The Arran LE, all good things always come to an end, now activating the one-bottle-out, one-bottle-in rule.

 

Enjoying a very chilled out Sunday afternoon drinking some bud & listening to Mr Bolan ,

 

For Cinco de Mayo!
For those outside my country, Cinco de Mayo is a 'Mexican holiday' celebrated in the US. I believe the only people who celebrate it in Mexico are the brewers and distillers.

 

Michters 10 yr was on the menu, difficult bottle to find without the 2-300 dollar secondary mark up.

 

Bartaco spicy margarita

 

A simple but devilishly good liquid lunch :0)

 

GMT lager. Highly recommend!

 

I've been sucked into the craft beer scene lately. These are two really nice double IPA for those who love the style (second is "Is there music in your dream" from Wylam x Other Half breweries.

 

Picked this up. Not the best blend I’ve had from these guys, but really came alive with a few drops water.

 

Weather is still good in the UK so keeping it as God intended with a very simple G&T..... Spirit inspires. Spirit triumphs. Spirit carries us forward, onward, upward. In spirit we are stirred to go beyond, to rise above and to find greatness. To transcend.... I must be pissed again :0)

https://www.bristoldistilling.com/

.

 

Mingqian An Ji Bai Cha.

When you drink it, a strong feeling of extreme relaxation mixed with euphoria washes over your body.

I will be chasing this the rest of my life.

 

King Cobra

 

Just had a G&T and now opened a 2005 Rioja Gran Reserva - very smooth... worn with a 76100 with faded bezel... HAGW all!

 

Out with the wife while grandmother looked after the two kids. We had a very nice bottle of Leclapart from 2008 (didn’t manage a photo from the restaurant) along with dinner


And then afterwards we went to an Irish place with some live music and I had a Honey Dew Ale from Fuller’s. Not reeeeally my cup of tea.

 

Friday night, hanging with the Missus while enjoying the contents of this recently deceased bottle of Lot 40. A fine, pure Canadian Rye.

 

sampling local beers and wines while exploring the island of Crete...

 

@jimmyd13 we were definitly off topic in the stop watch usage thread, so I prefer to continue here the discussion around coffee

The medium ground is the part is struggled the most to find, and when I nailed it was a coffee especially ground for Moka. But it was an organic brand and Moka was not available all the time. And it was always paired with "Volvic" water . I got the rest correctly I think, mostly thanks to Valentina, except for the cold water.
So from what you told, I assume if no Moka ground coffee is available, I should chose one for filter coffee? And not one branded as "italian taste" or something like that as it is generally associated to "Espresso taste" so over-roasted

I assume for the grind size that it is because a Moka pot generates way less pressure than an Espresso machine, so water will struggle to go through a fine grained coffee (same reason why it should not be tamp I guess).
Not sure why about the roast. I think it is also related to the infusion time. It may infuse longer so coffee should be less roasted otherwise it'll be too bitter?
And no idea why concerning the water just off the boil...

PS: next subject when we will know everything about coffee: the perfect Irish Coffee! But for tonight, I'll go for a Boulvardier

 

Firstly, think of making coffee as a chemistry experiment. You're creating a solution. Your solvent is water and your solute is all the really good tastes that come from the coffee bean.

Now, coffee is the most complex taste there is (chocolate runs a close second). Coffee beans contain flavours ranging from sweet soft fruits all the way through to bitters. When you brew coffee, your aim is to get the good tasting stuff out and leave the bad tasting stuff behind. Nature is good to us, though: when you introduce hot water to coffee the sweet (high) notes come out of the grounds before the bitter (low) notes. If you time everything just right, then you get a balance of some of the lower notes to compliment the sweetness. You can get create a coffee that has lots of "fruit" or balance to create something akin to chocolate, or take it a little further to get a nuttiness.

So, if you're interested in making great coffee, you're going to be asking yourself how to do all this? Extraction has three components: water temperature; contact time between the water and the grounds; and, the size of the grounds. (Espresso adds something else to this with pressure. An espresso machine creates around 9 bar of pressure and that accelerates the whole process).

If we just focus on using a moka pot, this uses the same principle as espresso but the pot creates a little over 1 bar of pressure. You can't control the water temperature (which will be a little above boiling); nor can you really control the time that the water is in contact with the coffee grounds. Both of these functions are down to the design of the moka pot. Don't bother with a cheap one from Ikea - buy Bialetti, Gnali or Alessi (fun fact, the Bialetti and Alessi families are related by marriage that predates them independently becoming kitchen icons). There might be others out there as good, but I've not tried them yet. What you can control is the grind size, and you want something that's a medium level. French press uses coarse, as does drip and pour over; espresso is fine. Try to get something in the middle. If you can't then go with a french press ground.

Now, I mentioned starting with hot water and taking the pot off the heat before the brew is completed - allowing the pressure in the pot to finish the brew for you. This is because you can burn the grounds. Not with the heat from the water but from the heat you're putting into the pot itself. You get a "fresher" tasting coffee by keeping its contact with heat to a minimum. Some suggest leaving the pot on the heat until it's finished then running it under cold water. I don't like that idea because you run the real risk of spilling hot coffee everywhere but you're also forcing a faster contraction of the pot and if your OPV and a seal both fail, you can get yourself a nice little hand grenade.

The TL;DR version:
get a medium to coarse ground coffee
fill the pot using hot water
place on a medium heat until the coffee is half brewed
remove from the heat and allow it to finish
don't drink the coffee immediately - moka pots brew at 100C+, so allow the drink to cool for a few minutes at least and don't bother preheating your cups.

 

So basically the hot water is for the pot to not run too hot and burn the coffee before the water inside it boils? It makes sense.

I don't like the hot-cold idea either, and even in a general manner. I discard this kind of "shock" technique whatever the topic unless a good reason is provided, such as for green bean/grean peas to retain chlorophyll, to cook brownies and keep them fudgy, or to harden steel (I am no metallurgist but I understand the benefits of it)

 

Evil Twin Grand Cru on tap. Delicious.