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Comment by rando14775 | Hacker News Reader

You sure? Germany is a (shit) coffee country and everybody has had electric kettles since the 90s.

Lots of Americans drink kind of shit coffee as well, they just largely drink it from drip coffee makers. Alternative brewing methods like french press, aero press, pour over, etc. is starting to become more popular but is definitely still not a predominant way of doing it. And even then, the really bougie people will just have an instant boiler tap in their kitchen instead of taking up counter space with something that takes longer to get hot water.

In my experience drip coffee in a halfway decent machine from halfway decent beans is miles better than most/all instant. Just because drip coffee is convenient doesn't necessarily mean it's bad.

The beans you use are more important than the brewing method - if you use a giant tub of stale Folgers it probably won't be great. But grind you own decent beans and a drip machine can be fantastic.

Recommend any particular beans?

I doubt we live in the same place so I won't recommend anything specific. But I would find local roasters and try to buy beans that were roasted in the last couple of days. Freshness makes a pretty big difference. Finding specific ones you really like will take a bit of trial and error. Single origin if you want interesting/specific flavours, blends if you want something a bit more consistent.

Drip coffee is pretty good, good taste and caffeine content while being pretty simple to brew, a decent machine is cheap as well. It's just a method, the beans you use are what actually count.

The worst part of a standard American drip coffee machine is cleaning it. Too many different nooks and crannies to get gross.

I find pour over to be one of the easiest methods in amortized time. It takes three minutes to make a cup but the clean up time is only another 30 seconds—-throw away the paper filter and rinse the dripper.

Those suck, I use a Moccamaster that's been beating around for at least some 30 years. Bought it second hand and never had an issue in the past 15 years, reliable, easy to clean. It's a delight of design based in functionality for me.

Recommend any particular beans?

The time since roast matters a lot. Find a local roaster, you can get fresh roasted and it’s unlikely someone that went through the effort of setting up a local roaster is going to buy crap beans. Also, I’d recommend light roast.

And pour-over is just you manually doing what the drip coffee machine does for you.

I don't drink the bean juice personally, so I've got no skin in the game. To me it definitely seems like a drip coffee maker could make a cup of Joe just about as good as most other methods. I do think it's a combination of the burner burning the coffee after and also a coolness factor (that's how my parents did it, gross!) that drives a lot of the hipness of alternative brewing methods in the US.

But as mentioned I don't really have a horse in this race to begin with. Drink what makes you happy however you brew it. :)

I'm not going to judge which one is better (though I personally prefer espresso, it's a matter of preference), but coffee brewed with different methods definitely tastes differently. Coffee brewed at higher pressure (3~4 bar for moka pot, >9bar for espresso) tend to taste way stronger and more flavorful (which is why they're drank in lower quantities)

Hard Disagree.

Espresso and similar pressure based brewing (Moka Pot) is far superior with equal beans. Tastes way better, more flexibility in creating different drinks, very fast to brew, etc . If it’s too concentrated or hard to drink an espresso shot then you dilute it (for all you black-coffee drinkers, it’s ok to use milk, it’s still coffee).

Different methods of brewing give you different results. If you like (or just want) a stronger flavour, use a pressurised method (espresso, moka pot, etc.), more flavour but the caffeine content is going to be lower than a longer brewing method.

I drink coffee in different ways in different days. If I want a large amount in the morning I go for a drip coffee or french press, the taste is smoother and caffeine content higher. If I want to taste the fullness of the beans I use a moka at home.

I don't see other methods of brewing as objectively better or worse, it depends on the result you expect or want, some days I want an espresso in the morning, some days I want a lot more caffeine, etc.

Also, I just drink coffee, I don't make drinks or turned coffee into a hobby.

> an instant boiler tap in their kitchen instead of taking up counter space with something that takes longer to get hot water.

These things usually serve "near-boiling" water, somewhere around 95 C. This is fine for some cases - e.g. making ramen - but not appropriate for many kinds of tea.

I have such a tap, and I also have an electric kettle. The tap is mostly used to prefill pots with near-boiling water for cooking, so as to not wait for so long for the stove to do it. The kettle is used for tea and coffee.

It was weird how before that they only ever had wall mounted Wasserkocher (water boiler) and then en-masse discovered kettles.

What do they use the kettles for? For most non tea drinking households in the US there is no essential use for a kettle.

They do sell them here, people buy them, they are usually tea drinkers.

To perhaps state the obvious, I use mine mainly for coffee. And the occasional tea cup.

Honestly it seems more likely for an American household to have a Keurig machine (or hell, even multiple Keurigs) than to have any kind of kettle.

You're on target here. I have become the dumping ground for misbehaving keurigs from family and have managed to make most of them work or frankenstein parts between them. I hate the machines and wish this never happened. I was happy with a french press. Curse my urge to not waste things.

Last sentence is ironic because keurigs waste so much plastic if you use them daily.

It feels like much plastic since you touch each one, but it's a very tiny amount if you weigh your monthly usage.

> I was happy with a french press. Curse my urge to not waste things.

I don't understand this sentence, I would much rather waste some ground coffee beans and water than plastic.

With a French Press, you don't have to buy and throw away a constant stream of paper filters.

A Keurig machine is just an electric kettle with an electric pump inside of it.

Can it be used like a kettle - ie can it rapidly heat up a quart of water without a coffee residue taste? No, it cannot.

Just because they both heat water doesn’t make them similar.

Pretty much. I used my keurig this way for a few years until i realized I'm really not using pods and am only using it for hot water to make tea (via normal steeping). If you brew coffee and then use it for something right after I don't recall there being much coffee taste, but you could probably run a small cup setting to flush things in the pod area a bit if needed.

I've since switched to a Zojirushi water boiler which I adore, especially after learning my keurig wasn't getting hot enough to really brew the tea well.

I used to use my Senseo to make ramen so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I strongly disagree. With a kettle, the whole volume of water is being heated at once and is a uniform temperature. A Keurig or drip coffee maker is only heating a small volume of water at a time. By the time you process a whole liter of water the first bit will have already cooled off a lot. It's a very different process and potentially a very different outcome.

If you're making a single cup (~250mL) why do you need to heat 1000mL of water?

Ok exactly - in addition to keurigs /nespressos etc mentioned (which I will refuse to buy) - for years the predominant coffee making apparatus in the US has been the automatic drip coffee maker.

French press, pour over, chemx are all niche.

German in Canada here. I used mine to cook water for pasta as it's usually faster and more efficient than my electric cooktop. Bought one in Canada and it's close to useless for that purpose. My German kettle would bring 1.7L of tap water to a rolling boil in about 4 minutes. My Canadian one needs about 10 minutes to achieve the same.

> there is no essential use for a kettle

electric kettle

french press for coffee

tea kettle for tea

Tea.

French press coffee.

Instant coffee, hot cider, hot chocolate, etc.

Heating water for instant soups, etc.

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