Modern Espresso vs traditional

[Ckmaui]

Wow, that Flair 58! That is one gorgeous piece of art. Don’t watch the video on their site if you don’t have $500 burning in your pocket. Anyone wanna trade a Toggle for one lol?
The Baratza Encore is an amazing mid priced grinder and the burr upgrade for espresso is not expensive. Love this thread. Good pulls everyone!

also look into the Cafelat Robot IMHO the robot makes a better espresso quite easily but like shave gear get what you like

have one and the thing is incredible for full manual setup that I could get shots that I was satisfied with and that was comparing to my Elektra A3

 

[Dobric]

There is no old or new espresso.
There is espresso, and there is capsule coffee...
Capsule coffee is crap IMO, but as they say YMMV

 

[street]

It's all about the coffeebeans you like.Buy them fresh ( between 0-8 weeks after roasting) and you should make good coffee.
I always use my Bialetti for my morning cup .

 

[street]

NICE and looks like a mahlkoenig there to ?

Yes.My K30 vario.

 

[Dnallehekaj]

There is no old or new espresso.
There is espresso, and there is capsule coffee...
Capsule coffee is crap IMO, but as they say YMMV

There is a third wave take on espresso that is very different than traditional, Italian style espresso. It is very different from traditional espresso in both texture and flavor. It is made using the same types of espresso machines, but it is a very different result.

 

[Leverspro]

Great thread! Brewing coffee is a great ritual with lots of rewards, relationships and rabbit holes.

 

[Luc]

Time for an update.

I'm getting a fairly consistent brew at the moment with different grains (I don't always buy the same coffee). My conclusions are:

-A tamper is very useful. I tap my coffee when I hit 16 grams to make sure that I can squeeze an extra 2 grams (18 grams total) in my coffee maker (boo, boo, I know, I'm not supposed to do that but it works). I really need to do that if the bean is very oily.
-My el-cheapo Bodum coffee grinder still works. I understand it may not be the best but the grinding is pretty good. It seems that it had to run for a bit before getting there. Like a new car... It's set on finest and I get decent grinding now but it took months.
-I've been using distilled water for years and I'm not ready to change to tap or filtered water.

When the family comes over, they bring their own coffee beans now so that I can prepare it for them. I don't know if it's a good thing but all of them said that I beat whatever coffee they drank.

 

[Luc]

I did another clean-up on the Bodum grinder yesterday. I started by using the air compressor. I briefly disappeared behind a brown (look-a-like) sandstorm. After spraying my shirt, hair, and pants I finished the cleaning by grinding a cup of uncooked rice (setting medium).

I then used around 1/2 of coffee beans to get the rice out (+ a paintbrush to brush what I can).

What prompted the cleaning was the motor slowing down. Also, my coffee was taking well over 40 seconds to brew. Finally, I was easily able to stuff 18 grams without much effort using the tamper.

So, post-cleaning, I lowered the setting a bit(from minimum/finest toward 2 notches coarser). The result is coming back to what I had 3 months ago (around 25 secs for the brew). Crema is still great.