paulraphael

It would be fun to experiment with. The moka pot coffee I've made has been on the bitter side, but not in an unslalvageable burnt office coffee way. I didn't know what I was I doing (just using the resident pot at an air b&b). I suppose it's a given that you'll be brewing with 212° water, so that might be tricky to compensate for.

When I was a kid my dad bought a coffee roaster and experimented with it for a few weeks. I don't know why ... he's not an obsessive nerd like me. I was thrilled that he dropped it because roasting day made the whole apartment smell like a tire fire.

Just to keep it simple, there is exactly one definition of espresso: coffee produced by forcing hot water through coffee grounds at very high pressure, typically 9 atmospheres. There's a bit of wiggle room with the pressure, but if it's much lower than that it's not espresso. For example, a "moka pot" aka "stovetop espresso maker" can make good coffee, but it's not espresso. These contraptions produce about 1.5 atmospheres of pressure. The result doesn't resemble the flavor or viscosity of the real thing. The pressure requirement isn't arbitrary; a major part of what characterizes espresso is that the high pressure emulsifies the oils from the coffee bean. This creates the syrupy mouthfeel. Other factors that have been mentioned—grind size, water temperature, etc.—are incidental to the process. You need a fine grind size to make the process work, and uniform grind to make it work well, but the pressure is what makes it espresso. The correct water temperature (which can vary from 196°F to 205°F) is important for dialing in the right flavor, but this is no different from other coffee processes, in principle. There is absolutely no correlation between roast and espresso. The idea of an "espresso roast" is a con. It was a way of convincing people they could simulate the taste of real espresso by brewing coffee with burnt beans. Most 3rd wave coffee roasters don't even go anywhere near the 2nd crack in the roasting process, because they want you to be able to taste the beans. Even traditionalists in Italy ... their dark-roasted espresso is usually what we'd call a "city" or "full city" roast in the US (medium roasts). Nowhere near black and oily. If you want to taste the full flavor and origin character of the coffee, you need a light or medium-light roast.

Well, I want to experiment with it at the urging of a chef I know personally and respect completely, who is not shilling anything. Acids are all different. Saying that "Balsamic does pretty much the same thing as verjus, and is far cheaper" is a head scratcher. Where I live, real balsamic vinegar costs around $30 an ounce; fake supermarket balsamic is useful for basically nothing; and neither tastes anything like unaged, unfermented acidic juice. I would consider them to be at opposite ends of the flavor spectrum when looking for an acid. FWIW, my current go-to acids (in order of brightness to roundness) are pure citric acid, lemon juice, fino sherry vinegar or grenache vinegar, palomino sherry vinegar, moscatel or pedro ximenez sherry vinegar, and reduced wine. I probably use more px sherry vinegar than everything else put together, at least these days. I want to play with verjuice for the brighter end of the spectrum, for things where I currently use lemon juice or the lighter vinegars. Edited to add: the main acids in unripe grapes are tartaric and malic, which should lead us to expect a quite different character from the usual citric and acetic acid-based potions.

Mezzalunas belong on the wall. They're pretty. And a they're lousy tools. Cutting herbs is one of the more delicate tasks in the kitchen (I knew a chef who considered it the most highly skilled prep job; you'd graduate to herbs after mastering butching fish and cutting sushi). A curved piece of lawnmower blade steel that you'd probably never sharpen even if you knew how is probably the last tool for the job.

Just make sure the cord is rated for enough current. Without looking at the specs I'd guess the thing can draw close to 9 amps.

It's got egg white, egg shell, egg yellow ...

That's $30/ lb. I pay roughly $20/lb for Stumptown or Toby's Estate. And that seems like a pretty crazy price to me ... it's high enough that I really just drink it on the weekends. But I'd be happy to come sample the Norwegian coffee any time ...

Yikes, that's gotta be expensive. I'm sure it's great, but it seems excessive paying shipping and also Norwegian prices. You like them so much more than the stuff roasted at your doorstep?

Dave Martell at Japanesecharpening.com said that the steel in Globals such a nuissance to sharpen that he doens't do it on Japanese waterstones anymore. He treats them like European knives and sharpens them on a belt sander. He finds the steel unusually gummy and difficult to deburr.

Thanks so much, Chris. I'm curious to compare results to my current methods. It's interesting that they give refrigerator proofing as an option. My sourdough culture just goes to sleep in the fridge ... it would never work. I used to do it all the time with commercial yeast.

Anyone cook with this? Recommended brand and where to find? Preferably something not too exotic?

Are you trying to figure out how to get similar results more economically? I'm not trying to get any more flavor than it already has. It's pretty intense.

Yes, many experiments with temperature and time. Things were a little different than brewing into water, partly because there are other ingredients affecting flavor perception, and possibly because the solubility of many compounds into fat is different than into water. I got the best results with a temperature that's 4°C hotter than what I like for press pot coffee. The way I'm extracting is very much like using a press pot, only it's sealed, to keep the aromatics in, and I chill it before opening and straining. It wastes a ziploc bag, and gives you a strainer to clean, but otherwise isn't more work than making coffee. You got me thinking that maybe intead of using a chinois (which takes about 10 minutes to fully strain everything) I could pour the brewed mix into my press pot and strain with the plunger.

Interesting read. That mostly fits my experience in Rome a couple of years ago, where the espressos were all good, but had a bit more of a "comfort shot" feel than what I get at the best US coffee shops these days. Not dark roasts, but a little darker. More emphasis on base coffee notes and toasted flavors. More mellow than bright. The thing is, the dairy and sugar in ice cream mutes the brighter notes, so all coffee gets pushed in the direction of mellower, sweeter, toastier. The challege is if you want the brighter flavors and aromatics ... you need to start with bright beans and use an extraction method that might lead to a too-bright cup of coffee. I wouldn't put add sherry vinegar to my morning cup of joe, for that matter.

You could use a different sherry vinegar, or even a balsamic. Some people might prefer to leave it out entirely. I wanted to bring out the fruit and acid flavors of the coffee, but my neighbor (a Café Bustello man) doesn't like those flavors. He doesn't like my favorite café, doesn't like my coffee, doesn't like my coffee ice cream. I'm pushing that PX vinegar on everyone partly because it will make the world a better place. I agree with all your thoughts on eggs. It's why I only use two yolks per liter. For some flavors (like chocolate) I leave them out entirely, and use alternate emulsifiers. That said, I didn't experiment with an eggless version of this, because I pushed it so far in the direction of low fat to begin with. Chocolate brings so much fat of its own so is a different story. If someone else wants to play around with eggless versions I'd love to taste the results, but right now I'm quite happy with both flavor and texture and so don't feel the need to start over.

Not yet, but I'm dying to try it. Have draft 1 of a recipe ready to go. I'd be happy to bathe in the stuff.

This is definitely something I would have experimented with, but it requires an espresso machine. The only espresso machines I'd let into my house are outside my budget for now, and possibly ever. And I'm not interested in racing home with 10 ristrettos to go ...

I'm not at all a fan of dark-roasted coffee, either for drinking or for ice cream, although I find it more tolerable in ice cream.. My post goes on a long diatribe against them. Darker roasts demolish the aromatics and the acids (which I'm trying to emphasize) and pile on bitter notes (which I'm trying to control). I've had the best luck with the medium-light roasts favored by most of the 3rd wave roasters these days. I use East African varieties, mostly because that's what I like to drink and so I have them around. I can't say that in a blind test I'd be able tell the difference between a such-and-such estate Ethiopian coffee and a similar roast from Panama.

Cardamom is my first thought too. Actually my second. At first I read the thread as "what spice do you like with permission?" which got me thinking of which forbidden spices I might like even more. Also maybe cloves, chilis, cinnamon, ginger, or nutmeg.

Can anyone share the books' basic sourdough method? Not for creating a starter, but for building the bread from there.

Because I spent a year figuring out how to make awesome coffee ice cream and I'm going to enjoy it, damn it. Even if it kills me.

Last year I did a ton of experiments and arrived at 80g coffee per 1400g water (48 fl oz, a big press pot). This is 5.7% by weight relative to the water. I'm mostly buying East African coffees, especially Ethiopian varieties, from 3rd wave roasters who favor a lighter roast. Occasionally I'll end up with beans that do better with 90g or 70g, but this is rare. The variable that took me forever to figure out was water temperature. About 8 years ago in this thread I was complaining that the coffee I made at my girlfriend's apartment, with a crappy grinder and no scale, was often better than what I made at home while geeking out. The culprit turned out to be my (supposedly fancy) Zojirushi hot water pot, which was set to 203°F. Turns out that it was about 10 degrees cooler than that, and this was throwing off everything. I use a regular electric kettle now and check the temperature. After trying every temperature in the recommended range, I found 93°C / 199°F to be my favorite. My press pot is uninsulated, so this would be the starting temperature. I've never measured to see how much it drops over 4 minutes.

Straight arrowroot works great. I like it more than the other options (I haven't compared with tapioca or potato starch, but I suspect they're similar in the broad strokes). The small portion of xanthan allows it to work in significantly smaller quantities, with more clarity and possibly better flavor release. But the overall texture is only slightly different. It will have a bit more shear-thinning character, as you'd probably expect.

I haven't tried either of these products. I take you're word for it that they are excellent, but don't see how a commercial coffee paste is going to be able to equal the flavors of the best coffee beans extracted (optimally) directly into the dairy, with a method that lets you hang on to most of the aromatics. Coffee is a perishable product. Once it's roasted those aromatic compounds start to oxidize, break down, and fly away. I'm not opposed to adding things to enhance flavors. But I'll do it if there's some structural or chemical reason that makes it necessary. I adjust the flavors with sherry vinegar, because I don't know how to keep the dairy and sugar from muting the acidic and fruity flavors, even when I do everything possible to extract those flavors. And I add salt, because even the most balanced method I've found extracts a bit too much bitterness. I don't know what I'd be trying to accomplish with black cocoa.