14th January 2024 - Coffee Makers
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While I love tea, I also fancy a coffee from time to time. It is 
something where the big and bold flavour just hits right at times. Tea 
is for slow days where you can take time to savour. Meanwhile, coffee 
is a great way to have a quick break which helps you forget the 
nonsense from before the break and reset the mind. Both have their 
uses, annoyances and delights. 

Tea is complicated and yet the kit is relatively simple. A vessel for 
brewing and a vessel for drinking is all you really need. Well other 
than a way of heating the water but that is a given when talking about 
hot drinks. Coffee on the other hand involves very complicated kit. 
Well, it can if you are not drinking instant and life is too short for 
instant bitter caffeinated hot water. There is a reason that coffee 
shops are popular and so many people take their coffee to drink else 
where. 

My journey to drinking better coffee at home started with the barista 
powdered instant stuff. This tends to involve metal tins of finely 
ground coffee. I was drinking the Nescafe Azera and Kenco Millicano. 
Both are good but fairly expensive. Thankfully, they are often on 
offer and so not too bad. It is samey stuff and I yearned to explore.

My kitchen is fairly small and lacks counter space. As such, I don't 
really want to have a big coffee machine. There is also a desire to 
not use power for more than heating water, being easy to clean and 
ideally being able to use while out and about. I do enjoy camping and 
so having the option to use else where would be nice.  

Pour over is a fairly cheap kit set and simple enough. I bought a 
Stanley classic pour over [1]. This is a metal cup with a metal filter 
which appeals as I like to avoid single use where possible and I 
dislike having to keep track of this sort of thing. In use, this was 
fairly simple but I kept having fairly bitter brews. This is mostly 
thanks to my pouring technique I think. There was also a lot of coffee 
required for one cup. The Stanley pour over is pretty good as a 
product and can brew more than one cup at a time but only if you watch 
the levels in the mugs and swap in time. This did not really work for 
me and I went hunting for alternatives. 

I ended up looking at the Wacaco Pipamoka[2]. It is an interesting 
device which has an insulated mug built in. A plastic insert has a  
screw edge and a plastic ring to move this insert up and down. A lid  
provides a seal. You fill a basket with coffee, fill the mug with  
water and drop the basket into the mug. Then you fit a lid and turn  
the ring. This then moves the plastic insert upwards, creating a  
vacuum and forcing water through the basket and producing coffee. This  
is a neat system but I found myself struggling to twist it. My hands  
are small and so I just couldn't get a good grip. I tried with gloves  
and that helped but it just became the sort of workout I don't want  
to get a coffee. My hands hurt a lot from this. It did produce nice  
coffee but I really could not be arsed with it in the end. Thankfully,  
a colleage in work likes this system so now has one for home and one  
for work. 

One thing I had noticed for a number of years was how many people in 
work end up using an Aeropress. I ended up getting an Aeropress Go, 
the portable version[3]. The key difference seems to be the inclusion 
of a travel mug/case, a rubber lid for the mug/case, a plastic cover 
for filter papers and the stirrer can fold. I quite like how well this 
all packs up. I did end up with a metal filter to avoid having to buy 
more filters although it does come with an awful lot of the paper 
ones. A metal filter forces the use of the inverted method as you end 
up with too much coffee passing through before you use the plunger. 
Operation is fairly simple. You have a plunger and a brewing sleeve. 
The inverted method involves fitting the sleeve to the plunger, 
standing it all on the plunger, filling the sleeve with coffee and hot 
water, stirring, adding the filter bit, adding a mug to the top, 
flipping it all and then pressing down on the plunger. This pushes the 
water through the coffee grounds and leaves you with coffee in the 
mug. There are lots of things you can adjust and play with but you 
simply get good coffee out. It also helps that the clear up is quick 
and simple. The grounds are compressed into a puck you can just push 
out. A quick swill of everything in water and you have a clean system 
ready to do for another mug. I really like the Aerospress but it just 
does not quite hit the espresso cravings. It is relatively cheap and 
packs down for travel pretty well. 

To try and satisfy the espresso cravings, I ended up torn between a 
Wacaco Picopresso and Staresso. Based on price alone, I ended up 
getting a Staresso [4]. This uses a plunger to create a vacuum and 
force the water through the coffee grounds. The first few attempts 
lead to rather lukewarm coffee. A preheat cycle is definitely required 
with this one! It is relatively easy to use and clean but the height 
makes it harder to find a home for. I did find the espresso had some 
crema and it tasted good. There was plenty of depth and wonder. This 
is a pretty good system but not the most portable. I would struggle to 
be confident in chucking it in a bag to brew outsdie with. There is an 
attachment for using coffee pods. After a stay in a hotel which 
provided some free pods, I gave this a go. It ended up in the pod 
exploding grounds into the cup which is frustrating. I tried changing 
things up a bit and got more explosions. Bah. 

After a year or so, I decided to try out a Moka pot. They are a 
classic and I have been curious about them for a long time. After 
doing a fair amount of reading around, I decided to give a stainless 
steel knock off of a Bialetti Venus a go. These involve heating water 
in a bottom chamber and using steam pressure to force the water 
through the grounds and out into a top chamber. They are curious 
things and both simple to use but fiddly to get good coffee out. You 
do need a stove to heat the bottom chamber. I found this reasonably 
good but mostly got more of a bitter taste than desired. Clear up is 
reasonably simple but it took a fair while to get a coffee. That might 
just be me watching a kettle boil though. I found the need to wait for 
it all to cool down a bit annoying. I will probably play a bit more 
with this but it certainly will not be my regular coffee brewing 
method. 

While I was looking at moka pots, I kept running into the picopresso 
and decided to give that a go. I had some cash from Christmas burning 
a hole in my pocket and I succumbed. Wacaco have been refining a 
'press the plunger' range of espresso makers for a number of years. 
They released the Minipresso and Nanopresso before coming up with the 
Picopresso. The Picopresso [5] is a fairly small system which has many 
bits. One of the issues is how many bits there are! There is the main 
body which has a plunger and water tank, a lid for the water tank, a 
coffee basket, a shower head which distributes water across the coffee 
basket, a nozzle to focus the output from the coffee basket into a 
single stream and a cover for the bottom. Then there is a wall for the 
coffee basket, a tamper, a proddy thing to remove clumps and a brush. 
All pack together for storage. You essentially fill the basket, tamp 
it, screw to the bottom with various water direction valves in place, 
fill the water tank and then get pumping. You get a nice crema out of 
this and the pumping is easy enough. I find my hands don't make this 
akward to use. Clear up is mildly annoying. There are lots of rubber 
bits which have lips which make things hard to dry up after washing. 
You do still need to do a heat up stage without the grounds but this 
is quite simple and quick. I have had some great espresso out of this 
and it removes the urge to go to the fancy coffee shop which is a 10 
minute drive away or a 30 odd minute walk. As I use it more, the clear 
up is quicker and quicker. I do need to learn to make the espresso and 
just enjoy the drink before cleaning the machine. This does make life 
easier in the end. While this is a costly brewer, it feels like it 
will last and I will be able to get parts in the future. It is not 
light so I am less likely to take this when I am carrying all of my 
kit. However, this is rare and the Aeropress Go works well for those 
situations. Otherwise. I think the Picopresso will feature in the 
camping gear. 

Overall, this has been about 3 years of exploring different methods. 
It has been fun and only mildly irritating. I have found grinding 
beans does help with rich flavours and it is worth the effort. Most of 
my coffee is bought from Quarter Horse Coffee, a roastery based in the 
Jewelery Quarter in Birmingham, UK. They provide interesting coffee 
which is ethically sourced and importantly tastes pretty great. There 
is lots of information about the coffee in terms of where it is grown 
and how it is processed. It feels worthwhile going to the effort of 
grinding and brewing with the coffee I can get from the Quarter Horse. 
There are lots of interesting flavours which linger for a good while 
after. Sometimes I can even identify flavours from the tasting notes. 
I tend to find tasting notes to be an exercise in madness and wishful 
thinking so being able to agree with tasting notes is a novelty.  

If someone asked me to recommend a coffee brewing kit, my first 
recommendation would be the Aeropress. Which flavour? I don't think it 
really matters. They all seem similar and they work well. They give 
you the option of making mugs or espesso cups worth of coffee which is 
always good. The ability to get reusable filters and the robust nature 
of the product make it easy to recommend. I would also recommend the 
Picopresso for those who enjoy espresso on the go. The Starpresso is 
also recommended if you want a cheaper option for espresso making but 
not fussed about travelling with it. Right time for a coffee after all 
that! 

[1] https://uk.stanley1913.com/products/classic-perfect-brew-pour-over
[2] https://www.wacaco.com/products/pipamoka
[3] https://www.aeropress.co.uk/products/aeropress-go
[4] https://staresso.com/products/sp200
[5] https://www.wacaco.com/products/picopresso
[6] https://quarterhorsecoffee.com/