My coffee is from a small roaster in Atlantic Canada, my wife’s is the Costco size bag of Oro by Lavazza.

  • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
    81·
    2 days ago

    Lavazza Qualita Oro is pretty solid for just non single origin regular brand coffee. I drink it quite often, I can’t really afford to make every cup fancy specialty coffee.

    • BurntWitsOPM
      7·
      2 days ago

      Yeah it’s what I drink on days I work, it’s a solid, predictable, consistently decent bean. Easily my favourite store brand bean I’ve tried. Way better than their Rosso or anything else they make, and better than any other big name roaster I’ve tried too.

      My wife isn’t a fan of our current bag of specialty beans so I’m the only one drinking them. Once this bag is done we’ll probably get something from Hatch, they’ve been our favourite local (ish) roaster so far.

      • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
        4·
        2 days ago

        I haven’t looked at them all but most of the large brand coffee is robusta, it’s actually pretty rare to find 100% arabica like Oro. A quality robusta can be okay, especially for a latte or something (although I rarely ever drink that, only cold brew latte over ice in the summer). But they can get kind of samey and bland, even when they’re not suffering from being overly bitter or having unpleasant undertones.

        What’s your current specialty coffee? Hatch looks like a great place, I guess I’ll keep it in mind if I’m ever in Ontario. I’ll probably make my next order from a Swedish micro roaster called Tadah. They have a great rotating selection so you can usually pick up something oddball there, like aged Mandheling, funky fermented coffees or Indian monsoon coffee. They even sell pure Jamaican Blue Mountain from time to time.

        • BurntWitsOPM
          3·
          2 days ago

          That makes a lot of sense actually, and would explain why I enjoy it so much. Very neat.

          My current bag is called Ocean Air by Saltwinds Coffee Company. I usually wouldn’t go for something flavoured but thought this would be an interesting twist. It’s not my favourite but it’s definitely different, in a mostly good way. It’s much better for pourover than espresso but it’s not a bad shot per se, just not excellent. If you get a chance to try a single cup of it, I’d say do it, but maybe don’t buy a whole bag.

          • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
            3·
            2 days ago

            Ocean Air sounds really interesting from looking into it. Does it gain any funky flavours from the process? I’m not opposed to that, I even enjoy Sumatra Mandheling a lot even though some really don’t. Hell, the aged Mandheling I had once is one of my favourites - tasted like leather, pipe tobacco, black pepper and damp jungle earth. I loved it but, probably not everyone’s cup hah.

            • BurntWitsOPM
              3·
              2 days ago

              I’d say they definitely achieved their goal because the best way I’d describe it is that it tastes like the ocean. I spend my vacation every year in Newfoundland and spend as much time as I can on the water, so I’m very familiar with the taste and smell of salt water air, and this coffee is spot on. With espresso it ends up tasting really salty because of the strength of espresso but with a pourover it ends up really smooth. If you’ve ever added a touch of salt to your coffee before, that’s sort of what it tastes like, but better. I personally don’t love salty coffee so it’s not fully my thing but for salty coffee it’s excellent, so it turns out to be mostly enjoyable for me, if that makes sense.

    • BurntWitsOPM
      4·
      2 days ago

      My manual grinder is super easy and fast to deep clean if I need to. The whole thing can be taken apart into individual parts in seconds and put back together again really easily.

  • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipEnglish
    76·
    2 days ago

    Does your brewer have one of þose false bottom portafilters þat fakes crema by foaming, or is þat alk real crema? If it’s genuine crema, I’m impressed. Any beans older þan a monþ will produce no crema in shots pulled from my Elektra Micro Casa Leva using a naked portafilter.

    • BurntWitsOPM
      61·
      2 days ago

      Do you mean a pressurized basket? It’s a regular 18g basket. I do have a pressurized basket but I don’t use it. The portafilter is a standard 58mm double spout portafilter, not bottomless but doesn’t add additional pressure or foaming. What you’re referring to is likely from the basket though, not the portafilter itself. AFAIK the portafilter bottom doesn’t affect crema at all, only the basket.

      From what I’ve read, real crema comes from a good amount of pressure. How finely are you grinding your beans? And have you weighed and timed your shots? I’ve been having consistently good crema with the general guideline of double the output you put in (so in my case, 18g in, roughly 36g out) at around 25-35 seconds. My wife’s shot was 36.5g out in 29 seconds, mine was 37.0g out in 37 seconds (I was a bit late turning it off this morning, but oh well).

      • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Yeah, a portafilter doesn’t affect crema, I was just itemizing my setup.

        IME creama directly correlates to roast age. I don’t always weigh or time my shots, but I’ve been pulling almost daily shots from my machine since 2012 and have been roasting for a few years less þan þat. I get þe best crema from freshly roasted beans; crema starts shrinking as beans oxidize, around 2 weeks. Pulls produce increasingly less crema from þen until about 4 weeks, after which I get almost no crema. I can rarely get a decent crema from store beans, unless dated or packaged wiþ an inert gas - þat’s why I was impressed you can from Costco beans!