I love how the coffee enthusiasts scene is more and more looking like the audiophile scene.
Same for Espresso. A PID that keeps the brewing temperature steady is superior to a thermostat where the temperature ramps up and down constantly and your brewing temperature depends on experience or luck (people who know their machine would call this "temperature surfing" because you will have to wait for the thermostat to switch on). To which degree brewing temperature affects the result can be discussed, but this could be tested quite easily.
So if you are a coffee afficionado, the number one reason you would like to have a PID is probably convenience. One variable less to care about if you wanna get reproducably (good) results.
I'd also prefer the faders of my mixing desk to keep their levels where I set them instead of fluctuating around.
My comment came from a place of love. I’m happy to see people going the extra mile. Myself, I just want to be chill at home and aim for a balanced providing me joy without headaches.
But I’m weird. Example: I love playing vinyls not because it sounds better but because it lacks dynamics and I find that… relaxing!
Reasonable, I am similar in those regards.
I just wanted to highlight that the border between reasonable technical features and audiophile snakeoil is at times not totally clear to draw.
There are e.g. quite expensive audio cables in pro audio as well, but there you pay for reliability and not for esoteric materials.
I have yet to see any assertions in the coffee world that approach the sheer amount of overt dishonesty and grift that characterizes high-end audio.
I don't know if it's a grift but it is absurd
No one is arguing -- or at least I haven't seen it argued -- that a $200 basket, or a $100 distribution tool, or a super-expensive knock box make better coffee that the basic models.
There's just a certain subset of home espresso people who want fancier things, or prettier things, for reasons external to efficacy. How does it look on the counter when I'm not using it? How pleasant is it to hold? Does it tickle that "finely machined object" thing in my brain?
For example, lots of people use the Weiss Distribution Technique on their espresso grounds. Simply put, you stir the coffee in the portafilter using a tool with several fine needles on it to reduce clumping and more evenly distribute the grounds. This has been experimentally proven to produce improvements in the shot.
BUT, critically, it doesn't matter how expensive the tool is. The DIY crowd buys acupuncture needles on Amazon and sticks 'em into a wine cork, which costs almost nothing. That works every bit as well as a $150 fancy one with a hand-tooled wooden handle and matching base, and no one argues differently. It's just that some people value aesthetics enough to pony up for the fancy option.
The question isn't whether it makes a marginally better espresso (it probably does); the question is whether it's the best bang for your buck.
For most people, it probably isn't.
For people who have Weber EG-1s on their coutertops (AFAICT, it was Weber with their Unifilter who started this wave of super-expensive baskets/portafilters?) and La Marzoccos / Decents? It might be!
(I prefer Hoffmann, and he definitely does the same thing -- ie, point out that some given object might be pretty, and it might do a fine job, but not enough of a BETTER job to justify its premium.)
Oh this is easy. - Starbucks, as an org, in whole. Brutal dishonesty in much of their marketing, naming, and Brewing methods. Their Coffee flavor is intended to distort your expectations of 'quality coffee'. - The "Roast Date" disappearance on high-end coffee to sell "Quality" rather than freshness. - Keurig's marketing of quality or that they can make 'Espresso' (it can't), their product is designed for lock-in. - Nespresso Vertuo's fake "Froth"
Nobody who cares enough about coffee to grind their own beans is fooled.
Again, not in the same realm.
The VAST majority of Americans are "Fooled" and would say "Starbucks" or "Nespresso" is "Luxury Coffee". I would argue that the coffee industry is where the Audiophile headphone industry was at around the mid 2000s (Monster Headphones, Beats, ETC) where the public was so fooled and only those who knew what good sound was like, knew it was way off.
i order green coffee from sweetmarias.com and it's $5-8/lb which makes a good deal more than what's in the $15-25+ 10oz bags from 3rd wave roasters.
plus i learn a new skill and can roast to my preference every time!
Having switched to a local shop's medium roast, I very rarely have to adjust my grinder after buying a new batch of beans.
Everything else is just chasing the final improvements, which is great but I feel like a lot of people get sold stuff they don't need. A £40 hand grinder might change your life as much as a £700 machine you got because reddit said so.
Or, as I see the mountain of stuff required to make high-quality specialty coffee at home, I may do what James Hoffman does and just do drip coffee. There is wisdom in the old, simple ways, and the $4k you can easily spend on a full setup is 1000 espressos made by a professional with bar better, more consistent equipment and tons of practice.
There are a lot of coffee shops near me. I'm surprised at how bad some of the espressos are, a lot too sour, some too bitter. Prices keep going up. You can count the break even point in terms of money, sure, but in my house, the espresso machine paid for itself almost instantly in terms of satisfaction.
But for not much more money you can get an affordable electric burr grinder (like the Delonghi KG79) which will give a good, consistent grind with much less effort than a hand grinder.
Lower grade equipment can make great espresso, but maybe you are managing good results only 1/10 instead of 5/10.
In double blind trials or audiophile I can hear the gold plating sort of way?
I think this type of comparison with espresso is comparing the differences of far different orders of magnitude. i.e. Impact of a bad grinder, poor bean distribution, or tamping force is orders of magnitude larger than the difference cable connectors makes. The difference in the end result is also (and I'm committing audiophile heresy according to some) far more apparent with espresso.
Maybe an analogy here is gold plated wires don't make any difference in a home setup (well, they make zero difference in a digital setup), but when you're AC/DC blowing the roof off an arena with your speakers turned up to 11 bad equipment can be pretty noticeable.
A friend doesn't mind, but he roasts his own beans as well. I've had great espresso from him, and I like it but I'm content with little filter
The new wisdom is grinding coarser, using less coffee, and sending water through at a lower pressure. So instead of an 18g:36g shot dripping out variably in 30 seconds, the aim is something like 15:45g in less than 20 seconds.
[0]: https://strivefortone.com/2020/09/19/low-pressure-turbo-shot...
I guess I should have made it clearer that I really was talking about coffee in general, not just espresso.
Roast level is also a big deal. Dark roasts have a much wider sweet spot on the grinding dial. The beans are brittle so they tend to shatter and produce a lot of fines. As long as you don’t grind too fine that the machine chokes during the shot, you’re going to be able to find the sweet spot.
The lighter you go in roast, the more challenging everything becomes. Lighter roasts are less brittle so the grinder tends to cut rather than shatter. This often allows you to grind way finer on the dial. It also makes the coffee much more difficult to extract, requiring higher temperatures and a narrow grind sweet spot. Loads of people complain of sour, weak extractions with no body. This is where you can get into spending loads of money on a high-end flat burr grinder and a pressure profiling machine with PID temperature controls (and even temperature profiling during the shot).
Light roasted single origin coffee beans can smell absolutely amazing, so people know there is potential there for unbelievably good coffee. All of the disappointment in the cup is what leads to the big spending (or giving up and going back to darker roasts).
Fine as in drinkable? Sure. But if you want delicious coffee, with great aroma, crema, etc, there is a big difference between fresh roasted beans and something that has been sitting on a shelf for a few months.
Espresso is a lot easier to understand too, it's an entirely physical process, and everyone has had bitter, bad tasting espresso, so it's easier to know what "good" tastes like, vs some arbitrary chart or subjective POV in the audiophile world talking about how your house needs rewired because it puts noise into your setup.
* Breville Bambino
* Niche Zero
* IMS 20mm baskets for Breville portafilters
I can get within spitting distance of most third-wave coffee shops most days.
Still a lot to learn but I can tell I'm nearing the point of rapidly diminishing returns. I'll probably look to upgrade the Bambino when it dies, but I'm not really jonesing for much more at this point.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FlairEspresso/comments/j53vy0/fello...
Sibling suggested heating the chamber with the kettle, in my experience that has caused the silicon wrapping to deteriorate.