Too much hardware

[ad47uk]

Hi there peoples from all around the world.
I am new to this forum, and I love coffee.

I have had a quick look though these forums and have noticed that there is so much choice in grinders and any other bits of equipment. Some of them I never heard off.

At the moment, I use a small coffee grinder, which seems to do the job and a little expresso coffee maker, which have also got a coffee filter system stuck on as well. I mainly use the expresso part, because I can grind the coffee, and just make enough for me.
there is nothing worse than using a coffee filter and having the coffee kept warm on a hot plate for hours.


Do I really need any of this other hardware? I buy my beans from a small cafe, called the Coffee bean in my home town. Ok, I know a lot of people on here will buy green beans and roast them, but at the moment, I can not see myself doing that due to cost and time. I would love to try it mind you.

Anyway, hi to you all, I think this is the only forum about coffee on the net, I may learn a bit more about coffee and the different types or some of the different types.

 

[mrgnomer]

Hi ad47uk,

It's all about taste as far as coffee goes. If your set up works to deliver good tasting coffee there's no need for more.

Home roasting is good but if you're getting your coffee fresh from a good roaster the quality will probably be better then what you could do at home. Experienced roasters know what they're doing and use better equipment and have better stock than home roasters so their roasts will be more consistent and of higher quality.

I had no idea what good coffee tasted like until switching to a vacuum brewer and started home roasting. I don't have access to a good local roaster. Fresh roasted coffee vacuum brewed was very good.

From there it led me to getting a good grinder. Yes, there's a lot of grinders out there but you get what you pay for and high end grinders are excellent for evenly grinding coffee. The more even the grind the more even the extraction and consequently the smoother tasting the cup of coffee.

Good coffee as far as I understand is mostly dependant on fixing a handful of variables that make for an excellent cup. Roast quality and freshness, water temperature, evenness of grind, saturation of grinds, and steep time are critical factors. If you can control these variables and place them into an ideal range for coffee extraction a simple french press will outperform just about all drip makers on the market. You don't need to spend a lot of money on expensive equipment for drip coffee. The biggest investment would be a good grinder.

Espresso, IMO, is currently the only method of extracting the essence of coffee. In addition to the ideal ranges for the variables in drip coffee extraction, 8-9bar+ of water pressure is required for espresso. Machines capable of delivering this much pressure reliably and at reliable and stable temperatures are expensive. As with grinders, you'll get what you pay for. There is additional equipment associated with good espresso extraction so good espresso does require an investment.

There's a suprising amount of good and freely given advice on coffee forums and on the web with regards to everything coffee. With a little research brewing good coffee is easy.