Enkerli Senior Member Joined: 1 Aug 2004 Posts: 711 Location: Montreal, Qc Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: (At cafés, not at home) Grinder: Hario hand grinders Vac Pot: (Moka Pot) Bialetti Brikka Drip: Steep and release pour-over Roaster: iRoast-2
Posted Wed Aug 17, 2011, 1:10am Subject: Re: Confessions of a Brikka Lover
RaptorHornet Said:
So there it is. If you're worried about dust coming from your grinder, go ahead and break up the beans first at rock gravel setting and sieve out the dust before grinding it again at your desired setting.
Thing is, I’m not worried about fines, as I get very little. Maybe something to do with the roast? I notice that darker beans are more friable… So you got a fine enough mesh? Or maybe you grind coarser than I thought. I’ll try with as fine a sieve as I can find.
Posted Wed Aug 17, 2011, 2:44am Subject: Re: Confessions of a Brikka Lover
Maybe something to do with the roast? I notice that darker beans are more friable…
Maybe. The guy at the local roaster told me they roast all their beans until medium but when I look at the color and the tiny bits of oil clinging on the bean surface, I'm thinking full City+ to light french. Too bad I can't make special requests. That'd be pretty cool. Maybe I'll have an easier time grabbing flavors at lighter roasts.
So you got a fine enough mesh? Or maybe you grind coarser than I thought. I’ll try with as fine a sieve as I can find.
Not that fine actually. Holes are about 1mm more or less. That's why I do road gravel first before the real deal. I'll be buying a finer mesh sooner or later. I'm hoping I can find something with holes less than .5mm.
Enkerli Senior Member Joined: 1 Aug 2004 Posts: 711 Location: Montreal, Qc Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: (At cafés, not at home) Grinder: Hario hand grinders Vac Pot: (Moka Pot) Bialetti Brikka Drip: Steep and release pour-over Roaster: iRoast-2
Posted Wed Aug 17, 2011, 7:35am Subject: Re: Confessions of a Brikka Lover
Full City+ is still fairly light, by the way. My sweet spot is between FC and Vienna, depending on bean and use. I wouldn’t say beans get noticeably friable until light French. But, despite having been roasting for nine years, I’m still not sure my characterizations are spot on and there’s a possibility that my descriptors are off.
RaptorHornet Said:
Not that fine actually. Holes are about 1mm more or less. That's why I do road gravel first before the real deal.
Posted Wed Aug 17, 2011, 12:48pm Subject: Re: Confessions of a Brikka Lover
Just thought i would check in here - loving my new Brikka too. First cup from my smaller 2 cup version of this brewer in the photo - 14g Klatch Gedeo Worka at 3 days rest, 14 out of 40 grind w/Baratza Virtuoso calibrated for fine grinding, 90mL water. Tastes very much like a shot from my Gaggia - the brightness and mouth feel is very similar too.
(Click for larger image)
I chew coffee beans with my teeth while gargling with 195 F water to enjoy coffee. What is this "coffee brewing" device you speak of?
Enkerli Senior Member Joined: 1 Aug 2004 Posts: 711 Location: Montreal, Qc Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: (At cafés, not at home) Grinder: Hario hand grinders Vac Pot: (Moka Pot) Bialetti Brikka Drip: Steep and release pour-over Roaster: iRoast-2
Posted Wed Aug 17, 2011, 6:02pm Subject: Re: Confessions of a Brikka Lover
Hey Eric, Thanks for dropping by! Sounds like a nice shot. Sometimes, the Brikka highlights different things than espresso, but getting a similar result is something some people strive for. Have you been using moka pots much, in the past?
Now that you mentioned it, I did try sieving after grinding just this morning. I only had a 1mm mesh so I decided on doing presspot brew using my aeropress. I set my grinder for a ±1.3mm size and after the whole grinding/sieving rigmarole, I discovered that only 7 of the 12 grams of beans I used stayed above the 1mm range. That's more or less 50% of inconsistency right there. I was planning to do a 6oz brew but given the circumstances, I settled for a 4oz. Now I definitely need to buy a finer mesh if I'm going to try drip brewing again. Just the thought of all that dust I have to deal with disturbs me already.
Oh and the coffee was fantastic by the way. Never in my life have I drank black coffee that was incredibly smooth and clean. The cooler it got in the cup, the more it resembled the aroma of the grounds pre-brewing. It was by far the best cup of coffee I have ever made.
EricBNC Said:
Tastes very much like a shot from my Gaggia - the brightness and mouth feel is very similar too.
Great to know. Now I want to buy one even more. I also badly need to switch to a 2-cup since there's just too much grounds needed for using my 4-cup.
On another note: I'm also thinking of getting a Gaggia Baby as my final coffee investment. Hopefully, the ones being sold here are models with the 3-way valve.
By the way, your signature is bloody hilarious. I can just imagine Chuck Norris doing that to brew his coffee.
Even nicer! As you might notice, moka pot brewing is a thing in itself. Or, maybe, some of us who are “into” moka pot brewing are a weird bunch… ;-) Since it sounds like you have an impressive coffee arsenal, may I suggest adding a Moka Express to the lot? You can easily get a “6 cup” one for about 25$ and you might enjoy the brewing experience. The reason I say this is that you quickly got the hang of things. Some people have a bit of difficulty getting good results at first, maybe because they use too high a heat level (my hypothesis), or because they don’t use the right amount of grounds. With a Moka Express, you don’t get the crema-like emulsion and the mouthfeel can be quite different from espresso. But it also allows you to experience other dimensions of the same coffee. One thing I like and that we’ve discussed a bit, recently, is the way the scent of a bigger moka pot can fill the room. A Brikka can do very well with aromas in the cup, but it typically doesn’t cause the air to be imbued with a nice coffee smell.
Wow! Nice! These moments really do a lot to get you to understand coffee in a new way. It’s like a breakthrough. In this case, it sounds like you’ll be able to reproduce the experience, which is very useful. At the same time, you’re not stuck on this one way to make coffee and you’ll continue experimenting with other methods. So, it’s a bit like a confidence builder, though you probably knew that you’d be able to consistently improve the quality of your coffee.
And now that you’ve been mentioning issues with fines, I’ve been getting a few SaRPoD batches with a bit of “sludge” at the bottom of the cup. My current “omnigrind” is on the fine side of things, for me, and I’m using bamboo filters. Wouldn’t say that the impact on taste is that negative. And I really don’t mind these fines, from a practical standpoint. What’s funny is that I don’t get them in other methods. Maybe the holes in a bamboo filter are really very big. Even the Coava disk doesn’t really let fines through. Of course, there’s more to fines than what’s in the cup. By increasing the surface area, they probably cause overextraction. In a French Press, that’s a real risk and, with about 40% of the total amount of grounds, that’s a very significant difference which could be made. Again, grind consistency isn’t a factor I’ve been considering. It’s quite possible that getting a more consistent grind would greatly improve my coffee. And sieving the grounds sounds like an easy way to palliate my grinder’s shortcomings, assuming they’re quite significant. Since getting my Hario handmills, I was under the impression that the grind consistency was quite decent. But I never really looked into it and my assumptions may be false. A friend, who’s used other hand grinders but mostly uses a Rocky at home (and has been in the biz for a while) just assumes that my Hario mills grind very inconsistently. Though he might be right, I wasn’t thinking much about the difference it’d make. So, you’re encouraging me to experiment more.
Posted Thu Aug 18, 2011, 2:58am Subject: Re: Confessions of a Brikka Lover
Just to go back to the discussion about moka brewing methods:
It's possible that doing the standard method (i.e. put cold water, assemble, then brew) might actually give a better cup. I have a hario vac pot that I occasionally use and the idea there is to boil the water before assembling the top container because a premature assembly leads to poorly heated water rising to the top container. Since a stovetop, on the other hand, heats up water much much more aggressively than a vac pot, it might actually be more beneficial to go the opposite route and assembling everything immediately to avoid (or atleast lessen) extracting the grounds with boiling water.
The downside of this, like I mentioned before, is that the top part is gonna be awfully hot when the coffee starts pouring out but since you have a spray bottle on hand, you could simply disperse some cool water in there when you think it's getting too hot and that should be enough to avoid boiling the coffee.
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