Today morning I was rushing out of the house and consequently, I forgot to tote along with me the Aeropress to school and the result is a disaster! The second lecture of the day which is held from 1:30pm to...
Given how important fresh coffee is to the flavor of espresso the coffee consumer has a bit of a quandary. Coffee is at its best for about a week. Depending on the coffee it might be starting at day three...
I've done a fair amount of chronicling good coffee roasters out there, but to find a good coffee roaster, you have to wade through the bad ones. I don't plan on naming names, because I'm not out to harm folks that are...
Water – how important is it for coffee? The answer is both clear to me and not clear to me. If your water tastes terrible then it will not be good for coffee. Espresso only has two ingridients – coffee...
I've been brewing espresso seriously for about a year. This means that all of the trials and tribulations of the art form are still fresh on my mind. I thought I'd share some of the lesser known ones that I...
Puckstrology is practiced in some circles of the coffee world. The dark secret world centering around espresso where the line between myth and reality blurs. I am not talking about something mysterious like having your fortune told by a mystic...
Europe or America – who makes the best espresso? This is an interesting question. The answer is that there is no correct answer and it depends on your perspective. I think there is no question that if you stumble into...
Dialing in the grind at least to the first approximation of where it should be on a pump machine is not too hard in the sense that you can monitor if the shot when pulling a double is producing two...
I have come into possesion of a handful of commercial espresso machines and I seem to notice a common theme in all of those machines. They all are dirty, stink and full of crap in the groupheads, portafilters and boilers....
So I encountered a problem with the NS Musica today morning! I woke up at 6am in the morning and turn on the NS Musica the first thing when I woke up. I started brew my first shot of espresso...
You know an item has made it big when it becomes the first word in a travel package. Make way for the coffee vacation, the latest thing in expensive coffee breaks. No stay on a coffee plantation this, but here's...
This is a write up of the main differences between the Pavoni lever machines for those who may want to start out a coffee voyage with a lever. When I was looking for one I had to search for quite...
I'm really interested in obtaining a hand grinder for for grinding coffee at my school to be used with the Aeropress. Currently, for coffee at my school, I just preground my coffee on the Vario into an airtight container or...
I have been in the past have to oportunity to use several lever espresso machines such as La Pavoni profesional, La Pavoni euripicola which is essentially a smaller capacity version of the profesional and a Ponte Vecchio Lusso. These two...
http://www.baristalab.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/600x600/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/n/u/nuova-simonelli-musica-life.jpg" height="600" width="600" /> Image is not mine, copied from BaristaLab.com Today is an exciting day! I have just acquire a new espresso machine and it is the Nuova Simonelli Musica from a defunct restaurant. It was a really dirty...
I have more questions than answers lately. Life is full of "why's" and not enough answers. Today's burning question is this: Why is it so hard to remove the double spout on my portafilter? I have a really nice single...
In Japan, small apartments and busy people make it hard for many animal lovers to have live-in pets. So a purrfect solution has been found. Many Japanese coffee shops started bringing in host cats, critters that are more a decoration...
Lever machines with a Pavoni focus The La Pavoni is a manual lever machine, which is one of the common machines that people buy when they decide to make a foray into expensive espresso machines. New they run at least...
How do you know when to stop a shot of espresso? The thing most people do when they are first learning is they stop the shot when the cup is full. If you are lucky this will work, but this...
Ah, good ol' Grumpy. This was the last stop on my fantastic voyage. My girlfriend and I were returning to Chelsea after watching Follies on Broadway (her idea, not mine), when we passed right by the café. I'd like to...
Aeropress coffee Vs. Espresso To continue my rant with the aeropress, I'm going to compare it to my favorite coffee brewing method which is espresso. In contrary to what aeropress advertising, which they claim that the aeropress can make espresso;...
