If your doing anything more than a quick rinse then you’re doing it wrong.
Assuming its anything like a moka pot. Kind of like a seasoned pan.
A bit of both I think 
Grumpy about the waste, hipster about the coffee.
1 Like
The burning smell/flavour is because the coffee has been ‘cooked’, which is something you actually avoid at all costs when making coffee as it ruins it.
Moka pots (my favourite method) are a dance. Getting te water up to temperature on a stove without the pot getting hot enough to spoil the coffee.
I don’t use mine much but I just grab a cereal bowl (there’s always a dirty one!) put a drop of soap in, fill with water, and then stick in the filter to soak.
I microwave the water and finish it off on the stove on medium so the coffee doesn’t get too hot. I suppose I could just use a french press, but the moka pot is easier to clean.
I boil the water in a kettle first - but use the same technique!
Nespresso doesn’t actually use plastic, they use aluminum. You can drop them off for recycling in most big cities, and the inside of the capsule is nothing more than coffee. It’s not as good as keeping beans in a reusable container and grinding in the morning, but it could certainly be far worse.
I like to pre-steam my steam. For this I have built a special purpose boiler that is fired with a special sooty wood from South America that imparts an aroma to the pre-steam steam that really can’t be imagined. To light the fire under my tiny boiler I have devised a re-useable fuse that smolders quite nicely for several minutes before going out. Then it can be re-lit for the next round of pre-steaming. I need a name for this fuse-like device if anyone can think of one I would be highly unusual.
1 Like
Aeropress FTW. By far the best quality to convenience ratio in the ‘Land of Coffee’ – rather than the ‘Land of Liquid-Medium-For-Legal-Stimulant’. With a steel filter, the least waste as well.
Isn’t it worse that it’s a metal?
Nope, from wikipedia:
Aluminium is one of the most efficient and widely recycled materials.[3][4] Aluminium is shredded and ground into small pieces or crushed into bales. These pieces or bales are melted in an aluminium smelter to produce molten aluminium. By this stage, the recycled aluminium is indistinguishable from virgin aluminium and further processing is identical for both. This process does not produce any change in the metal, so aluminium can be recycled indefinitely.
Recycling aluminium saves 95% of the energy cost of processing new aluminium.[5] This is because the temperature necessary for melting recycled, nearly pure, aluminium is 600 °C, while to extract mined aluminium from its ore requires 900 °C. To reach this higher temperature, much more energy is needed, leading to the high environmental benefits of aluminium recycling. Americans throw away enough aluminium every year to rebuild their entire commercial air fleet. Also, the energy saved by recycling one aluminium can is enough to run a television for three hours.[6]
Compared to no throw away capsule? That’s a fuck load of waste and still
totally unjustifiable.
But good to know how it compares to plastics, thanks.
2 Likes
Agreed on the coffee but not on the tea. It will not produce a drinkable cup of tea via the reusable basket. There are tea K-Cups and I suspect they have better results (e.g. finely ground tea that quickly brews) but I haven’t tried them.
The attachment may not produce fancy shmancy catshit coffee but it will produce, at best/worst, a consistent cup of coffee. But not so with tea leaves.
I love the aeropress for travel, and for making US-style coffee or cafe con leche. Got the metal filter on Amazon and it works great. But, the aeropress doesn’t really cut the mustard with what I drink every morning, which is a slightly exaggerated double shot of espresso with some milk foam. And therefore fails miserably at the espresso after dinner - my friend from Portugal (where coffee is very damn delicious) snubs my aeropress shots because the filter removes the essential part of a good espresso- the thick coffee foam at the top.
Producing that foam with an espresso machine is not so easy, either, The cheap-o espresso machines have no temperature control, so you can go though bags of grounds trying to learn the sweet spot where the water is hot enough to make the foam yet cool enough not to sour the brew. Pulling a good shot with a thick foam takes years to learn, and after years I still can’t do it consistently on the steam powered machine but can’t afford a real machine. This is where those hideous pod coffees gained popularity in Europe-they allowed any dufus to make a shot which looked right, nice foam. I suspect they add baking soda or something to the grounds to fake the foam.
1 Like
So I just bought an aeropress, and I’ve discovered that most of the water goes straight through the filter, into the cup below, without the need for the plunger. Am I doing something wrong?
My research group had an honor system for the Nespresso machine; the sponsor bought the doses and everyone kicked in their share. By contrast, the logistics of coffee grounds always breaks down when decentralized which is a sad indictment of us, really… Likewise, in the institutional setting (where no one really wants to be except by a weird consensus), the rules differ.
So you either walk back and forth to the kitchenette a few times every time you want a cup, or you stash your french press in a cramped cabinet (where it will be `borrowed’ or broken), and this kitchenette can comfortably hold 1.2 persons so you’ll be blocking the fridge while you’re using the french press or waiting for the water to boil in the crappy electric kettle which, like the grounds, no one wants to replace because there’s no formal reimbursement system and, again, no one really wants to invest in a place they really wouldn’t choose to be if it were up to them, even though paying the $20 would be cheaper than paying into the Nespresso pods, but then on the third hand you don’t want the inevitable attachment that having your appliance in the kitchen would mean, let alone that the Nespresso pod guy would be disappointed or maybe even threatened by your counter-offer, so even if you’re economically rational, you’d need to sort of smuggle it in covertly and that never works because even if you get it in, someone might be asking who brought the kettle and so you’d need to be prepared to suppress yourself and modulate your facial expressions into a blank at any given moment, and with all this, shouldn’t you really just accept the idea that the Nespresso pods really are a premium product anyway, so at least you can tell yourself that you’re treating yourself to something special and maybe even feel just a bit of gratitude toward the Nespresso guy every time you tally up on Friday and hand him $3.75? It’s not all bad, and hey, at least it’s cheaper than the coffee place.
But, yeah, having one at home would be silly.
1 Like
I always turn mine upside down, load it up with coffee, add water and give a little stir. Then I fasten on the filter end and invert it over my cup before pressing.
AKA “the poor man’s French roast.”
I have a Moka Pot and my main issue is that it’s too much coffee (or rather, caffeine) for one drink. It holds about twice as much grounds as the Keurig reusable basket. It isn’t a large Moka Pot, either (maybe 1.5 cups). I don’t think using less coffee is an option, is it? I thought that thing had to be packed full in order to work.
(Oh yeah, the Moka Pot is made of aluminum, if anyone would like to chime in on that one.)
I don’t want to drink more coffee (or, more concentrated coffee) than I already do – I try to keep it to one coffee in the morning, and then hot tea after that.
Thanks. Perhaps I need to buy some decaf beans to practice with.
