Bitter Coffee

Well…I paid 3,20€ for 250g of my Moka Sidamo - no idea if that’s a good price or not? Never been in a torrefacteur joint before! A whole new world… :wink:

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I have a nice torréfacteur in town, it is very good fun to go there and you can taste before you buy. My aunt and uncle in Scotland get their supply from Valvona’s in Edinburgh.

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Bitter coffee is usually down to over-extraction - the main cause of which is varying grain sizes - so smashing the beans up with a whizzy grinder is a bad idea and electric burr grinders are expensive.
I’m only making coffee for me and in any case can do without harsh noises first thing in the morning, so I use a Japanese Porlex hand grinder and 1 minute’s grinding has become part of the ritual.
With standardised grain sizes you can find the optimum brew time - with random grain sizes, some of the coffee will be under-extracted, some over-extracted.

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I know I’m very late to the thread, but I believe you can still buy “mellow Birds” :smiley:

My mil used to buy that. I actually prefer Camp coffee to Birds! That perhaps is a nostalgia thing from childhood though. I’ve never bought either myself.

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I hate to recommend good coffee, because it leaves less for me, but at the moment I’m loving this from Hasbean.
My favourite for years was Guatemala El Bosque - similar beans and production method - but it seems to have lost its edge.

I don’t have the palate to get all the claimed nuances, but I find it super-chocolatey and just enough acidity.

“In the cup it’s milk chocolate with a silky mouthfeel. There’s a hint of hazelnut and shoulder of pear , but it’s the chocolate that lasts and shifts into a dark chocolate on the finish as it cools.”


£8 delivered for 250 grammes.

I hand grind one scoop then brew for about a minute (well-stirred at the start) in an inverted aeropress fitted with a stainles steel filter so I don’t lose any flavour in a filter paper.
I’ve been distracted and let it go two minutes with no problems.

I hope I can find equivalent coffee in France. I am already fairly certain I will have to get my tea delivered from the UK - £30 postage on £100 worth of tea. (free postage in UK)