What's caffeinating you today?

[T42]

I can get both of those from a French website but their minium size of bag is 1 kg, which is a bit hefty to try. I like Italian bar coffee too, though, so once I get through my current hoard I might try it - I still have a few spare valved bags to split it into.

[Hot Flatus]

I can get both of those from a French website but their minium size of bag is 1 kg, which is a bit hefty to try. I like Italian bar coffee too, though, so once I get through my current hoard I might try it - I still have a few spare valved bags to split it into.

Go careful with the Covim...they do several grades of bar coffee, one of which is pretty heavy on the robusta. I quite like a touch of it for a faint burnt rubber taste, but too much is pure shite. Ditto Kimbo, I guess.

Have a look on ebay. It might be cheaper than your French supplier (maxicoffee?)

[T42]

I can get both of those from a French website but their minium size of bag is 1 kg, which is a bit hefty to try. I like Italian bar coffee too, though, so once I get through my current hoard I might try it - I still have a few spare valved bags to split it into.

Go careful with the Covim...they do several grades of bar coffee, one of which is pretty heavy on the robusta. I quite like a touch of it for a faint burnt rubber taste, but too much is pure shite. Ditto Kimbo, I guess.

Have a look on ebay. It might be cheaper than your French supplier (maxicoffee?)

I do get most of my coffee from Maxicoffee, but the Covim was on another site, https://www.coffee-webstore.com.  Their Covim runs about 10€/kg.  Maxicoffee's Italian blend is my staple - I'd put it at ~20% robusta but not always from the same country.

Last time I was in Italy the hotel barman was serving Segafredo, and it was excellent.  I reckon it's as much the barista as the coffee.

[Ham]

I've ordered a few bags of Italian bar coffee off eBay. A bag of Covim, a Genovese roaster whose coffee I drank in Liguria, and Kimbo, a neopolitan roaster.  Still on the Lavazza 100% arabica, which isn't that bad.

FWIW (as it was you who put me onto them) the current Coffee Compass mystery stuff is, at least for me, very excellent and possibly the best quality "mystery" they have had.

[Hot Flatus]

Last time I was in Italy the hotel barman was serving Segafredo, and it was excellent.  I reckon it's as much the barista as the coffee.

I agree (to a fairly large degree), purely because the coffee experience in Italy is pretty homogenous....but I think that is down to most of the coffee being  'safe', as in pretty easy to extract. Occasionally you get the collision of poor coffee and poor barista. I don't think the bars are chopping and changing their bean suppliers very often so that lends itself to consistency. Bit like having Guinness in a pub.

The French, however, manage to use bad beans badly, so I fully appreciate why you've gone your own way with coffee.

[Hot Flatus]

I've ordered a few bags of Italian bar coffee off eBay. A bag of Covim, a Genovese roaster whose coffee I drank in Liguria, and Kimbo, a neopolitan roaster.  Still on the Lavazza 100% arabica, which isn't that bad.

FWIW (as it was you who put me onto them) the current Coffee Compass mystery stuff is, at least for me, very excellent and possibly the best quality "mystery" they have had.

Thankyou for the tip. I haven't bought from them recently...having discovered the lucky dip that is bar coffee from TKMaxx, and also Sumatran beans from Waitrose that are a reasonable price and produce a nice smoky flat white.

But, I'll have a look. What does it taste like?

[Ham]

What does it taste like?

Not sure I have the lexicon, but to me it has an excellent balance of acidity and chocolatey roundness, as you drink it it says "HERE I AM" pretty strongly up front, and hangs around after saying, "now, wasn't that fun?" (may not be the most technical review). Possibly my favourite coffee is cuban serrano, and it has features in common, but not as flavoured or nuanced. I would have thought that it would be very commonly liked, the sort of flavour you'd expect from the house coffee of a decent cafe, it's £17/Kg. Bear in mind, I never add milk.

ETA, I've tried each of their mysteries since I've started using them and this is the first I would re-order. Others have been ok, but this is good (IMO)

[T42]

The French, however, manage to use bad beans badly, so I fully appreciate why you've gone your own way with coffee.

Yes. From what I can remember a lot of bar suppliers got heavy on low-cost robusta in the 50's, until by the 70's most of it was pure robusta.  Most people put sugar in it, so it didn't matter.  At the same time, most places served it in an espresso cup filled to the brim.  The quality of bean improved a bit over the years but the full-cup habit persisted.  I have had good shots in a few places, but you have to get lucky. That's why I drink café-au-lait when I'm cycling.

[Hot Flatus]

@Ham

Thankyou. Yes, milk is a different beast. It tempers overly acidic fruity coffees into something I can bear, but it swamps the subtleties of exquisite beans. Its a quandary because I like sweet Italian bar espresso now and again, but it is bland with milk. Maybe I need two grinders and two machines? 

I got into Cuban serrano couple of decades ago after trying it in Cuba. It was roasted pretty dark and was a bit like a really good Indonesian coffee. Couldn't get it here at the time, so had to import ground pre-roasted stuff.  Then I found a source of green and roasted it myself. Sold my roaster about 6 or 7 years ago and can't be arsed with that now.

I'm still lamenting the disappearance some years ago of Harrar coffee. Had a really good earthy fruitiness that held up with a medium dark roast level. When blended with a more neutral central American bean it made an amazing flat white. Just can't find it now, or if you can it's crazy expensive and not good quality.

Will have a look at the CC Mystery

[Ham]

I still have a sneaking fondness for the two-star hotel breakfast buckets of filter that snared me in the 80s.

[Hot Flatus]

I developed a taste for the French stuff when I lived there in the very late 80s, but I can't stand it now. It didn't help arriving in France after 2 weeks in Italy.

[Ham]

@Ham

Thankyou. Yes, milk is a different beast. It tempers overly acidic fruity coffees into something I can bear, but it swamps the subtleties of exquisite beans. Its a quandary because I like sweet Italian bar espresso now and again, but it is bland with milk. Maybe I need two grinders and two machines? 

I got into Cuban serrano couple of decades ago after trying it in Cuba. It was roasted pretty dark and was a bit like a really good Indonesian coffee. Couldn't get it here at the time, so had to import ground pre-roasted stuff.  Then I found a source of green and roasted it myself. Sold my roaster about 6 or 7 years ago and can't be arsed with that now.

I'm still lamenting the disappearance some years ago of Harrar coffee. Had a really good earthy fruitiness that held up with a medium dark roast level. When blended with a more neutral central American bean it made an amazing flat white. Just can't find it now, or if you can it's crazy expensive and not good quality.

Will have a look at the CC Mystery

That CC have Cuban is the one thing that keeps me from going elsewhere. They also had an excellent Indonesia Sulawesi Kalossi Toraja, gone now.  My standard order is 2 x 500g Cuban with 1.5kg of other stuff thrown in at random.

[Hot Flatus]

I fully understand that choice. The Cuban for the security, and the random for the excitement of the unknown. CC have resisted the decade long cult of light roasting, which is why I used them.. but I'm probably 4 years out of knowing what is going on in the UK coffee world.  The hipsters came in and those expensive parchment-style websites and sleeve-tattoos had to be paid for, but it wasn't going to be me paying £8 for a 250g bag of meh.

I occasionally stray back into filters and more refined coffee, but it is an excursion that doesn't last long. I realise I am like a junkie hooked not only on the drug, but also the works and the process, and those two dense brown mousetails of ristretto emerging from the portafilter spouts have me hooked.

[Ham]

Huh. I can give it up. Anytime. Anytime I want.

[T42]

Yeah, ditto. But it would be a shame to let the 1.5 kg I have in stock go to waste. Oh, and 250g of ready-ground that MrsT picked up by mistake.

(Can you imagine the horror? Gasping for a fix shot, no coffee in the house and she comes home with ready-ground? Aargh.)

[pcolbeck]

Just got back from two weeks holiday in Provence. The pictures of the gite showed a nice shiny chrome combined espresso / filter machine in the kitchen.
Unfortunately when we got there it didn't work properly. Took about an hour to make one filter carafe and even then it was lukewarm and tasted funny.
Downloaded the manual and descaled it. No joy still didn't work properly. Not a happy bunny as I hadn't even taken my Aeropress.
Then on Monday morning stocking up on BBQ food in the Intermarche there it was, a 11 Euro very basic filter coffee machine !!!!!

And dear reader it worked. Not as fast or as well as my own at home but it did the job for the couple of weeks we were there keeping seven of us in morning coffee.

I expect when we left as soon as the rental car was out off site of the gite that the little machine gave a sigh and refused ever to work again.

[T42]

That reminds me of our first "espresso" machine, a small black Moulinex doo-dah that turned out a brown coffee-flavoured drink from ready-ground. It was palatable but you needed a lot of imagination/optimism to pretend you really enjoyed it.

[pcolbeck]

That reminds me of our first "espresso" machine, a small black Moulinex doo-dah that turned out a brown coffee-flavoured drink from ready-ground. It was palatable but you needed a lot of imagination/optimism to pretend you really enjoyed it.

As it happens the chrome thing that didnt work was a Moulinex.

[T42]

That reminds me of our first "espresso" machine, a small black Moulinex doo-dah that turned out a brown coffee-flavoured drink from ready-ground. It was palatable but you needed a lot of imagination/optimism to pretend you really enjoyed it.

As it happens the chrome thing that didnt work was a Moulinex.

That figures.  Although to be fair, our old Moulinex microwave outlasted all the others we have had.  And the Samsung we replaced it with 5 years ago already has a duff door interlock - you can turn it on without first opening and closing the door. Quite handy at times.

[T42]

Just finished a cappu made with Carrefour's "Latin American" blend, which I'm finding increasingly to my liking.  It's a very dark shiny roast, and the beans are very light.  The flavour comes through the milk very well. Nom.

I need bigger cups.

[T42]

Medium-dark roast Huehuetenango. Lovely rounded flavour.

[Hot Flatus]

Covim. And it is filth.

But I don't mind a bit of filth now and again. It's got a fair chunk of robusta in it given the burnt rubber smell and the gloopy crema. Quite nice as espresso but regrettable in milk.

[Mr Larrington]

Here at the Hotel Lumberjack we have Seattle's Best Coffee, which is no better than it was in Sea-Tac airport a few years ago but is at least free.

[T42]

A medium-dose espresso made with Carrefour's dark shiny Latin-American blend, and it wasn't half bad - low bitterness, a touch of fruitiness.

They'll probably discontinue it now.

I bought some of Super U's serve-yourself Brazilian beans the other day and it's not a patch. Made for folk who take sugar.

[Hot Flatus]

I binned about 300g remaining of the red packet Covim. It really is filth, and, whilst it's OK for a bit, it really started to grate especially since the caffeine content was really high (cheers robusta). So I cracked open the 750g bag of Waitrose Sumatra which has to be ground really fine and produces a strong smoky cup.