The Coffee Thread

If it's just surface scale you can just clean it off. Iirc Gaggia classic body is stainless or it had a clear coat to protect it. If you paint it you'd want to use some kind of heat resistant product as boilers get pretty hot.

the blue stuff?

 

just surface rust on the inner walls of the body, not on any of the components or boiler. Yeah, was thinking to use high temp automotive paint that's meant for engines/exhaust.

 

I use an Airscape container. I think it was about $20-$30, and stores spot on 500g of beans. I normally get beans in 500g bags, so that is perfect, but they also sell larger and smaller ones. It has a dual seal, you push an inner seal to the top level of the beans, and the lid forms a second seal. It's not going to give you the same level of freshness retention as a vacuum seal, but it's pretty darn good otherwise, and was half the price of the better vacuum seal containers.

Z...

 

Probably not applicable to most people, but for the coffee nerd…

3-5 bags of 200g single origins – 7x normcore cellars, 4x DIY magnetised bean tubes for filter, so they stick on my grinder – pre-dosed 20g every Saturday. The rest stay in their bags for identification/tasting notes and go into the fridge.

1kg blend – 2x fellow atmos. The rest stay in the bag and go into the fridge. I might cut down on blends now that my espresso prep style has change with the new machine.

The above arrangement inevitably leads to a lot of excess (not waste!). In all, about 2kg of coffee that I would preferably love to go through in a month, at most 1.5 months before I get a fresh batch.

Roughly 200-300g of those single origin beans end up too old for espresso or PO, so I cold drip them.
The excess espresso blend gets ground to season my burrs and is then given to the neighbours/church for gardening. This sometimes can be up to 700g if I don’t get many visitors.

No I don’t run a café, just a home café where I do get a fair few visitors throughout the year, or people just hanging at ours because there’s free, decent coffee.
I do however get wholesale rate on beans as I run a church café on the side and have a mate who roast speciality coffee commercially that I just bung coffee off.

 

You could freeze them. I think it was Matt Perger(?) that showed that freezing coffee beans, and then single dosing them straight from freezer to grinder was perfectly viable, and nothing was lost in the cup.

Z...

 

how long did he freeze the beans for? Curious if a month would cause any issues. What about Co2 vents for room temp storage, is that no longer a worry?

 

Yea I only bother to freeze if it’s an exceptionally good roast that I want to cryogenically preserve. I still have 45g of Gardelli from 2021, a true Panaman gesha esmeralda and some crazy tasting libericas in deep frozen state for that special occasion lol.

That said, if the turnover is medium-high, I’ll just stick it in the fridge. It’s difficult to predict grind settings with frozen beans sometimes, they crush so easily and can go fine way too easily.

Some cafes that serve exclusively specialty freeze or chill their ‘hoppers’. Have a look at Aunty Peg’s coffee bar and some reels from titus grinding. Direct dose from freezer/fridge to an ek43 or nautilus.

 

St Ali in Melbourne do this

 

St Ali is the home of Matt Perger haha.

 

As above - the home of Matt Perger - and also great coffee. I found it quite by accident on a work trip to Melbourne many years ago.

It means you could, in theory, purchase a commercial quantity of beans (and get the associated discount), freeze the beans, and have delicious coffee from the same batch for several months.

We currently go through 3-4kg/month at home, but would need to order 10kg at a time to get a commercial discount (which is basically near 50%). So for the price of an extra kilo, I get 10kg of coffee, but would need to freeze 6 bags to keep them fresh when we are ready to open the bag.

I would need to try it, but I suspect thawing them out in a dry box/bag/whatever would probably do the trick, then store them in an airtight container while going through them. Basically do this on a kg by kg basis.
Z...

 

The last few bags I've been chucking in the freezer as soon as they hit peak (~7-10 days after roasting). I only get them out to top up the hopper with enough for a couple of days. Been great. I don't need to tweak the grind as much as they get on either. We go through 1kg in about 3 weeks though so can't comment on longer term storage.

 

Yeah passport up northside here freeze their nice beans too, I've got a one or two cool ones I picked up over the last 2 years I froze, didn't notice any significant issues, just get the air out!

 

James Hoffman also did a video on it too.

I will often freeze extra bags of beans and it works out great.

 

So I bought the Expressi milk frother from Aldi (Was $30) and mannnn it's made my coffee next tier

 

It's really good for instant/sachets. Dump the milk & sachet/instant and let it rip, does all the mixing, heating and frothing. Although I stuck to the mixer not the whisker/frother it still came out great.

 

They're such a time saver, I use one with my super automatic and pod machine. Kick off the frother and brew the coffee at the same time, coffee's ready in no time.

 

Any tips for a barista noob..

Got breville barista touch and mate talked me into buying naked portafilter (barista brew) and I love the look but my espresso shots are making such a mess with stuff spraying out sides.

Bought a levelling tamper and the shot isn't over sized (tested with trimming tool) and ice experimented with different grind sizes which isn't helping.

I wonder if i need to take apart and clean the group head as I did run some oversized shots earlier on and maybe it's a little dirty inside.

 

grind finer

 

Firstly...

How many grams is your basket rated for?

How many grams of coffee are you putting in?

How many grams of coffee are you extracting in 30 seconds?

With those answers we can offer more detailed solutions.

Usually water spraying around is from channeling which usually means the puck isn't uniform - this can be form uneven tamp but you've solved that.
It can also be from too little or too much coffee
or
uneven distribution of the grinds in the basket.
The beauty of the naked portafilter is it highlights a problem which you wouldn't have seen without the naked portafilter and will lead you to an even better tasting coffee!

I'll wait until you give your answers before being able to make further suggestions.

Almost certainly not necessary at this stage.

 

Wife tells me that all the bleeding time mate