Official Luthiers Forum!

1) Roast your own or find a local place to do it. Sweet Maria's is great but the shipping gets very expensive.

2) Don't use it the day it's roasted. It needs a day to de-gas.

3) The grinder means more than the coffee. It's all about how much water flows through what grind of bean. Ground roasted coffee loses much of the aromatic oils after a few minutes.
UN-ground roasted coffee loses most flavor after four days (peaks at 4 days or so- goes downhill from there)

Most people in the U.S. don't realize they are drinking dead coffee all the time. Starbucks included.
I use a local roaster, grind the roast in a grinder that is almost restaurant quality (about as big as the espresso machine) then pull espresso shots as the base for all the coffee drinks at a 25-30 second shot max.
If your jittery drinking espresso it's the sugar most likely. Espresso has less caffeine than a cup of coffee due to the faster water extraction times.

PM me if you need more info. Coffee and inlay are two things I go a little crazy over

Craig L

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www.handcraftinlay.com

wasn't it back here for a while?
I meant to say the grinder is more important than the coffee MACHINE. Not the coffee...

Fancy machines aren't going to make better coffee. They just do more tricks and make it all one step.

Good luck!
Craig

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www.handcraftinlay.com

There are some excellent tips in this thread!

I too HATE Starbucks and all the other burned bean coffees! Yuck!

I wondered why I could go to many restaurants and get good coffee, and yet coffee at home was always a gamble. So, I started paying more attention to the

BEANS: I buy organic, medium-roasted beans. I can't find any fair-traded or shade-grown medium roast in my town, though now that I just found the Cameron's on-line site I'll order some. Cameron's Mexican Altura and Breakfast Blend are my local choices.

GRIND: Though I'll now look into a real mill, my cheap solution is a grinder with blades. However, not the round ones, the ones that have a D-shaped grinder cavity. That shape bounces the beans off the flat wall, and into the path of the blades. The idea is that powdered coffee beans make muddy, crappy tasting coffee every time. Beans that don't get ground are an expensive waste. The ideal is to have all the beans ground to an even consistency - closer to flakes than powder. For me and my cheap grinder, that means adding about the same amount of beans each time, and grinding for about the same amount of time (happens to be about 8 seconds for me.) A better grinder or mill that drops the flakes away from the mill wheel or blades would be an upgrade.

WATER: I agree about the distilled water, but I use Brita filtered tap water. (Again, cheap, but not as pure or consistent as distilled.) If I want the coffee to be stronger (not more bitter, just stronger), I preheat the water before adding it to the coffee maker. Hotter water draws out more oils. However, don't use hot water from the tap. If you start with hot tap water, you're getting the flavor of the mineral sludge in your hot water heater. I believe that's where the old adage about starting with cold water comes from. Restaurant coffeemakers typically heat water to a higher temperature than home brewers, and so I believe that higher water temperature is one of the "secrets" of better coffee. With a higher temperature, you can use a bit less ground coffee and get a better flavor.

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Add me to the list of starbucks haters.... I just plain cant stand the stuff they serve. I have tried to drink it several times, but cant find anything they have that is tasteful.

I have traveled all over north and south america and one thing I look forward to every morning is my coffee. Matter of fact, I drink coffee all day long. The best coffee I have ever found was in Venezuela. It was a local brand.... never have been able to find it again. It was actually ground extremely fine and was meant for expresso machines. One teaspoon full of it would make a full Mr Coffee urn and it would be full and rich flavored but never bitter. I bought 5 pounds of it while I was there and it lasted me for years because I would only use it for special occasions and when I had company over.

wish I could get my hands on some more of it!

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Reguards,

Ken H

I might add that this coffee was sold in San Christobal, Venezuela which is near the equator in southern Venezuela. If anyone is ever going down that way, I'd be happy to pay for part of their trip just to get some more of that coffee!

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Reguards,

Ken H

Ken, do I hear a "group buy" coming on? We haven't done one of those in a while.   

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Nah, don`t make Lance do all that packaging and shipping.

We could just all show up at his place with our OLF mugs and hang out like a bunch of junkies at a crackhouse picnic.

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Give me 50 cents worth of regular.
Check my oil too, if you don`t mind,,,

Bruce, I'll do some checkin when I get a chance. What color did your GGfather wear?

He was mustered in at Fostoria, Ohio. My guess he was a Yank. He was dead within six months. I did find him on the muster rolls and listed as injured on the first day of the Second battle of Winchester Virginia and died three weeks later. I too believe he was evacuated to Harper's Ferry. But as to his burial, that eluded me. George Washington Adams was his name.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Bruce, was G W Adams from Kentucky or Ohio?

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Ohio. I think he lived in a nearby community to Fostoria. Later the family moved over to Warsaw, Indiana. But Civil War Service was Ohio.....

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

It's the recipe that counts, from my Mom.

1 tablespoon (Not Level) for every two cups of water.
add 1 additional tablespoon (again not level) of espresso.

Brew and enjoy.

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Michael Lloyd

“I was born to ignorance, yes, and lesser poverties ...
I was born to privilege that I did not see ... I didn’t know it, but my way was paved” – John Gorka

1 Tablespoon of ___________________?

to 2 Cups of water.

1 Tablespoon of espresso What? _________________

to how much total water? __________________

Help us out here.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

[QUOTE=Bruce Dickey]Ken, do I hear a "group buy" coming on? We haven't done one of those in a while.    [/QUOTE]

I would gladly do that!

San Christobal is one of those places that you go to on purpose. It is in the middle of the Andes mountain range, and very close to the equator. I would almost sweat to death in the daytime and then freeze to death at night. It is hard to believe that it gets that cold when you are at the equator! These people are about 50 years behind us in technology. When you get just a half mile out of town, you are in the middle of tribes people that eek out a living any way they can. Nobody in the USA knows what poverty is. I have seen poverty first hand and nothing in the USA would be considered poverty. Seeing what I have seen, it makes me appreciate the things I do have MUCH more than I ever did before.

I also went out and hand picked some coffee beans, which grow in the understory of the rain forest and mountains. Not how I had pictured coffee growing at all since all I had seen was juan valdez and his terraced slopes filled with coffee bushes. This coffee grew in the shade on the side of a steep mountain. It was extremely rich coffee but not in the slightest bit bitter tasting. I'd love to have more of it!

I have been to Venezuela 6 times over the last few years. Unfortunately the political unrest there and the outward posturing toward Americans would prohibit me from going there again any time soon.

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Reguards,

Ken H