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Espresso Enthusiasts
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Ah, bravo. My grateful thanks to you @Shrink. (Oh, and I also read a certain foreword, well done, too).
No need, @SandboxGeneral as @Shrink has already attended to, and done the needful.
Anyway, this exquisite objet d'art was purchased earlier this afternoon; for now, it is still in the box in which it arrived home.
I have LC press working with Rwandan coffee, the smell is great.
The third bag is Douwe Egberts and was given to me by a colleague at work who swears by it and buys it in bulk.
Douwe Egberts Extra Dark Roast Coffee Beans 1kg Ref 433000 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0051GH5GU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_jsLPxb2YEKPXT
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Don't recognise the third bag form the left so cannot offer any thoughts on it.
I will agree with @Zenithal that Illy in tins can be quite good; abroad, especially in poor countries where coffee consumption is not a daily habit, Illy in tins is as close to coffee nectar as it comes (and tends to be priced accordingly).
LavAzza is a perfectly acceptable basic Italian coffee; twenty years ago, or, even ten years ago, it would have been regarded as a pretty good coffee in our part of the world.
In western Europe, personally, I find LavAzza too darkly roasted, and hence too bitter. Others on here will probably quibble (with reason) about freshness of roast. Abroad, in some of the places where I have worked, I will be thrilled to see it. Indeed, I will drink it happily abroad - and be very grateful that I can lay hands on it.
However, here, these days, there are far better coffees available.
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Ah, okay.
Ah: Therefore, I take it that your personal preference is for 'extra dark roast'?
If it is, then you should also like LavAzza.
I am not an expert on Douwe Egberts, and haven't drunk it that often.
Personal taste also comes into it, - and here, each to their own. For my part, I have come to the realisation that I don't much care for coffees that are too darkly roasted. However, others on this thread love them.
And abroad, well, a spoon of sugar can be a wonderful friend to a cop of coffee, given that I far prefer a cup of dark roast coffee (plus some sugar) to no coffee at all.......
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Yeah, they need to be very cold or otherwise you pickup strange tastes from the tins. I don't think they coat the insides. And if you want a glorified dessert that a teenager would love, there's always Starbucks in a glass bottle. Yuck.
Sounds familiar but I may be thinking I've seen it before but really haven't.
No argument about Illy beans...with the exception of the question of freshness.
What I would argue is that beans should never be stored in the fridge. Coffee beans absorb moisture very easily and it effects the beans negatively, as there is a great deal of moisture in a refrigerator. It will not keep the beans any fresher...if they are more than two weeks post roasting, they are beginning to go stale.
Ready-To-DrinkSorry that I misunderstood.
What's an RTD can?
It's about 6-8 oz, espresso or some type of blend coffee in a can. It's as close to premade coffee you can get without it being a dessert, like Starbucks.
Thanks for the explanation.
Now about potty training...coffee has this interesting effect...
Aah...never mind.
I'm immune to that effect. Thankfully. It took me many years to understand why some people wouldn't drink coffee in the morning or after a large meal. I had to ask my then doctor. This was before broadband was common and no one wanted to wait on 56K for a lengthy explanation. Ironically, strong black tea does have that effect on me.
Actually, I wasn't thinking of you...but rather another family member.
Potty training and all...
My afternoon cup was a blend of the very last bit of Sweet Maria's Burundi Mutambu Rubanda beans and a bit of the Atomic Coffee Intensi blend, probably about 60% SM, and 40% AC. It was delightful and very tasty.
Thanks for the explanation.
Now about potty training...coffee has this interesting effect...
Aah...never mind.
Never could quite work out whether it was large mugs of good - (these days - Ethiopian) coffee or almost industrial quantities of freshly squeezed citrus juice..............that assisted the digestive process in such a beneficial manner.
Ah, well.
And, I'll be honest: I never got into Star Wars - wrong age, a precocious teenager who preferred reading Sartre, Proust, and Plato to watching children's movies; it took me decades to get back to reading YA literature as a regular relaxing activity and I have yet to see the movies of the original franchise/trilogy. (Now, I did see one of the 'prequels' and it was awful).
Actually, early in my career as a university teacher, a bright, cheeky, and cocky kid handed in a term paper which - very creatively - used Darth Vadar as an example for something or other, betrayed ideals, poor leadership, dictatorship, lousy models of governance. Something of the sort.
The essay was excellent, genuinely original, (I gave it an "A") and - when I first read it - I got the (political) point the kid was making (to a certain extent). But, there was a slight problem, which was that I had never - quite genuinely - heard of Darth Vadar.
Thus, I had to ask my brother to enlighten me, which he duly did with a grunted, single sentence, explanation: 'He's the baddie in Star Wars'.
I don't watch movies (unless they are old, venerable, and actually good). I read books. Actually, I speed read. Thus, I read the Star Wars story in a book shop (no, I wasn't about to buy them) and once spent an afternoon in the English language bookshop in Prague, where I was supposed to be researching something else, something to do with communism, exploring an encyclopaedia of Star Wars which I found quite instructive.
Now, back on topic.
During today's visit to the small (excellent) coffee shop where I bought the gorgeous copper Hario dripper, my bespectacled eyes alighted upon their coffee machine. The name read La Marzocco. This was one of their commercial models, though I have no idea which one.
However, that did inspire me to take a small trawling visit tonight, to the La Marzocco site for My Corner Of This World.
To my astonished delight, they have just (this very August of this very year) launched a new model of the legendary GS/3 Model (the one our friend @Kurwenal teases me with a picture of, every so often).
This is retro stuff, - in that this seems to be a coffee maker that looks retro, but comes equipped with modern features - in fact, it seems to be a homage to the very first GS series, back in 1970. And this is reflected in its name: It is called the '1970 GS Edition GS3'.
Well, what can I say? Needless to say, it is gorgeous.......
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Ah.
I have had Rwandan beans - still have some - but never yet beans from Burundi.
While I would imagine that they are similar, how do they compare?
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Honestly, I couldn't say. I'm not sure if I've had Rwandan beans before, and if I did, I don't recall them. This was my first experience with the Burundi beans and it was a very good one. I looked forward to the days when this batch of Sweet Maria's blend came up in my rotation. Now they're all gone and I'm rotating through what's left of the Barrington Coffee and the recently arrived Atomic Coffee blends while I await the receipt of the Liquid Amber beans, probably on Thursday.
Well, when I asked him about this, @JamesMike - who knows quite a bit about the African coffees - remarked that Kenyan coffee lies between Ethiopian and Rwandan (and I would agree to a considerable extent, with the latter having more 'heft' but less 'smoothness' than I find with Ethiopian).
Burundi is - quite literally, geographically - and culturally (and, in terms of the respective ethnic groups - though not the actual percentages of the population, and in sharing the somewhat tense and controversial lingering influences from the former colonial power - in this instance - Belgium) next door to Rwanda.
Thus, I would expect the coffee from Burundi to be pretty similar to that found in Rwanda, but, as we know, coffees from even quite close regions can differ drastically, much as grapes, and vines do.
Ah, fascinating. So, are they smoother and more robust than are the Rwandan beans, then? More like Ethiopian beans, or Kenyan beans?
Pineapple enzymes. Or papaya. No coffee for me today. Suffering terrible heart burn. Though I suppose the highly acidic and sweet breakfast I had this morning is playing a part in this. It didn't stop me from having 4 large 10 oz cups with a shot of espresso in each. I then spent the next 3 hours being careful of my breathing so my food didn't come back up.
I keep forgetting that I'm not in youth like I think I am and can't handle how I used to eat. Even though I'm still very active, I simply can't graze or gorge like I used to when younger. Sad really.
I made a soft stage caramel sauce last night prior to bed. Except I forgot to add the salt to balance the sweetness. Bummer.
I keep forgetting that I'm not in youth like I think I am and can't handle how I used to eat. Even though I'm still very active, I simply can't graze or gorge like I used to when younger. Sad really.
I made a soft stage caramel sauce last night prior to bed. Except I forgot to add the salt to balance the sweetness. Bummer.
Of course you can handle what you used to eat, but, you need to take precautions.
What was in the 'highly acidic and sweet' breakfast?
Did you think to have fresh fruit juice with it?
And enough water?
I love my coffee - this thread alone attests to that - but I never have an espresso (or, a coffee, whether made from a Hario dripper or French Press) without plenty of water to hand. Likewise, in the morning, I will always try to have fresh fruit juice - my personal preference being citrus. That solves the digestive nonsense, and allows for the consumption of eggs, toast and marmalade if my fancy runs to that.