My Coffee Setup | Hacker News Reader

My Coffee Setup

holograham.com

21 pointsholograham46 comments

Does anyone know of any double-blind taste-tests for enthusiast setups like this? Not limited to coffee but I'd also be very curious about tea, wine and much of the accepted wisdom of both classic and modern cooking.

I don't mean this to be snide. I'm totally open to this kind of setup producing a far superior cup of coffee. But if we accept the premise that at least a portion of the experience, however slight, is psychological, I'd be very interested to know how big that portion is.

Somewhere on my depressingly long list of project ideas is a kickstarter for a video series that does exactly this - very rigorous double-blind tests for coffee, tea, wine, beer, food preparation techniques etc.

I would be more than willing to test my mettle :)

Of course the issue with taste is that there is a huge mental component. Sure your taste buds/olfactory receptors tell your brain what you are experiencing but your eyes, touch, mental state, etc play a significant role as well. I am sure part of the reason I enjoy my cup of joe so much is because I hand craft it which gives me a sense of satisfaction -> hence positive mood. Also the fact I drink it in bed while reading activates more positive vibes which re-enforce the feedback loop that says "this coffee is AMAZING".

I'm not aware of any super rigorous studies, but anecdotally the different types of setups definitely produce different flavors (I'm hesitant to ascribe a qualitative word like "better" since it could be pretty subjective).

My room-mates were mostly apathetic to coffee before I moved in with them, but I have Chemex, an Aeropress, and a Moka. Now that they're used to my coffee, they can readily tell which one of the three I've used to make coffee when I make it. They also get excited when I decide to make coffee for the house after an extended dry spell; they use a Keurig when I don't make coffee and they both subjectively think that the stuff I make is way better than their Keurig. I can't ascribe all of that to just the setup, a part of it is the quality of the beans (sometimes I roast my own after buying green beans from Sweet Marias, and I also have a running Tonx subscription). But I'd say from experience that the brew method does in fact make a huge difference (still won't ascribe a qualitative word to it, though).

The problem is that the premise is flawed, in that sense that it's the wrong setting for enjoying things like for example wine.

A big part of enjoying things like wine, coffee, tea, beer, whiskey, chocolate etc is in the setup, experience and anticipation of it. Good company and a nice mood makes wine taste better.

By blind-testing it that dimension is lost. It doesn't produce a more "pure" or "objective" result, because the metric is wrong - the setup is artificial to begin with.

That being said, there's nothing wrong with just enjoying a cup of coffee and that being it. Coffee snobs and the likes who insists on their metric being the only right ones are annoying (not implying that the author is of that variety).

> By blind-testing it that dimension is lost. It doesn't produce any more "pure" result, because the setup is artificial to begin with.

I agree that the results of a properly controlled blind tasting are not more "valid" than the results of enjoying a coffee in a casual setting. However, they are helpful in indicating how much of that casual experience of a coffee is due to the contextual and psychological elements of the experience and how much is a result of the intrinsic qualities of the cup of coffee itself. I think this is interesting in its own terms.

I don't think the premise is flawed, because the premise is not "a double-blind taste test will establish whether subjective taste is true or false", but rather "a double-blind taste test will indicate to what degree subjective taste is determined strictly by the substance being tasted".

Surely when you're trying to figure out whether one cup of coffee is better than another, you're not interested in an absolute number as much as a comparative ranking? Why would taking away the "setup, experience and anticipation" also take away our capacity for taste and evaluation?

Well, you can do an A/B/X comparison; Coffeebar2000 makes doing so quite simple. But don't expect your results to sway anyone who's already strongly committed to one side or the other of the debate; if you can't tell the difference, the enthusiasts will just stick with their lossless methods and claim you don't have a proper sense of taste or your mug's not up to standard or something, and if you can, the "lossy is good enough" crowd will call you an elitist idiot who's only pretending in order to justify having spent ridiculous amounts of money on equipment which can't possibly make a difference to what you're tasting.

Depends on what you are comparing. Usually these enthusiast setups have fresh beans ground just before the brew. You can most definitely taste the difference between that and, say, a keurig cup.

Slightly different than what you propose, but my wife (PhD biologist who ran her own lab for many years) was annoyed at my insistence that I could tell the difference in red wine "processed" through the Vinturi aeration device.

She ran multiple A-B-X tests over a several month period as we tried a bunch of new wines in our house. I recall that I was perfect 11-for-11 in determining whether X was A or B, and was 10-for-11 in which of A or B had gone through the Vinturi.

(In all cases, A, B, and X were the same wine; A XOR B had been run through the Vinturi; X was the same as A XOR B at her discretion. I don't know what protocol she used to randomize the trials. Each (opaque) glass was labelled with a sticker on the bottom. I didn't know ahead of time which of the three glasses were A, B or X. I'm sure it doesn't meet peer-review standards, but she was trying hard to prove that I was full of crap and failed in this instance. :) )

Baratza Vario Coffee Grinder – Simply the best home grinder on the market. 440 distinct grind settings. Ceramic burrs for low heat transfer and long life

I can't help wondering if the grinder uses solid core or braided wire internally. If it's braided, he'd better ensure that there's some opposing winding in there to prevent any heat transfer from stray EM fields.

I read that as "My Coffee Startup". I need to go to bed, and possibly read HN less.

Both are equally acceptable (Startup/Setup, not going to bed or reading HN less).

I thought it was going to be about coffeescript.

Although I can agree with the pourover method (the resulting cup of coffee is by far my favorite), I've found that it simply takes more time than I'm willing to invest during the week. For a weekend morning, absolutely, but I find myself getting impatient during the week.

If you find yourself in a similar dilemma, I'd recommend* an AeroPress. They take < 1 minute and essentially leave you with a double espresso, to which you can add water and have an Americano. A year ago I would have said French Press, but I grew tired of the 'silt' at the bottom of the cup.

*I'm a bit of a coffee aficionado myself (Seattle) and have more than 5 coffee-making-devices at home.

Aeropress rocks. Really.

My morning cup goes like this:

* Lightly roasted beans

* Hario mini for grinding, with click number five

* Grind 14 grams of coffee and mix it with 230 grams of water

* Let it brew for 3.5-4 minutes

All of this with the inverse method. Easy, quite fast and a really cheap way of getting an excellent cup of coffee. All my equipment was around 50 euros and the most expensive part is to get proper and fresh beans.

$18/lb??? What a rip off. If anyone is wanting to get into great coffee without spending an arm and a leg, please look into roasting your own coffee beans. There is a place called Sweet Maria's in Oakland that can ship it to you; however, I often find shipping kills the deal. I found a really cool local roaster that is willing to sell me any of their green beans for $7/lb. After roasting, you lose some weight so that it comes out closer to $8/lb. And, it's really fresh. The freshest anyone can get.

Fresh isn't always what you want. Many African varietals need two days rest before they really get good, though Latin American beans typically need just one day.

One of the best shots of espresso I've ever had was a Rwandan roast pulled at fourteen days. Incredible.

Just curious, do you know of a good reason for this effect? Do roasted beans ferment after time?

They don't ferment. I think the primary chemical reaction would be oxidation, which one normally tries to prevent. Perhaps with favorable conditions, it can produce a "better" flavor though

Roasted beans give off CO2, which is displaced by oxygen during the off-gassing process. Fresh roasted beans are full of CO2, which mask the aromatics/lipids. The first day or two, most of the off-gassing is all CO2. After the first day or two, the aromatics themselves start to off-gas, taking flavor with them.

It's basically oxidation and enzymatic breakdown after that. So they don't ferment, they just oxidize (a lot of the flavor in coffee comes from aromatics and oils/lipids, so it's similar to butter getting bland if it oxidizes for a while).

Yeah, for sure. Actually, you're supposed to let most freshly roasted beans to sit for a couple of days before grinding to allow off gassing. But, what I meant was, if you WANT the freshly roasted possible beans, this is the way to go. It's cheap, you can control the rest time before grinding, and it's fun and easy to do.

Intelligentsia offers free shipping on orders over 25 bucks but yes in general the price is on the high side. I did a quick cost comparison though to still show you are saving money vs buying at Starbucks.

That said -- I have not gotten into roasting my own. I am willing to try on artisanal and quality grounds (pun). However I am skeptical on the time involved as I am pretty busy and dont necessarily want to spend a couple hours a week roasting beans.

It's really not that bad. I spend probably 15 minutes a week to roast a lb of coffee. Just get a small, stainless steel pot (I use a 1 qt KitchenAid) with a thick even heat base. Then, warm up the pan for 3 minutes, add coffee beans, and continuously stir with a metal whisk or wooden spoon. There are videos online of how to do this.

The biggest sunk cost, though, is practicing it. It takes some time to get this down. And, you may lose some $ in the process of learning. But, if you're really into coffee, I think it's worth it.

I live right around the corner from the original Intelligentsia store here in Chicago and even without shipping, the ~11% tax we have here is a killer on my expensive coffee habit.

Former commercial roaster here.

"Fresh" has to be qualified. Beens are going to be gassing CO2 for ~3-4 days after roasting, and ideally during this period you won't be consuming them. If they're bagged at a roaster immediately after roasting (after cooling, naturally) in bags w/ 1 way valves though, the gassing will displace oxygen, and the C02 will be a protective barrier against oxidation. Oxygen alone is the killer of coffee. Oxidation is hastened by heat and light, which is why people are encouraged to store coffee (and oil, wine, etc) in cool, dark places.

I _have_ roasted at home (frying pan), and while the experience was a treat (I encourage anybody who has any interest to go for it!), the results are nowhere near what a decent commercial roaster produces. I haven't used an air-popper for roasting, nor Alpin (?) or other more sophisticated roasters.

To be honest my fantasy setup would be some Jabez Burns sample roasters[1], but I'm not there yet...

[1] http://www.cafeimports.com/photos/images/lab/espresso_tastin...

I use a similar setup. I swap the V60 for a Chemex (better for larger quantities), a Bonavita instead of a Buono and I don't bother with Intelligentsia's overpriced roasts.

Frankly, I think Intelli's golden days are behind them and they're partly riding on their reputation at this point. Better roasts at lower prices are available from other roasters.

Where are you getting your coffee from now? I've tried some other online roasters (e.g. Tonx) and thought they were worse than Intelligentsia.

I buy from Brown Coffee Co.

I live in Chicago where Intelligentsia was started and has several locations. Intelligentsia is good coffee but it's not the best in town by any means. Other strong (Chicago based) competitors:

http://www.halfwitcoffee.com/

http://www.bigshoulderscoffee.com/

http://gaslightcoffeeroasters.com/

http://www.lacolombe.com/

http://www.darkmattercoffee.com/

I haven't been to any of their Chicago locations, just Venice and Silver Lake in LA. I was also at a cafe in Tokyo a few weeks ago that imports Intelligentsia, which personally seems like overkill.

For what its worth. I just upgraded from an old Delonghi and an Aeropress to a Crossland CC1 w/ a Vario grinder (a refurb from Baratza), love this setup so far. Having a good grinder definitely helps a lot at least as far as consistency goes.

Intelligentsia coffee is great, there is also an artisan bean subscription service, out of SF I think: https://tonx.org

I've tried Tonx -- wasnt a huge fan. Perhaps I should give it another go.

You should! :)

Send me a note if you want me to kick out another sample your way.

Thanks for this post. Was never really into coffee until I moved into a workspace that valued good coffee over Starbucks and K-cups (we drank MADCAP: http://madcapcoffee.com/).

I've been toying with the idea of getting my own setup but wasn't sure where to start. This definitely clarified that it's pretty expensive to get started so I may just stick with the artisan coffee shops in town.

the grinder is really the huge purchase price. You can buy a cheaper grinder as a stop gap especially just starting out. Just make sure it's a burr grinder and not a blade grinder. Blade grinders SUCK.

That said -- over the long term buying a quality burr grinder is still cost effective.

Consider an aeropress or french press. I like a french press @ home and an aeropress @ work (the aeropress is a bit cleaner to use).

Then, if you're willing to throw in some manual labor, you can get a nice burr grinder like the Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill.

All told, $50-75

90% of the benefit to your coffee is switching away from a regular drip machine and to some kind of press, and away from preground beans and to freshly burr-ground beans.

If you enjoy a dark roast like I do, make sure the beans are a little oily when you buy them, they should have a shiny surface. That means they are fresh.

I've been experimenting with a portable coffee setup. It's currently an Aeropress, a Porlex Mini Stainless Steel grinder, a thermometer, and a small scale. I'm experimenting to decide on the ideal type of filter - currently comparing paper vs. a couple different metal filters.

ive tried metal -- hasnt done it for me.

Also what "small scale" are you using?

I'm using this scale:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SC3LLS/ref=oh_details_o...

I have a finer mesh filter inbound that I'm told is closer to paper in taste.

If portability is valued, why bother with a scale?

I love this Able stainless steel filter for Aeropress: http://ablebrewing.com/products/disk-coffee-filter

The difference in flavor from a paper filter is very noticeable and hugely appreciated.

One of the fundamentals of good coffee is a proper ratio. I think it's worth the extra space.

I just received that filter - I liked it, but I had to drastically change my grind size, and the resulting coffee didn't have the body that I associate with Aeropresses.

I talked to the Able Brewing folks, and now I have one of the Disk Fine filters inbound that supposedly behaves more like a paper filter.

In italy you'll find a mocha pot in every house. Any expert in coffee could tell me the difference in taste if you'd use the mocha (using hot water under pressure) or the drip method?

Don't drink coffee, it's poison!

Why do you say that? Care to explain?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com