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Comment by jimmytucson | Hacker News Reader

Before you go to bed tonight: put a bunch of big spoonfuls of coffee grounds into a French press, add water, and stir. Into the fridge. Then put some oats into a big cup. Pour in milk til they’re “swimming”. Put that in the fridge.

When you wake up, press the coffee grounds out and pour that into a thermos. Put some honey in the big cup of oats and throw a spoon in there. Now you have the best breakfast and coffee to go, and it’s so easy it feels like cheating.

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Shouldn't you use scale for anything coffee related? Spoon is cursed word in coffee world as well as preground

Not all of us coffee drinkers are that OCD about it.

Obsessive compulsive disorder isn’t like that. Obsessive would have worked, but OCD is a very poor way to describe this.

I mean the colloquial usage of OCD.

In that case, I’d likely suggest you don’t use medical diagnoses in that way. OCD sucks dude. Its kind of like having your nervous system set on fire.

Sorry if I've offended you.

For espresso it’s vitally important. One extra gram of coffee takes it from smooth, sweet and acidic to being extremely bitter and unpleasant. It’s not just people being snobs, it’s just espresso is very sensitive to tiny changes.

I dump the cheapest grounds I can find into a mesh bag and put it into a gallon of water overnight, tastes completely fine

People like what they like. It’s likely your grinder isn’t up to my standard. But I’m not going to put it down for no reason.

I used to be able to tell the difference between pre- and freshly-ground. These days I really don't care that much; you can still get decent results. Similarly weighing the coffee is going to be more accurate, but it's not as crucial as in espresso or moka where you the amounts are small and significantly affect the resistance to the flow.

What matters far more than freshly ground is freshly roasted (<1 month, > a few days) and grind size for the type of coffee

Are graduated spoons allowed ?

As someone with a scale for coffee: cold brew is very uncritical in terms of amount. Use more and you end up with a more concentrated liquid, use less and you get a more watery thing. Many people also make a concentrated cold brew and then add water to taste.

These are all things that come close to a sin with hot brewed coffee, but cold brewing is different.

> These are all things that come close to a sin with hot brewed coffee, but cold brewing is different.

I’d say French Press brewing is also very forgiving regarding the amount and quality of the grind. A lot of people forget that not everyone uses an espresso machine for their coffee (probably the least forgiving method of making coffee)

Sure it is, what I said is that most other hot brewing methods are more critical to differences in coffee amount than cold brew methods, not that all of them are totally critical.

I didn’t mean to contradict you. Only to add ;)

Scale? Spoon?

I just grab a handful of beans and chuck them in my hand grinder. The amount I can hold without dropping any beans seems to be just right for one cup of cafetiere coffee.

Never tried cold-brew; maybe I'll make some this evening, and try it tomorrow.

I like to use mason jars instead of a french press, I'll make a week's worth of cold brew on a weekend night. You do need to drain it through a coffee filter though. I just dump them into a pourover coffee pot with a re-usable metal filter.

I have a mason jar with a sealing metal filter insert. Very low effort, you simply remove the filter, rinse the lid, and close the jar again :)

You may have just changed my life. Or at least my Sunday afternoons.

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