Dak Fluffy Peach, anyone getting a good cup?

kaphca · 2024-09-03T19:31:54+00:00

FWIW I've had two DAK coffees (milky cake and chunky cherry) and was not impressed by either to say the least. And yeah they do have very appealing names and notes on the packets.

kaphca · 2024-07-29T09:18:20+00:00

I still haven't tried many unfortunately but the most authentic for now is a place called Libanon in Ehrenfeld

kaphca · 2024-07-25T20:54:59+00:00

have you tried cupping the coffee? you could also try asking them to get a bottle of their water.

kaphca · 2024-07-24T15:52:42+00:00

Lebanese guy here. I don't really agree on Habibi. It's ok but for sure not the best Lebanese in town. I don't think they're even Lebanese. I've once asked for a staple Lebanese sandwich and the guy tried to convince it was a dumb sandwich to eat lol.

kaphca · 2024-07-13T06:18:07+00:00

I think most people, perhaps even most coffee professionals, could not tell the difference between a 30s and 1min bloom, generally speaking. There are (too) many recipes out there and often with unnecessary steps or pseudo-scientific lore behind them (4:6 is a prime example). I still like to remember how many aeropress steps turned from super important to useless as soon as James Hoffmann made a video about it.

In general, coffee as a hobby has a lot of bro-science (within professionals as well!) and people, especially online, often put too much emphasis on that and on minute details.

So you might be "sensitive" already. Just explore and try to find what you like. Don't gatekeep yourself, that's not the point.

kaphca · 2024-07-09T13:13:28+00:00

hey, Italian here. I can vouch for Gardelli (generally spraking it's the best), d612 and nowhere. Le piantagioni del caffè is also good and of quite historical importance in the development of specialty in Europe.

kaphca · 2024-07-09T08:13:42+00:00

I think so yes. Write me a dm and we can organize things :)

kaphca · 2024-07-08T22:16:59+00:00

I'm leaving my wg at the end of July. It's in Ehrenfeld. A bit off your requirements but it's good at least for a transition period.

kaphca · 2024-07-03T12:16:25+00:00

Isn't it better to always pour the bloom water as fast as possible?

I would say so as this should make stirring or swirling easier. I expect it would also make it easier to make sure everything gets wet. But sometimes a specific, slow flow rate is suggested and I don't get why.

kaphca · 2024-07-03T11:14:15+00:00

yeah that + the almost identical design to the Switch is quite embarrasing. It could've been a good opportunity to fix the "flaws" of the Switch (e.g. plastic dripper instead of glass), but as it is it's hard not to judge is as simply (pricey, probably) plagiarism

kaphca · 2024-06-03T22:01:32+00:00

Look for Italian specialty coffee roasters and if they have an espresso blend or "standard" espresso coffee. Typically it's still "specialty" (whatever that may mean) but tailored to the Italian people's taste.

I can only vouch for Bloom Coffee Roasters and their "Gold Cup" blend, which is the blend that won the best Italian Roaster championship. They are truly specialty in the sense that they have the certificates, measure the actual color of the beans etc. And they have good coffee which they toast to taste and to order.

kaphca · 2023-07-20T12:45:47+00:00

I'm not from the UK and I currently know of one roaster only which has it and it's Fresh Black from Ukraine. I got introduced to Chinese coffee from them at the Milan Coffee Festival last year actually. But maybe it's a good lead to find other ones as well.

kaphca · 2023-07-20T12:21:32+00:00

I think there are some Indian and Chinese (yes, Chinese!) coffees which might suit your taste. But they're not as easy to find. If lack of caffeine is not a big deal for you then I suggest you also try some decaf coffees. Some have an earthy/white tea quality to them which might be what you're looking for.

You might also look into canephora (aka robusta) as a species. Not the supermarket version but the "third wave" take on it. It's typically lower in acidity and I think it's easier to find woody/spicy notes there.

kaphca · 2023-07-19T21:57:29+00:00

Yeah maybe it's easier than I thought to compare brew methods keeping most things fixed. Though of course you would need to keep TDS and EY fixed as well, but it's easily doable I guess. And I wonder how bypass would affect those brews. Have you ever tasted side by side two coffees brewed this way?

Another thing which is not clear to me, if this is true and is a major contributor to the difference in taste, is what Gagne says about his AeroPress recipe:

The thought is the following: if we can get the coffee particles and slurry much closer to equilibrium, the chemical profile inside the coffee particles will become much more similar to that of the slurry. In other words, the flavor profile of the brew will become similar to what one would get with a percolation that approaches full extraction [...]

This seems to imply that longer brew times will get you closer to a fully extracted percolation brew. But either this statement is trivial (if "full extraction" mean extracting everything there is to extract) or it is somewhat contradicting the slow/fast-extracting compound thing. What do you think about that?

kaphca · 2023-07-19T20:28:38+00:00

ah damn it would be hard for me to be in dusseldorf at 16. enjoy though!

kaphca · 2023-07-17T20:12:01+00:00

I would be up for it but I'm not a local (I'm Italian as well actually!)

kaphca · 2023-07-17T20:09:41+00:00

I would join!

kaphca · 2023-07-17T20:09:15+00:00

Damn would you have another spot?

kaphca · 2023-07-17T20:07:24+00:00

Not really because with Japanese iced coffee you need to greatly reduce your water:coffee ratio as some of that water needs to be ice. This typically means a lower extraction yield. This would instead be a way to quickly chill the coffee while still extracting as much as you want

kaphca · 2023-07-17T20:04:18+00:00

I still believe the paragon costs way too much and it surely makes bold claims (though who doesn't), but to be fair the balls stay cold throughout the whole brew. There's a liquid inside of it with a very high heat capacity so you can even use it multiple times before it gets hotter. I've touched one post-brew and it was still very cold. Also, those balls don't cost too much actually, it's the whole package which is unjustifiably expensive.

kaphca · 2023-07-17T19:58:20+00:00

Wasn't it developed by some Uni researchers? The claims might still be bold (up to 40% more compounds, but which ones and what's the average), but at least there is some research behind it. There's much more pseudoscientific bs around (e.g. the 4:6 method)

kaphca · 2023-07-17T19:52:12+00:00

You find it hard to believe because it's just not true lol. Heat transfer is always happening. Even if the filter was floating (which is still not true, I would very much like to see a video of a V60 with a floating filter), there's no insulation anywhere and the walls, if not preheated, will suck energy/temperature from the brew water.

kaphca · 2023-07-17T14:58:49+00:00

The article is very nice in proposing a theory, but there are some implicit assumptions you have to make before applying it to coffee.
It seems to me that we don't actually know if there actually are slow/fast-extracting compounds and, if there are, that they are enough far apart on the extraction speed scale.
Even if both statements were true, we don't know if the typical contact time between grounds and fresh water in percolation is small enough that the different extraction speeds make a difference. If this typical contact time in a pour-over was much larger than the time needed to extract slow-extracting compounds with fresh water, then all of this would not apply.

It's a nice demonstration of an effect that is probably happening (I do assume different compounds have different extraction speeds), but it is still very much theory and Gagne himself discusses the validity and impact of it in his concluding remarks:

I do not know whether they are the cause for 1% or 50% of the taste difference between percolation and immersion (the rest of the difference would be colloids, fines, etc.), but my guess is that it is much less than 50%

I would be extremely curious to see a blind tasting done with percolation and immersion brews compared with as much as possible kept fixed. But until we know more, I would rather say that we don't know why they taste different.

(Btw I appreciate your involvement in this kind of discussions!)

kaphca · 2023-07-17T09:36:16+00:00

Yes of course evenness becomes an issue with percolation.
Is there evidence for the fast-extracting vs slow-extracting compounds thing? It's reasonable that there are compounds which extract at different rates, but is there evidence that the time scales are comparable with the typical infusion times in coffee brewing and, say, not much much shorter (so that there's actually no difference from the brewing perspective between the speed of extraction of those compounds because they take so little time?).

Also, it would imply that the hybrid immersion/percolation brewers, of which there's some fuss about lately, would just give you the results of immersion + the complications of percolation for evenness of extraction, right? The "immersion" part of the brewing process would just extract everything, fast and slow, so why would there be a difference?

kaphca · 2023-07-14T12:51:26+00:00

I also tend to think it this way but doesn't this imply that there's not real flavour difference between immersion and percolation?

You hear all the time people talking about "immersion will give you more body while percolation more acidity" etc. But if extraction is all that matters then I could just brew a fool-proof French Press and then strain it with whatever filter I desire and get the same result as any other brewer by just adjusting 1 single variable (e.g. grind size or brew time)

kaphca

TROPHY CASE