Hope to have a review of the Behmor up by the end of the week, but in the meantime…
Musings on Coffee Culture From Ireland
Archives for category: Machines
The Anfim Haus Self doserless burr grinder.
Every grinder involves a set of compromises. The general trend is that these compromises can be reduced in correlation to the amount of money forked over. Having gone through 6 or 7 grinders in the last year, I am all too aware of the pitfalls. Currently I have two grinders on the go, a Macap M4, which I use for espresso, and a Nuova Simonelli Grinta which picks up the slack when it comes to all other grinds. While the Grinta could also be used for espresso there were certain drawbacks which I felt necessitated a dedicated grinder. Clumping is probably primary among these drawbacks. Clumping, for those unfamiliar, generally affects fine espresso grinds, on flat-burr grinders. As the grinds are ejected from the burr chamber they adhere to each other in little balls. This is a problem as it creates an uneven density of grinds in the puck, which leads in turn to uneven extractions and channelling. Of course there are ways to alleviate this effect (such as the Weiss Distribution Technique), but I was unhappy with having to introduce this extra step. So I bought the Macap which has a doser that conveniently breaks up any clumps prior to entering the portafilter. Another issue with the Grinta is grind retention in the region between the burr chamber and the exit chute. This leads to unnecessary waste, having to grind several grams through the grinder if there is more than a couple of minutes between shots (to avoid stale grinds). To a greater or lesser extent this is a problem with nearly every grinder.
After a month of hiatus on the site, which entailed creating the new look and format, here’s some meagre content…
As you can see, I picked up some new toys, most notable of which was a Brewtus III, all the way from the good people of Casa Barista in the Netherlands.
Very shiny. Fingerprints beware!
Surely Bodum are the Apple of the kitchenware world. The Danish company seems to have an innate ability to combine the best in design with the best in functionality that makes many of its competitors seem devoid of inspiration. A quick glance around my kitchen reveals no fewer than 14 Bodum items loitering about, including but not limited to two French Presses, a Santos vacuum brewer, 4 Pavina glasses, an Assam tea pot, and a travel mug. You could say I’m a Bodum junkie. Specifically in relation to coffee, Bodum has been making their French Press in its various design refinements since 1974, and I have not come across a better implementation of this type of brewing. Of course to make a really great cup of French Press coffee (or any other type of coffee really) you need a good quality grinder. For people getting into making great coffee at home this is often the biggest obstacle, as while €300+ may seem to make sense for a fancy espresso machine, something that turns big bits of coffee into little bits of coffee doesn’t seem like as much value. In an ideal world I’d tell everyone to go out and buy a Macap or a Mazzer, but in reality most people will start with a €20 whirly blade grinder or maybe a €50 Krups “burr” grinder (burr is in exclamation marks for a reason). Normally I would say that the minimum you need to spend on a decent introductory grinder would be about €120, which would get you a Solis 166 (aka Starbucks Barista), or maybe an Iberital MC2. However, Bodum have a conical burr grinder called the Antigua, which can be bought new for as little as €60. This lead to a conflict in my thoughts: Bodum = good / €60 grinder = bad.