Coffee Snob...

[charlieandkath]

I have a Rancilio Gaggia and a Sunbeam Bur Grinder with the right beans ground at the time you make the coffee it makes the perfect espresso. I like it that much that when we go on holidays i pack the machine up and take it with us strapped between the twins car seats like our third child : ). I hate going on holiday and having to drink crap coffee it ruins it for me.

I live in melbourne and getting a good espresso is very difficult any idiot can make a lattee or a cup-a-chino but they mostly screw it up. Pelegrinis at the top of bourke street makes good coffee.

Just before Christmas I discovered the best coffee beans I have ever bought it was Atomoica medium blend makes an exceptional espresso. Its a coffee shop in brunswick street I bougth the medium blend if your in melbourne and your obsessed with coffee try this

you sound just like me imonmyway. We took our old delonghi withus everywhere as was very light. Trouble with our new Giotto takes up three times the room and weighs 20 kg. I look at my kids and the coffee machine when we go away now and I say OK kids who is staying behind, you or the coffee machine.

Can you get your Sunbeam bur grinder to grind fine enough for your machine? Our delonghi bur grinder is set to the finest level but the water still comes through too fast even if I tamp the hell out of it. Someone else did reccommend that grinder to me so will have to have a look at it.

Will have to try those beans aswell. Got a phone number for me. That would be great. Thankyou.

Anyone else out there got a good grinder they can reccommend? Cheers

 

[HappyCamper]

you sound just like me imonmyway. We took our old delonghi withus everywhere as was very light. Trouble with our new Giotto takes up three times the room and weighs 20 kg. I look at my kids and the coffee machine when we go away now and I say OK kids who is staying behind, you or the coffee machine.

Can you get your Sunbeam bur grinder to grind fine enough for your machine? Our delonghi bur grinder is set to the finest level but the water still comes through too fast even if I tamp the hell out of it. Someone else did reccommend that grinder to me so will have to have a look at it.

Will have to try those beans aswell. Got a phone number for me. That would be great. Thankyou.

Anyone else out there got a good grinder they can reccommend? Cheers

With a Giotto, you need to move away from those 'appliance' brands for a good grinder. Here's a few suggestions in ascending order:

Cunill Tranquilo
Compak K3
Mazzer Mini

 

[charlieandkath]

With a Giotto, you need to move away from those 'appliance' brands for a good grinder. Here's a few suggestions in ascending order:

Cunill Tranquilo
Compak K3
Mazzer Mini

Awesome stuff HappyCamper. I will google those. I am thinking of making coffees at charity events and fundraisers so I feel i need a good grinder to 1make awesome coffees 2. be a bit quicker.

There was a good quote I heard when we were doing our baristas course. Here goes - say it in Italian voice " it takes the same amount of time to make a good coffee as a bad coffee so you may aswell make a good coffee"

All the best and thanks for reccommendations.

 

[evand]

I live around the corner from Alchemy. Great coffee. You cant beat Sydney's inner west for coffee.

I don't think the average punter can grind accurately for great coffee so i mostly buy pre ground bags of Vittoria and do 'em on my cafetera. (stove top), I make a mean coffee without all the fancy stuff.

 

[Piston Broke]

Vittoria is good, so is Lavazza crema & gusto.
But one thing for sure is that both Vittoria & Lavazza coffee you buy here is different to what you buy in Italy.
And it may be just an impression (although I've done A-B tests), but the italian ones tastes better. Same brand, same type.

 

[jaycee]

I have a cafetiera, but I stopped using both it and my espresso machine recenty.

I havent mastered the cafetiera, though I have fluked a couple of suprisingly very good espressos out of it. Best one was one my friend's mum made, she whipped up the crema in a separate cup with sugar and poured it back over each espresso shot.. probaby the best espresso I've had.. Even once you get the grind right, the tamp right for your machine, the type of coffee and the amount makes a difference.. Fresh coffee of course has to be the starting point...I make greek coffee too, you spoon the ground coffee into a pot with the sugar and water over the stove, sitr and watch and wait til it starts to froth up.. when you use crap old coffee (like yhe often seen 2kg "Bushells Turkish style" coffee jar which woudl always make you think, " I didn't think they sold tht anymore hhmm", it's boring.. when you use good coffee, the crema create is natural, like the head on a soft drink or beer,it looks different than the forced head made by shaking something up which is who a not well made coffee comes out (be it through wrong technqiue or stale ingredients etc). The right amount of coffee also makes a difference and also varies.

And yes, it takes the same amount of time to make a good/bad coffee

 

[charlieandkath]

With a Giotto, you need to move away from those 'appliance' brands for a good grinder. Here's a few suggestions in ascending order:

Cunill Tranquilo
Compak K3
Mazzer Mini

Done some quick research and all three of those could be suitable thanks very much happycamper. I owe you a coffee.

 

[evand]

I used to be a Lavazza fan, now i'm all Vittoria.

Its an Australian company that exports coffee to Italy, strangely enough. Maybe they export it stronger there for the Italian taste. Would be interesting to find out.

I was taught the cafeteria style by my wife's parents, who are Italian. I stand there and watch it and pull it of the heat at the exact right time and stick it in cold water. Stops it dead.

If you're in Italy, and you see a house without a bunch of cafeteras, it would be rare. They have them from one cup to about 10 cup sizes, depending on how many visiting. Same as Italians in Australia.


I was an early adopter of the espresso machine, But i packed it up and went back to the stove top.

Vittoria is good, so is Lavazza crema & gusto.
But one thing for sure is that both Vittoria & Lavazza coffee you buy here is different to what you buy in Italy.
And it may be just an impression (although I've done A-B tests), but the italian ones tastes better. Same brand, same type.

 

[imonmyway]

you sound just like me imonmyway. We took our old delonghi withus everywhere as was very light. Trouble with our new Giotto takes up three times the room and weighs 20 kg. I look at my kids and the coffee machine when we go away now and I say OK kids who is staying behind, you or the coffee machine.

Can you get your Sunbeam bur grinder to grind fine enough for your machine? Our delonghi bur grinder is set to the finest level but the water still comes through too fast even if I tamp the hell out of it. Someone else did reccommend that grinder to me so will have to have a look at it.

Will have to try those beans aswell. Got a phone number for me. That would be great. Thankyou.

Anyone else out there got a good grinder they can reccommend? Cheers

Waking up when your on holidays and having to hunt down a crappy cup of coffee from somewhere ruins it for me.

Coffee to me is as much about making it as drinking it.

Getting the right beans,
Grinding them perfectly,
Getting the maching to the right temp,
Packing the hopper just firm enough to extract all the flavour without it burning.
Hitting the on button and watching the coffee slowly fill the cup and creating the perfect creme.
You know when its going to be good by the colour it should have a reddishness to it when its coming out of the unit.

I only have 1 or 2 of these a day and love it.

The sunbeam bur grinder does the job very well you will never have the problem of water running through to fast it is as good as any grinder i have tried and costs half as much, one reviewer labled it a game changer because of its price and quality. I think I payed $160 at good guys after some haggling its a pretty serious machine imo.


Atomica Caffé

(03) 9417 4255
Fitzroy
268 Brunswick St
Fitzroy, 3065

 

[Jonathon]

I'm both a coffee snob and a very proud Melburnian, so it makes me sad to say that it's very possible to get a bad coffee in Melbourne.

Try comparing a coffee from one of the better cafes (Seven Seeds, St Ali, BBB, etc) with your average cafe, and there's a massive difference.

After all, enough people drink coffee from maccas to prove that many people are clueless about good coffee - I can never understand why people drink coffee from maccas in the CBD? In the middle of nowhere I can understand, but on Collins St?

As for beans, you can't go past freshly roasted beans, ideally about 4-5 days old. You really start to notice the drop off in freshness about 2-3 weeks after roasting. Beans that have been roasted less than about 3 days ago are too fresh.

I usually go with Padre beans from the East Brunswick Coffee Project, but Sensory Lab (St Ali) are very good as well.

A decent conical burr grinder is a must. I use a Rancilio Rocky, which is good but there are much better ones for home use, such as a mini mazzer.

My machine itself is a Rancilio Silvia, which at $850 is probably the cheapest good machine you can buy. It'll give you a far better coffee than a $2,000 machine from Myer or DJ, but it does take a lot of practice to get right.

I spend a lot of time in Perth. There are 3 cafes there that are the match of almost anywhere in Melbourne - Zekka in King St (their muffins are the best in Perth), Epic Espresso on the corner of Hay and Outram and Elixir, on Stirling Highway, next to Chelsea Pizza. Perth also has a fresh wave of newer cafes, which are pretty good, Milkd and Mrs S in Bayswater are both pretty decent, about the match of a second tier Melbourne cafe. (Assuming about 5 tiers)

I think you can measure coffee snobiness by how far you're prepared to walk, and how many decent cafes you walk past, to get a coffee. Luckily in Melbourne I work within 300m of great coffee, but whenever I work in Perth I do walk past a LOT of cafes to get to Zekka.

Cheers
Jonathon

 

[kathryn d]

wow, you people really are snobs.

We bought 2 jars of Homebrand instant coffee @$3.99 each,as we can't stand anymore of the crap cappicinnos,espressos etc. When we do buy, I actually
have gone as far as trying the hot chocolate ( eww)..and am now on to tea. ( slighly eww)..which I usually only drink at home, because of the way I make it.

To each their own....

 

[gooram]

wow, you people really are snobs.

We bought 2 jars of Homebrand instant coffee @$3.99 each,as we can't stand anymore of the crap cappicinnos,espressos etc. When we do buy, I actually
have gone as far as trying the hot chocolate ( eww)..and am now on to tea. ( slighly eww)..which I usually only drink at home, because of the way I make it.

To each their own....

So because of the crap coffee you get when you go out, you decided to get crap coffee at home??

Yeah that makes sense

 

[kathryn d]

So because of the crap coffee you get when you go out, you decided to get crap coffee at home??

Yeah that makes sense

Actually, it is the best I've tasted while in Aus.
I like instant coffee.

 

[jaycee]

Greeks gave a nationally recognised iced coffee drink called "Frappe". It's made with Nescafe Classic instant cofee, sugar, cold water & milk (mik & sugar optional, if you really want to, you can substitute norma milk with condensed milk for extra taste but nolt necessary).

However, all Greeks, including the youth who may not care about other forms of coffee at all, know it's instant and it's not the same as a freshly made drink.

I like it sweet and strong and in the true Greek fasion, enjoy it over a half hour or so (which is why coffee is expensive in greece, people will take up a cafe's table for 2 hours and ony order 1-2 coffees).

But fresh made coffee cooked from fresh beans is something different... ... get it right and it pleasantly surprises with "that taste"

 

[Dazz]

wow, you people really are snobs.

We bought 2 jars of Homebrand instant coffee @$3.99 each

I'm with you guys.


Huge jar of Moccona for about $ 8.00, lasts about 6 months for both the wife and I. "Massive taste difference" my left foot.


With the difference we saved on snobby coffee and all it's snobby multi-thousand paraphenalia for each bit of kit, we bought a shopping centre instead, where one of the little cafe owners now provides us with free coffee whenever we go. Like the old saying goes, if ya can't beat 'em, buy 'em.


Life's far far too long to waste even a second on being a snobby coffee snob.


I think it boils down to poor people trying to act like wealthy people.

• Coffee snobs are coffee snobs cos they can't afford to be red wine snobs.
• Red wine snobs are red wine snobs cos they can't afford to be car snobs.
• Car snobs are car snobs cos they can't afford to be house snobs.
• House snobs are house snobs cos they can't afford to be....and on it goes.

 

[andrew_de_a]

Dazz that is the biggest load of crap I have ever read. Peope drinking nice coffee because they can afford to drink nice wine!

 

[Dazz]

Dazz that is the biggest load of crap I have ever read.

Glad you agree. Perhaps you best widen your reading....there's some real dross to be had. Enjoy !!

 

[jaycee]

Or perhaps it's what people are used to.. Before the invasion of so many cafes in Perth and the hype surroundgng them, some were used to drinking such drinks already at home and when they went out. Same with wine. Many many people developed the taste for it long before the recent exploison of Aussies wines and the surrounding hype and snob culture. Same with cheese, some liked, knew about and enjoyed different cheeses etc made from different milks a long time before Jamie Oliver or even Hewie told us about them. Same with olive oil, it was used by many many locally even here in Perth before Neil Perry showed us how to pour it over blanched vegtables with salt and lemon juice like the Mediterranean has done for centuries....

It's not all a fad.

But when we first notice it, it does appear to be new and I suppose that makes us wonder why so many people give a ****... BUT...we're the ones just realising something that's always been around..

But anyway, some people love fresh muesli with this and that in it, some don't give a rats buy the cheapest everything they find not worrying about what it's made form or the taste cause it's just a filler...No biggie...

As long as I have choice.

I recently bought a bottle of white wine after telling the lady at the bottle shop that too many lately make me sort of cringe when I swallow it... she said it would be the acid and offered me an Italian Pinot grigio.. absolutely beautiful. If you can't stand wine in the frist place then it might not make much of a difffence to you at all, but I don't think everyone else is making it up...

 

[our obsession]

Just you writing about it JC makes me want one right now...

Airlie Beach and Swan Hill Maccas are a good coffee. Or AB was?, SH still is.

 

[our obsession]

I was introduced to a Margaret River dry white wine during our Vic flood drinkies, Absolutely freak'n' beautiful. 'Dry' white wine rocks. And it went down like a dream after slogging thru mud and mess. I had two the first was that good.