Fun Stuff > CHATTER

Swedish egg coffee (and other coffee)

<< < (2/9) > >>

Aimless:
I'd like to revive this thread to evangelise for a while! I've decided to stop trying to kick my coffee addiction. Instead, I'll culture it.

Those of you who like coffee should, if you have some time to spare, try your hand at roasting your own beans. I use a heat-gun to roast them on my balcony and it's fun as hell! It's extremely satisfying because of the hands-on approach, the learning element, the (hopefully) delicious results... and because the house smells of freshly roasted coffee for a while after you're done :) I get my beans from a Swedish company but you Americans can try www.sweetmarias.com (for both beans and LOTS of info). I'm not sure if Brits can still use www.hasbean.co.uk

Of course, roasting whole green beans at home is only useful if you've a grinder. If you've a little money to spare, check out the Pharos manual grinder from Orphan Espresso. It is a bit of an ergonomic nightmare, but it's probably the best value high-quality manual grinder on the market. That being said, almost any decent burr grinder--even ancient second-hand coffee-mills--is likely to be a good upgrade over nothing at all or over a blade grinder. I like old grinders with flywheels, mostly because I think flywheels are cool (and I think this because I am not cool).

Roasting your own beans may or may not be economically advantageous, but, with a bit of work, it's def advantageous wrt flavour. Buying whole beans is better from a flavour perspective than buying pre-ground coffee. Relatively freshly roasted beans are better than stale ones. Beans you've roasted yourself are, sooner or later, going to beat the tight pants off of any pre-ground coffee you can buy... and, with some training, it'll beat many pre-roasted beans.

When it comes to brewing methods, I have recently become enamored of the good ol' cowboy coffee. It's more common up here in the north and was introduced to me by the manly men in my fiancée's family. I've also bought the second iteration of the Presso and, though the quality of its output is steadily improving, I must say it's been more hassle than it's worth. However, when it works well, it's a reasonably cheap and elegant way to get good espresso at home.

Wrt flavour, I've discovered, to my surprise, that I really like light-to-medium roasts. Done well, and under the right circumstances, these roasts seem to have sweeter and more exciting flavours, as opposed to the more bitter and less varied flavour of most really dark roasts I've tried. I hear adding a tiny amount of salt to a bitter brew can neutralise the bitterness to a great extent but I've decided to steer clear of such black salty magic.

Another way to reduce bitterness is to cold brew your coffee. Depending on the coffee and the time, this method can also bring out both a more rich chocolatey flavour as well as some subtle delicate flavours you'd never notice otherwise. It's probably one of the better ways to use "bad" coffee and it can be fairly practical as well in that you can just prep it quickly in the evening (eg. in a french press or Aeropress) and drink it in the morning. Some people make larger batches of cold-brewed coffee concentrate but I'm not a fan.

Aimless:
Oh yeah, coffee-liqueur is delicious. Our most successful liqueur experiment to date involved infusing vodka with coffee beans and then mixing it with a nice cinnamon-and-vanilla-flavoured brown-sugar syrup. It was delicious right from the start but after a few months of resting and mellowing it turned into something amazing.

Metope:
I've been addicted to coffee for a while, and while I don't roast beans myself, I have access to some very fine beans from a cafe two blocks away who roast their own. It's fantastic! Unfortunately I don't own a nice burr grinder (no hand grinder for me thanks, because while I love coffee, I do prefer it with minimun effort in the morning), they're too big and expensive for my international student life, since I'll eventually have to move everything back to Norway in a year-ish I don't want to acquire many large, heavy items. A blade grinder is just fine for now.

By the way, do you think light to medium roasts is a very Scandinavian thing? Because that's basically all there is in good quality Norwegian cafes, and I definitely prefer it myself, but everyone here in the UK seems to like dark roasts. They also seem to like it with cream and sugar though, which I guess balances out the bitterness. I take mine black, thanks.

Aimless:
There is a particular style of light roast that's come to be known as the "Nordic style" and I think it's esp. popular in Norway :) From what I've gathered, it requires great beans and great care, so I guess it's not too surprising that you don't see this sort of coffee more often. Swedes have a thing for strong dark coffee but I'm hoping more cafés will begin to serve these Nordic style roasts because I've had no luck trying to replicate that profile at home. For many large-scale coffee roasters, roasting extra dark is about convenience and cost reduction, although I'll grant that consumers have come to prefer the extra toasty coffee.

The Pharos grinder is extremely low effort when grinding for drip or french press. Fast and almost no resistance at those grind sizes. If you ever do consider a hand grinder--with advantages such as low noise and small footprint--give it a look :) the burrs match those of some of the best electric grinders and the alignment is perfect. If you live with a sleepy/lazy person you can grind your beans without waking them.

The closest electrical equivalent (in terms of price and quality) is probably the dainty Baratza Vario. A friend of mine has this grinder and he's justifiably pleased with it. If you can get it for cheap-ish then go for it, it's not too large :o of course, if you mostly brew drip coffee then a blade grinder should serve you well indeed.

Metope:
Oh, that grinder does sound tempting then, the one I have now makes a lot of noise. I might do that next year when I have money, at the moment I'm pretty broke. I think it might be worth it though, my current grinder is really old and grinds very unevenly, I use a drip cone and it clogs it up quite often and makes a mess. Thanks for the tip!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page