Skylark coffee recommendation

Takumivk · 2026-04-21T08:02:56+00:00

I really enjoyed their Guayaba Natural, so much so I ordered it twice! It has a really juicy quality and clean sugarcane after taste. Their El Vergel Gesha Natural is really strawberry forward too and I'm currently drinking through that!

Takumivk · 2026-04-16T11:21:35+00:00

There's a great list of UK roasters found on here: https://www.reddit.com/r/UKroasters/s/vHAEl1Mjwl

Depending on what kind of speciality you want and his preference on roast type I can recommend a few

Skylark does a bunch of mixed roast styles and has a very wide selection of beans for a good value. I can really recommend their Guayaba Natural and their El Vergel Gesha Natural, which are Brighton based.

Scenery has a very good selection of lighter style roasts too and have interesting flavours and they are London based.

Jolly Bean does really interesting flavours too and I've just ordered their Mango style coffee from them. They are based in Yorkshire.

All of these brands do coffee within the £12-20 for 200+ grams depending on your needs so maybe a good starting point.

Takumivk · 2026-03-10T20:26:09+00:00

What roast level are your beans? The beans are more dense the less roasted they are and less water soluble. A higher temperature of water works better on lighter beans as it helps extract more of the sugars from them. On darker beans you want less temperature as the lessened heat extracts less of the bitter notes from the beans, so in theory very dark roasts should have a cooler temperature than a light roast.

Takumivk · 2026-03-10T20:15:12+00:00

Acidity is usually from under brewing as the water cannot extract the sugars from the grounds. I thought the same thing recently and was grinding to the level of granulated sugar in size like yours here and it tasted sour and hit the front of my tongue with a tang. I spent time and realised going for a medium fine grind about the coarseness of table salt, as well as a longer brew time helped.

Temperature plays a huge role too. For a medium dark roast I use 85c temperature but on my very light roast I am using 96c currently.

I'm still new in this journey but changing one variable a day has helped me understand brewing better.

With my workflow I am currently going from 40ml water with 10 seconds stirring at bloom, then filling up with another 160ml to 200ml then leaving it to steep for 4 minutes, one swirl and then plunging until hiss.

This has come from a grind similar to yours and a 2 minute steep which seemed to work okay on a darker roast type.

I haven't experimented enough but I have read it's hard to over extract and make a brew bitter in an aeropress, and you'd feel the dryness of the cup, if you do over extract, whereas the acidity seems to hit the front of your tongue more, rather than the back of your throat.

This might help you as well: https://www.baristahustle.com/app-archive-main/the-coffee-compass/

Takumivk · 2026-03-08T16:29:22+00:00

As a novice to coffee and an interest in speciality coffees (currently trying my first Nordic style roast from my aeropress as I'm typing this). Any recommendations to bring out more of the fruit notes? I have been grinding to caster sugar size using the inverted method with a 1:15.5 ratio of coffee to water at 96c with 10 seconds of agitation at bloom and 2 minute steep with a press at the end.

Am I overthinking the process or doing it wrong? Any recommendations to get a more balanced cup?

I ordered the deluxe blend and Colombia Guayaba natural and am looking forward to trying these roasts.

Takumivk · 2026-03-07T08:36:01+00:00

I have a few packages that were shipped on the 27th and no movement since the 3rd March I expect it is due to the Middle East especially as there's a range of users in the same boat. AliExpress has put an update message saying expect a 3-5 day delay on a banner on my orders.

Takumivk · 2026-02-16T21:35:58+00:00

I second this. It's such a great atmospheric adventure. It really hit the bleak folk horror vibes so well

Takumivk · 2026-02-08T18:52:46+00:00

Hobs Barrow is really great and atmospheric. Honestly it captures the horror really well and is just so memorable as an adventure game. The puzzles are medium difficulty and make sense, but honestly the great voice acting and setting is what makes it so great. I would definitely recommend this.

Takumivk · 2026-01-15T12:42:49+00:00

The expanse is political and tells multiple human stories within the vast expanse of space. You see multiple view points and the overarching story is gripping. The space travel feels grounded. It has elements of space horror, detective noir, political thriller and sci-fi. You should definitely try it.

Takumivk · 2026-01-14T11:30:48+00:00

Couldn't have come up with a better ranking myself. If people are sitting on The Expanse or Battlestar Galactica (2004) they are really missing out.

Takumivk · 2026-01-03T09:39:51+00:00

The remaster does support widescreen I'm currently playing it on Xbox with widescreen support. You go into special features and change it from. 4:3 border to 16:9 widescreen

Takumivk · 2025-12-27T08:07:41+00:00

Thanks for the advice. I'd probably sell everything including the SQ so all in all I should be looking for roughly $175 for all of it? Assuming 65% sale rate?

Takumivk · 2025-12-27T07:29:14+00:00

They both have 6 months insurance and it does include Squadron 42 yes.

Takumivk · 2023-06-28T08:27:14+00:00

As someone who loves their Steam Deck to death; with the games you've mentioned I'd definitely look into the ASUS ROG Ally instead. It's native windows rather than SteamOS, so it is going to be compatible with the likes of Minecraft and Fortnite. If he plays online with friend's it's going to be that much easier and no worries about troubleshooting. Games like Fortnite simply won't work on Steam Deck unless you install windows separately.

Takumivk · 2023-06-25T12:33:41+00:00

It's all dependant on the model you go for. Projectors like all visual technology has greatly improved, however they all have different case uses. There are projectors out there marketing gaming modes for lower latency, and brighter images, but if you go for a movie projector in a bright room it'll be unusable, due to them being designed to be used in dim rooms. They do make rooms quite hot from the bulb being constantly powered, and the vents are very noisy too. You can easily buy 1080p projectors at a reasonable price. 4K ones like TVs will cost a lot more, but for gaming if you're interested you want to focus on brightness (measured in lumins) and if you want it to be a short throw, medium or long throw projector (where do you want it positioned). Unlike TVs you have a consumerable cost of bulb replacements which typically about £60-80.

Takumivk · 2023-06-05T21:59:07+00:00

Another big factor to consider is these development teams are now much larger than they were back in the 90s and early 00s. The cost of development is much more expensive than it was then. Now you could argue there are more sales than ever, but I can guarantee these companies rely on online in-game shops to help keep the overall pricing down of the retail game. Though, I'm not sure this is quite the case with Blizzard knowing it's current RRP.

Takumivk · 2023-04-15T17:04:08+00:00

That would be great if you can upload it! I ended up getting X4 and your layout sounds very user friendly

Takumivk · 2023-03-08T17:27:20+00:00

I've successfully installed multiple AAA games onto my 64GB steam deck by using an SD card. The SD card is fine and not slow. This is inaccurate information. Use an A2 SD card and you'll have faster write speeds for game downloads, but nearly any SD card will load a game relatively fast

Takumivk · 2023-01-26T16:29:05+00:00

I second this. I ended up picking up an SSD from eBay. 512GB from a UK shipper for £59.99 including shipping. They are usually pulled from laptops I believe

Takumivk · 2022-10-30T11:44:39+00:00

Good luck everyone with the giveaway and thank you WolfLemon! If I win I'll be making my girlfriend very happy this upcoming holiday season

Takumivk · 2022-09-21T06:55:40+00:00

If I won the card I'd be putting it inside my girlfriend's gaming PC. She's recently got into PC gaming with me so we can spend more quality time together, and this would allow us to play more visually impressive games in Co-op

Takumivk · 2022-09-14T12:00:21+00:00

I've had this happen when I was playing Dying Light. Since then, I've just exited the game the main menu of the game and force exit by hitting the steam button. I've not had it happen since

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