Tag: coffee

Baratza Encore ESP Review

1 Comment

In 2023, Baratza released the Encore ESP following the super popular Encore that is probably the number one most recommended coffee grinder for people looking to buy their first grinder. The ESP adds the ability to grind for espresso, not just for filter coffee like the Encore. It also offers the upgraded M2 burr (with faster grinding) from the more expensive Virtuoso+ that so many Encore users would upgrade. If you consider the cost of a base Encore and the cost of the M2 burr upgrade, it makes sense to get the ESP even if you don’t plan to use it for espresso.

The adjustment ring on the ESP is quite innovative in that each step is 90 microns for the filter brew section and 20 microns for the espresso range of the dial. 

Let’s take a look at how the ESP compares to the Encore in our tests:

Baratza Encore ESP:

Grind Time: 13.86 seconds

Grind Retention: .2 grams

Decibels: 89

Baratza Encore:

Grind Time: 19.49 seconds

Grind Retention: .5 grams

Decibels: 80

The grind time for 30 grams of coffee for a V60 is about 6 seconds faster, the decibel meter picked up a little more noise on the ESP and retention on a cleaned out grinder is less. The ESP is competing with the new Fellow Opus which is also marketed as an all purpose grinder that can also grind for espresso, however the Opus uses two different adjustment methods (one internal and one external) which makes the workflow more complicated. The Opus can dial down to 16 microns per click if you adjust both the internal and external grind settings, but I opted not to buy or test this because this was a workflow deal breaker for me. 

Even using RDT (spraying the beans with 1-2 sprays of water before grinding) there was a fair amount of status and stray grounds/chaff from using this grinder. If you are looking for a great coffee grinder for filter coffee only that has very little static, check out the Fellow Ode Gen 2. We didn’t find any issues with popcorning (where the last few beans popcorn in the hopper and don’t get ground) with the ESP.

The ESP comes with a dosing cup for espresso, which was just a little too far away from the grounds spout and caused a lot of stray coffee grounds and chaff. It has a rubber ring that can be removed to accommodate both 58mm and 54mm portafilter. However, due to the static and stray grounds I would prefer to use the grounds bin with a dosing funnel on my Breville Barista Pro portafilter.

Overall the Encore ESP is a great first grinder or grinder upgrade. The upgraded model is still quite loud for those of you who are sensitive to sound early in the morning this might not be the grinder for you. The more expensive Fellow Ode Gen 2 runs at a similar decibel level, but just the pitch of the sound is more pleasant. 

Baratza Encore ESP Manual

The Best Batch Brewer – Oxo Brew 9 Cup Coffee Maker

3 Comments

The OXO Brew 9 Cup Coffee Maker is a popular option that has a price point that lands it firmly between high-end and mid-range, however it’s build quality and features lean more toward the high-end. The brewer is SCA Certified, which is an important feature and brews by pulsing hot water over the grounds, rather than having a pre-infusion followed by a constant flow of water like many other brewers we have reviewed. This results in high levels of extraction which means you will likely need to refine your grind size. I noticed this when using the same grind size between my Ninja CM401 and the OXO Brew 9 Cup that the OXO tended to be much more extracted. OXO also makes an 8 Cup brewer that is non-programmable, however we liked the fact you could program the OXO 9 Cup to brew automatically at a set time. 

Other than setting the brewer for large or small brews, auto brew is the only programmable feature on this machine. You do not have the option to adjust brew temperature or length of brew. The operation of the machine is simple, but not intuitive. I had to refer to the manual to learn the basic features. I own other OXO products as well and with those, I am able to operate the machine intuitively. Brew temperatures were very good and held between 190F-195F, SCA certified machines need to brew within a certain range in order to obtain their certification. 

The brewer itself has a pretty large footpoint and is quite tall, if you are placing it under a standard height kitchen cabinet you will need to pull the machine out in order to open the water tank (non-removable) or filter basket housing, not a big deal normally, but I like to keep them open to air dry, however on this brewer you cannot open both at the same time and opening either would interfere with opening/closing of your kitchen cabinets. 

The included thermal carafe feels high quality compared to the Zojirushi carafes that I have. However, as is the case with many thermal carafes, it is hard to pour out the last bit of coffee without removing the lid and turning it almost all the way upside down. The carafe includes a silicone straw to help prevent stratification in the brewed coffee to mix the coffee as it goes through the #4 size cone filters. The brewer has an auto drip stop so you can only brew into the provided carafe.

Overall, a solid brewer at a good price point. If I mostly brewed larger batches, I would definitely consider this machine. I normally only brew 1-2 mugs worth of coffee at a time so I use the Ninja CM401 quite a lot to brew directly into a mug or small server. This machine will brew until the water tank is empty, so have a look at our recipe charts for how much water and coffee to use with this machine. This brewer’s cup units are 5 oz of water so you can brew a maximum batch size of 45 oz.

Click here to read the manual.

The Best Thermal Mug

2 Comments

For those of us who like hot coffee and hate microwaving cold coffee, an insulated mug is a must have. We wanted to take a look at some popular options out there and see which one worked best for different needs. This whole process took a lot longer than expected, but we are happy to share our thoughts.

Before when more people had to commute, something that would work well for the car was important, however with many people now working at home we may have different needs. Here are some of the different use cases I considered:

  1. I need something to use on my commute. Ideally should have one handed operation and easily fit into a car cup holder and be leak proof.
  2. I will use this mostly around home and want to keep my coffee warm between cups and have a nice drinking lip.
  3. I need to keep my coffee hot for long periods of time.

The list of mugs we looked at kept growing as I saw things I liked and didn’t like about the different mugs that we tested. Here are the mugs we took a look at:

If you’re looking for the best thermal retention, the Zojirushi mugs or Fellow Carter win that test. I preheated each mug with the same amount of water and then took the temperature 2 and 12 hours after sealing with the same amount of freshly boiled water, all temperatures in F. The downside to the Zojirushi was that cleaning was the most involved out of all the mugs with multiple parts to clean. See below the results.

For best use for commuting in a car I found that I kept going back to the Stanley because it is really easy to clean and had easy one handed operation, it also felt the most like drinking from a mug with the plastic drinking lip. The Contigo had the second best ease of use, but I felt like drinking from it was similar to using a sippy cup and not a mug. The Contigo was also tended to leak with hot liquids. The Zojirushi mugs have a decent drinking lip, but the flip top lid can be a little awkward and the round lip can feel too narrow when trying to drink from it. All of these options had a plastic lip which offers a different experience than drinking from metal like some of the others.

The Fellow Carter Everywhere or Move and Yeti mugs offered the most similar experience to drinking out of a mug, but I didn’t like the two handed operation on the Fellow and wasn’t convinced the splash screen with the Move would do much to stop splashing on the road if I hit a big bump. These are the best options if you work from home and don’t need to commute. The Carter Everywhere is wider and shorter than the Move and I felt that the width felt more like holding a mug. I liked being able to cap the mug if I had to do something and return to a still hot cup of coffee.

The one I did not like was the Fellow Carter with 360º Sip Lid, for a company so well known for product design and user experience they really missed the mark. I know what their goal was since people didn’t like the two handed operation with the standard lid so they wanted to come up with a solution that allowed people to sip one-handed. It comes with a magnetic “umbrella” that is easy to lose and I don’t know what it actually does because it will splash with or without it. Overall, really disappointing, but would high recommend the Carter Move or Everywhere for home use.

Many of these mugs come in different sizes and color options, I went with 12 to 16 oz mugs for using at home or for driving to work. I went with 20 oz mugs if I was going to be out and about for a while and needed that extra bit of coffee to keep me going. Overall, I feel like this search for the best mug was a descent into madness for me with all the options, but I’m pretty happy with the mugs I ended up with for my needs. Some of you may be wondering about the Ember Mug, but after doing a lot of research I am still holding out for design improvements in future versions or from competitors.

Contigo 16 ozZojirushi 16 ozZojirushi 20 ozStanley 16 ozFellow Carter 16 ozYeti 14 oz Mug*
After 2 Hours161.8185184.5169.5181.6145.6
After 12 Hours96.8133.7135110.5125.179.5

*The Yeti is more of a traditional mug and was included as more of a home use mug because I felt that was a better match up against the Fellow Carter, which was a great mug, but because you need two hands to open and close it I didn’t think it was good for using while driving. The downside on the Yeti was that I preferred using it without the lid, causing the coffee to cool too fast, but because it was metal I couldn’t microwave it like a normal mug. Now I just use it for heating bottles for the baby since it keeps heat better and longer and porcelain.

**The thermal testing didn’t include some of the late additions from the Fellow line.

Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Coffee Pods

Leave a comment

Like many of you, my morning coffee routine involved popping in a Keurig or Nespresso pod and filling up a thermos on my way to work, these pods cost about 50 cents each on average, average is also the nicest word to describe the coffee in these pods.

If you follow the drip coffee ratio that most roasters suggest of 1:16 to 1:17 (grams of coffee to milliliters of water), your K-cup is designed to make you about 6 fluid ounces of coffee. Yes, most Keurig machines have different size options, but you’re just drinking more diluted coffee when you pick anything larger than the 6 fluid ounce size. The “strong” setting on your Keurig machine just adds an extra 30 seconds to your brew time to try and improve the extraction.

I was curious how much coffee is actually in one of these pods, the answer is 7-12 grams for a K-cup and about 5-6 grams for the small Nespresso pods. For Keurig you’re paying about $1.42 per ounce of coffee (at 10 grams per pod) and $2.58 per ounce of coffee for Nespresso (at 5.5 grams per pod). A quick search will show you that “premium” coffee usually costs about $1 an ounce and local roasters charge about $1-1.50 per ounce of specialty coffee, so about $16-24 a pound. With pods you’re paying about $23-41 per pound of coffee.

The frugal side of me wanted to find a better option. Why am I paying premium prices for stale below average coffee? The most common answer is, convenience. People need to get their coffee and get out the door. You may be saying well it is cheaper than Starbucks and tastes about the same. While we have to give credit to Starbucks for growing the coffee culture in America, Starbucks coffee is not recognized as good coffee in the specialty coffee world. Compare that to coffee you can get at a shop that roasts their own single-origin beans or does made to order pour over and the difference will be huge.

I found an old ekobrew reusable K-cup in my cupboard and bought some pre-ground coffee and started to use that. However, with more reading I learned that you really need to grind your own beans as everything about coffee centers around freshness. You want fresh roasted beans that are freshly ground before you brew.

There are plenty of articles out there talking about the waste generated by these pods, I won’t get into that because so many others already have. I do know some offer recycling programs also, but my main argument against pods is that you are paying premium prices for below average coffee. For less than the amount you spend on pods, you could be getting premium specialty coffee in exchange for a little convenience.

I started researching better ways to make coffee and eventually landed on the pour over method. It sounds like a pain at first, but after some practice I think it is pretty easy with only a few minutes of your attention required. If you don’t have the time for that I’ve written about other methods for single servings and better convenience.

If pods work for you, then keep using them. In talking to friends and family, I noticed so many of them were deliberate about what they purchased and consumed, but when it came to coffee they were paying a lot more for the convenience of pods. Once they realized with a little more effort and less cost, they could get amazing coffee many of them switched over.

Here are some follow-up posts you might find interesting:

Check out our recommendations and product reviews.

How to Buy Coffee

2 Comments

There is a ton of information out there on this topic, in the spirit of my blog I’m just trying to give you the summarized version. This post talks more about how to make sense of specialty coffee labels.

Don’t buy pre-ground. Don’t do it. You already have the burr grinder and scale I talked about in the must haves post. Coffee is all about freshness, you want fresh roasted coffee beans that you grind fresh right before brewing. This is another reason not to use pods, all that coffee is stale and pre-ground, not to mention overpriced.

The peak flavor for coffee is between 3-18 days after roasting, maybe up to a month. I was at my local organic type supermarket the other day and saw a bag of “premium” coffee and the roast on date was over 2 months ago. Notice I said peak flavor, this doesn’t mean coffee is undrinkable outside of this range, but that most agree this is when coffee tastes best.

Coffee tastes best if brewed within 30 minutes after you grind it, so combine the fact that not only is your coffee going to be 2 months old, it will have been ground 2 months ago. At this point, who cares about freezing, vacuum sealed containers or whatever storage method you use, you’re just preserving staleness. If time is an issue in the morning, grinding your coffee the night before and setting a timer on your coffee machine is just fine, it will be vastly better than any pod or pre-ground coffee you would use. I would not advise using the supermarket grinder though, even though it’s just a week that you’d be using it, grind as close to brew time as possible.

If your coffee only has a “best by” date and no “roasted on” date, stop buying it. Simple as this, if they aren’t willing to tell you when it was roasted, it isn’t worth buying.

Try to buy single-origin or single-estate coffee. Lately there is a lot of focus on sustainability and traceability of coffee. You want to be able to know who grew your coffee, where they grew it, how it was processed, how it was shipped and when it was roasted.

Also to know that in every step of the way things have been done in an ethical and sustainable way from fair wages to use of chemicals and pesticides. Coffee is so much more complex than light, medium, dark or french roast, which is the only information you find on most supermarket coffees. Most of what you see out there are blends of coffee beans, while there are some great blends out there from specialty roasters, the supermarket brands use this method to mix low quality beans with average quality beans to give you average tasting coffee. If you find a great local roaster that has both single-origin and blends, I’d say those blends are better than any supermarket blends.

It doesn’t really matter if you buy organic coffee. Many of these small producers are already using organic methods, however to get the organic certification will cost them thousands of dollars, which oftentimes is out of reach or money better spent elsewhere. If you are buying responsibly sourced single-origin coffee I wouldn’t worry if it is labeled organic or not.

Avoid coffee with flavors and additives. Coffee can have some amazing notes, but when you see flavored coffee, that means artificial flavors have been added during the roasting process. Flavors like french vanilla or hazelnut are artificially added, even by some very popular and successful coffee shops (*cough* Philz *cough*).

Explore light and medium roasts. We have been conditioned over the years to think that dark roasted and bitter coffee is “strong” or “bold” (thanks Starbucks) when in reality this is the way the big producers ensure uniformity. Not to say there aren’t some great specialty dark roasts out there, but usually the more you roast a coffee bean the more uniform and bitter it tastes, which means you can use lower quality beans to achieve this. A lot more of the tones and flavor comes out in light and medium roasts, try it without milk or sugar first and see if you can taste them. Also light roast coffee has more caffeine than dark roasted coffee, contrary to popular belief than darker is stronger. Vienna, French and Italian are all dark or darker than dark roasts.

When you find that great local roaster, try the light and medium stuff first and give them feedback and see what they recommend. Usually when I asked people what kind of coffee they like, they answer with medium or dark roast, but coffee is so much more complex than that. Country of origin, geographic region, bean type, growth elevation, processing method and so much more.

Buy from local coffee roasters. Not only are you supporting your local economy this is one of the best ways to ensure you’re getting fresh roasted coffee. They should be able to tell you when a coffee was roasted and offer different types of single-origin and roast levels. There are also many small and independent roasters all over the U.S. that will ship you coffee that is roasted to order or roasted in the past few days.

Or…. Roast your own coffee. Learn how here.

How to Make Pour Over Coffee

5 Comments

The first time I saw pour over was at Blue Bottle in San Francisco, seemed like a cool way to make coffee. After a lot of research this is now my go to morning coffee process. It seems like a lot of work, but once you get the hang out it, it only requires a few minutes of your attention.

I like pour over because you can make some of the best coffee with a relatively low-cost method, you can get a great pour over setup for under $100, less if you have some of the items at home already. If you go down the rabbit hole of espresso you will quickly realize to get the best results requires a lot of investment in time and especially money. To do espresso properly requires at least $450 for a semi-pro machine and $280 for a good espresso grinder at the higher end you’re looking at $3000 machines and $680 grinders.

Things you need (there are links to the items in this kit on the recommendations page):

This is the James Hoffman technique, there is a video I made down below of the process, I have written it out with some additional detail. I know it seems long and complex, but after a few times it becomes second nature and only requires a few minutes of active attention. I mention this because I can do this with two toddlers screaming for breakfast, so I think most people can manage this. If the times and amounts are a little off, that is ok.. you will refine the process to make it work best for you.

  1. Boil the water in your gooseneck kettle, use filtered (preferably soft) water that is freshly boiled, not water that has been sitting in a warmer.
  2. While your water is warming, using the recipe sheet and on the resources page, grind your coffee by weight to a medium/fine ground. If your coffee comes out too bitter, adjust the grind coarser. Adjust finer if it lacks flavor. Ideally keep going finer until it becomes bitter then adjust it coarser again to ensure optimal extraction.
  3. Insert and rinse the V60 filter paper in your dripper using hot water from your kettle or I use a Zojirushi hot water warmer to do this (the kind I told you not to use for the brewing the coffee), if I am making larger batches sometimes my gooseneck won’t have enough water to rinse the paper and make the coffee. This cleans out any paper taste and also heats up the dripper and carafe. Dump the water after the rinse.
  4. Set your carafe, dripper and wet paper on the scale and tare it to zero then pour in your ground coffee and confirm the amount. It could be less than you put into the grinder due to grinder retention, if it is a gram or two off, I wouldn’t worry too much. Give your dripper a little shake to level out the grounds. Tare to zero again before pouring water.
  5. For this example let’s use 30 grams of ground coffee in your dripper and 500 ml of water, since one ml of water weighs exactly one gram so I use them interchangeably. With your scale at zero, start the timer and pour in a circular pattern 2-3 times the weight of coffee with your freshly boiled water. So 60-90 grams of water for the bloom. Give it a gentle swirl and let it saturate for 45 seconds. This is called the bloom, it helps to release gas and wet the grounds.
  6. Your timer is now around 0:45, within the next 30 seconds pour in a circular pattern approximately 60% of the water. So we want to hit 300 grams by the time the timer hits 1:15. Try to pour the flow to agitate the grounds sufficiently without creating channels in the coffee bed. Some will say don’t pour on the paper, but I think it is ok and I do it to get grounds that are stuck on the paper back into the slurry.
  7. Continue pouring the rest of the water with the goal to finish within the next 30 seconds, around when the timer hits 1:45. After all your water is in take a spoon and give it a gentle stir clockwise and another one counter-clockwise. Once the water level drops down to safe level give it another swirl to flatten out of the coffee bed. Throughout these pours we want to retain as much thermal mass in the dripper as possible, so try not to let the water draw down too much while pouring.
  8. Now let the coffee draw down fully, which should finish at about 3:30. Give the coffee a stir (not swirl) in the carafe before pouring. If your drawn down is much slower or faster than 3:30 try to adjust your grind size finer if it is too fast or coarser if it is too slow.
  9. Try it without milk or sugar first after it cools a little, see if you can detect any notes. If you want to add milk or sugar, you can do so, but try to get a taste of the coffee black first.
  10. If you want to nerd out, use your phone to take down some tasting notes on the type of coffee and if you like it, or if next time you should adjust the grind or whatever comes to mind. Coffee is personal, like wine or food, some people love certain types and others hate it, it is all personal preference.

They make machines that try to replicate this process so you can put in your coffee and just press a button and go. I know people that like them, but I enjoy the process of making it this way. If time is an issue, they may be good to look into. Check out our blog post about how to roast your own coffee at home here.

Must Have Items To Up Your Coffee Game

Leave a comment

Two things you must have if you want to up your coffee game:

Weight vs. Volume

Some of you who have done cooking or looked up a famous chef or baker’s recipe knows that many of them don’t use volumetric measurements. Pretty much any baker or cook outside of the U.S. can instantly recognize an American recipe because it uses volume measurements like teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, pints or quarts.

If you want to make your life easier with coffee, use the metric system. Grams of coffee to milliliters of water (this is where the kitchen scale comes in). A milliliter of water weighs exactly 1 gram so it makes this incredibly easy. Most roasters recommend a ratio from between 1:15 to 1:17 for drip and pour over coffee.

Here is a quick cheat sheet for grams of coffee to milliliters of water following the widely recommended ratio of 30 grams per 500 ml or water or 60 grams per 1 liter of water. Another way is to divide milliliters of water by 16.7 for grams of coffee needed, or say I’m at the end of a bag of coffee and only have 37 grams left, multiply by 16.7 and I know to use 618 ml of water for my brew.

Here it is in cups and fluid ounces, with rounding for convenience. Useful if your coffee brewer only lists cups. *This is based off US cups of 8 fluid ounces. Cups can mean 4, 5, 6, or 8 ounces of water depending on your brewer, try to figure out how many fluid ounces you are using vs. cups to avoid the wrong ratio.

If your coffee recipe involves number of scoops per cups of water, consider switching to a weight based recipe. Coffee beans come in all different sizes and water content and using a volume measure like a scoop is not at all precise.

Check out our post about kitchen scales.

Burr Grinder

The single most important thing to adjust the taste of your coffee is the size of the grind. It is recommended that you don’t alter anything else about your coffee recipe other than the grind size to adjust the taste. So if your coffee is too bitter, the solution isn’t to add more water to dilute it, the answer is to adjust your grind coarser. If your coffee is weak or sour you need to adjust the grind finer. The only way you can get a consistent and even grind, is to use a burr grinder.

A blade grinder works like a food processor or blender and just chops your coffee beans into inconsistent chunks of coffee. Invest in a burr grinder, this will cost anywhere from $80-140 for a decent electric grinder.

For each type of coffee you get, ideally you should adjust your grind finer and finer until you taste that bitterness you don’t like, the adjust it coarser just a little to know you are getting the ideal extraction level.

Check out our grinder recommendations here and our review of two of the most popular entry level grinders here.

Best Value Kitchen Scale

2 Comments

As I mentioned before a scale is one of the most important things you can use for better coffee. Don’t use scoops, tablespoons or volume to measure your coffee. You should weigh it and follow the ratios shown here for making filter coffee. One exception is if you know the exact weight per “scoop” of your coffee and you don’t have a scale handy, such as at the office or somewhere else.

I tested six different kitchen scales for use with pour over coffee and general kitchen use. The best one I found was the FEESPEC Coffee Scale with Timer. I tested scales from about $10 to $75 and this one worked the best. Fun trivia, a penny weights 2.5 grams and a nickel weighs 5 grams if you ever need to test a scale’s accuracy.

Here is the rundown:

  • The FEESPEC Coffee Scale with Timer, quick startup, accurate, includes a timer and accurate down to .1 grams. There is a little lag when using it for pour over, but at this price point it works well. I also like that you don’t need to long press for most functions, only to restart the timer.
  • My existing kitchen scale that I got for $10 about seven years ago, it was only accurate to 1 gram and didn’t have a timer. Worked well, but it was time for an upgrade to have better accuracy and a timer.
  • The Hario V60 Drip Scale, accurate down to .1 gram, but only has the ability to weigh in grams. Also I learned that at higher weights it starts rounding to the half gram. Living in the U.S. there are just times I need to know ounces and pounds. There was a bit of lag when using this to pour over and it also has a built in timer. Didn’t feel the scale was worth it at this price point.
  • The OXO Kitchen Scale with Timer, for the price it just didn’t perform to my expectations. The startup time was slower than the FEESPEC and requires a long press to turn it off. It is accurate down to .1 grams and has a built in timer.
  • The Salter High Precision Stainless Steel Digital Kitchen Food Scale, which wasn’t actually high precision as the scale would round to the closest half gram so that was one out right away.
  • The KitchenTour Coffee Scale with Timer, this is actually the exact same scale as the FEESPEC with different branding on it so I went with the lower price model.

What is the big deal about scales? Also, are these really value scales? People who make espresso often use scales that cost $140 to $225 so these are definitely on the lower end of the spectrum for coffee scales.

Introduction

Leave a comment

Welcome.

You probably know someone like me, I’m the guy you ask when you’re looking for new gear and want to know if I’ve researched it already. I’m the guy who spends hours researching and analyzing things in order to find the product with the best mix between function and affordability.

I plan to post about anything and everything on this site, such as:

  • Coffee – roasting, making, drinking, etc.
  • Tech, gear, devices, etc.
  • And much more.

All the information is already out there, I hope to be a resource for those of you who just want to cut to the chase and know what my research shows in a short post. Even if you’re just like me hopefully you can see if we agree on our conclusions. Hoping to connect with whoever shares any of my interests or can benefit from my posts.

I realize that not everyone has the time to watch videos, so I will always include a text summary for every video that is posted as a quick reference. I also hate blogs with an ad in between every paragraph so I will work hard to keep your experience ad free.