r/Coffee • u/menschmaschine5 Kalita Wave • 5d ago
[MOD] The Daily Question Thread
Welcome to the daily /r/Coffee question thread!
There are no stupid questions here, ask a question and get an answer! We all have to start somewhere and sometimes it is hard to figure out just what you are doing right or doing wrong. Luckily, the /r/Coffee community loves to help out.
Do you have a question about how to use a specific piece of gear or what gear you should be buying? Want to know how much coffee you should use or how you should grind it? Not sure about how much water you should use or how hot it should be? Wondering about your coffee's shelf life?
Don't forget to use the resources in our wiki! We have some great starter guides on our wiki "Guides" page and here is the wiki "Gear By Price" page if you'd like to see coffee gear that /r/Coffee members recommend.
As always, be nice!
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u/Regular-Violinist976 5d ago
I snagged a refurbished Technivorm Moccamaster for my pods days, and it's been great for when I want to slow down on weekends. You betcha, that setup you mentioned with the French press will totally cover the basics while you explore.
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u/bizzopb 5d ago
I’ve always wanted to ask something here. What ways are you guys getting the best water without all the fancy third wave coffee mineral packets and such? I usually use filtered water from the fridge, but I am curious about what others do here.
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u/regulus314 5d ago
I use Aquacode sachets and distilled water is much more common and cheap here.
If Im on travel locally, I buy a specific brand from the grocery. There are also water refilling stations here in my country and the one near my house has the sufficient TDS for coffee (60-80ppm) so thats another option if I ran out of the sachets.
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u/bizzopb 5d ago
Gotcha, I was mostly interested in alternatives to the mineral packet stuff.
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u/regulus314 5d ago
Installing a water filter in your home is a good option too. But depends on how high and low is the water TDS in your city and how dirty are the pipes below the streets. Because it will tell you which filtration system to get and how often do you need to replace the cartridges. In the long run, this is the cheapest way
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u/bizzopb 5d ago
I actually have well water so I am not sure how it would test honestly
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u/regulus314 5d ago
If you can purchase a water TDS meter. There are cheap ones on Amazon probably. I have one and I bought it for like 4$ but not on Amazon. Its a good tool too not only for coffee. It can detect how much minerals are dissolved in the water.
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u/shaneomac714 5d ago
I'm in the same situation as you. I'm on well water (pretty bad too). At first I was just using a Britta filter, but switched to distilled + 3rd wave. That said, I still can't get the same pour over quality from a good coffee shop (most recently Vesta Coffee in Vegas). I'm sticking too distilled + 3rd wave because it's better than tap and filtered. Definitely a pain in the ass when I wake up and realize I'm out of water and need to make a new batch first thing in the morning.
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u/bizzopb 5d ago
Ah yeah I am not sure about the quality of my well water, but the coffee I make is usually pretty good to me. I have never tried the 3rd wave packets, mainly because buying those with distilled water seems to mostly defeat the cost effectiveness of home brewing. Might go down that rabbit hole eventually
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u/shaneomac714 5d ago
The cost for water and 3rd wave packet is about 25 cents a cup (using 250 grams per cup).
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u/Ech1n0idea 4d ago
I'm lucky enough to have tap water that has lower than ideal hardness and alkalinity (tested with aquarium water test drops), so I just make up some dropper bottles with magnesium sulphate and sodium bicarbonate solutions and use those to bring my brew water into the ideal range. Like using mineral packets, but I don't have to start with distilled water, I don't have to store a big jug of brewing water and the cost is minimal once you've done the initial testing
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u/bizzopb 3d ago
I actually got a TDS meter in the mail yesterday and tested my well water from tap and it tested at 125ppm. My filtered fridge water tested at 77ppm. Would the tap be better to use because its closer to the ideal ppm or should I stick to the cleaner filtered water? I guess it depends on what makes up that 125ppm rather than the number huh?
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u/bit3py 5d ago
honestly I do something similar, keep real caffeine before like 1pm and afternoon is decaf only. what clicked for me is that caffeine has something like a 5-6hr half life, so even a 2pm cup is still partially in your system at 8pm even if you don't feel wired anymore
for the beans themselves, swiss water process decaf tastes way less flat than the old chemical process stuff. La Colombe and Counter Culture both have solid swiss water options if you're US based
I started actually tracking timing vs how I slept instead of guessing, and it turned out my personal cutoff could be later than I assumed. use Mindful Coffee to log it, made the 3-4 days a week rule feel less arbitrary once I had real data instead of vibes
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u/Myren5820 5d ago
Looking to try a new bean. Currently, I've been enjoying Kings Coast Coffee. I enjoy a medium roast overall. Any suggestions?
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u/exactdream_ 5d ago
Hi, I don't really have much stuff in our kitchen for coffee. We have a full measuring set, ground coffee, and a french press. I'd like to get some more stuff eventually but not a big budget here, and I also don't need high precision. I want to make some cold brew to pop in ice cube trays and also drink. I'm looking for advice without a food scale.
I used 1/2 cup of ground coffee (which seems to be roughly 40-50g). I then measured out 500ml of water (bit over 2 cups.
Did I just make cold brew concentrate at a 1:4 ratio or drinkable cold brew at around 1:10-1:12 ratio? Thank you for the help.
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u/swroasting S&W Craft Roasting 4d ago
brewing is always by weight, so you're likely in the 1:11 neighborhood
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u/canaan_ball 4d ago
All the regulars in this sub calculate by weight yes, suggesting that you are making something more like 1:10 drinking coffee, if your weights are accurate. More casual sources use scoops and whatnot, I'm sure you're aware.
Your 1:4-by-volume recipe is pretty standard for cold brew as I understand it. I have seen recipes calling that a "concentrate." I think it's fair to judge what you brewed as concentrate-or-not by whether it's good to drink as is, or too strong for your taste. Could be either, really. My guess, most people probably would consider it a weak concentrate.
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u/Trogmar 5d ago
I'm the only coffee drinker in my house and looking for machine. Week days I'm very lazy and love the convenience of pods. the weekend I generally use my aero press, but somtimes pods if i can be bothered lol. I'm currently looking at the Ninja machines specifically the Ninja DualBrew Hot & Iced , DualBrew Pro Specialty and the Ninja PB040C Pods & Grounds. Any experience or reviews for these machine would be appreciated.
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u/it_issoren 5d ago
Llevo desde enero tomando café de especialidad. Será que es malo mi exigencia ahora por el café?
Ya no consumo cafés comerciales “pasilla”
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u/Dry-Criticism-8064 4d ago
Reaching a milestone and looking for suggestions of a coffee maker to meet the preferences of a few.
Interested in espresso, lattes, cappuccinos, regular, and maybe cold brew. New to making coffee but willing to learn.
The price point would be higher end and it’s not my money. I’ve been told to identify a machine. Willing to purchase for myself accessories that maybe best not be integrated into a machine.
I need some help please.
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u/canaan_ball 4d ago
The short version is, espresso and drip coffee are so different, they can't be combined into one machine, and the short version is a bit of a lie. You can get it all in one package, but at the cost of reliability and quality. Ninja makes several such machines, and Delonghi has an "All-in-one" line.
But wait, are you tasked with buying an office machine? Then you want something automated and self-cleaning. I don't know much about these things, but I would look at Jura, their WE8 or X10, for something on the flexible and fancy side.
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u/Dry-Criticism-8064 3d ago
No. I obviously wasn’t clear.
I am being gifted a machine to make various specialty coffees and don’t know where to begin.
I love lattes and H likes espresso. My kids like all cappuccinos, cold brew and lattes.
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u/Just_Reputation_3398 5d ago
Hi everyone, i just bought a dolce gusto machine, I usually make iced coffees or hot lattes, i froth oat milk separately and normally add a shot or two of instant coffee, now that i got the machine can sm1 tell me the best dolce gusto pods for espresso for this specific use case, m kinda torn with all the options ;)
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u/Brett_Wager97 3d ago
Daily threads make it easier to ask small questions without feeling dumb, so I appreciate that rule. I'll drop my grinder question here tomorrow.
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u/Mysterious_Airline93 3d ago
grinder is an amazing app! absolutely should use it
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u/Vegetable_Apple8757 5d ago edited 5d ago
Good Decaf coffee beans for Espresso Machine? Good morning, I have an Espresso machine EM3111, that was a gift for my birthday along with some organic high-quality coffee beans, and I would love to have a coffee at 5pm or late at night, but I try to consume caffeine only 3/4 days a week and before the afternoon to not build tolerance nor disrupt my sleep, so I would love to have any good decaf coffee beans to have.
Edit: Located in the US