and amount of waste reduced is worth a fair amount. I’m not sure $1000 grinder gives me commensurate value personally, but a $100-300 grinder I can travel with? That sounds quite fair even just being slightly down the coffee nerd rabbit hole. :)
- tamaraaramat 3y ago
  > but not in the fridge I thought that storing them in fridge will keep them fresh longer
  - LesZedCB 3y ago
    freezer yes, fridge idk.

neverrroot 3y ago

You can likely get more out of not keeping the beans in the “open” (large hopper) than you could get out of wetting them. Assuming good quality beans, rather freshly roasted.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
If the beans are freshly roasted, it's often best to leave them two-three days to degas the CO2 from the beans.
- neverrroot 3y ago
  Agree 100%, I didn’t mention this because the beans were resting for longer as mentioned by the user I replied to.
- sgt 3y ago
  A professional roaster told me at least a week. I brought them green beans which they roasted and phoned me after a week (telling me that before that would be too soon and taking a chance) to come pick up.
  - robbs 3y ago
    It varies. I roast at home, and some beans are great the next day. Some are great the next week. The cafe I used to live next to would rest their beans for a week.
    - swells34 3y ago
      Same. I have noticed that the lighter the roast, the happier the beans are with less rest. That being said, the best coffee I've had was Ethiopian style, roasted dark and brewed right in front of me with no rest.
- stouset 3y ago
  I buy 5lb bags and let them sit on the counter for a week or two. Then I set aside a week’s worth for use and freeze the remainder in gallon ziplock bags with the air pressed out. This allows me to waste less coffee and less time dialing in shots because each week’s worth will be very close in required grind setting to the previous week’s.

tomstuart 3y ago

The target audience for this hack are people who carefully weigh their beans (and then put them into the empty hopper for grinding) each time they make coffee.

sva_ 3y ago
Damn, literal bean counters.
- rokkitmensch 3y ago
  Busted. My scale absolutely has a units mode that is very fun and completely caters to my precision fetish. Or at least I thought it did until I considered bean-weight variability...
  - mimischi 3y ago
    It’s infuriating when you change brands. Built up a feel for how much a bean weighs and how many are needed to go from 17.9 to 18.0g? Yeah, that other bean requires five beans, and not just one.
    - cjr 3y ago
      Or removing the right sized bean to go from 18.1g to 18g
      - pseudosaid 3y ago
        of course factoring in the age and roast too
- LesZedCB 3y ago
  there are even more niche products, literally called bean counters which dose whole beans to a certain weight. believe it or not they are well over $100. the deep end of coffee is both insane and expensive
3y ago

pseudosaid 3y ago

single dose