Unpopular opinions
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It's amazing, and pretty sought after. I think you are probably imagining is something like starbucks, or dunkin with artificial blueberry flavoring. The coffees I am describing are very different, and usually roasted quite lightly. They don't have any of those roasted darker notes you might traditionally associate with coffee. It really does almost taste like a blueberry tea. Made in a milk drink is one of my favorites. Just really smooth with a background of fruit and no bitterness.
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I didn't want to say it, but a barattza is probably not the best setup for those kinds of coffees. It's not a hard and fast rule, but conical grinders usually favor body and more traditional dark, italian style espressos. Big flat burrs bring the clarity and flavor separation.
I'd say that's true with the majority yeah, but that's one of the reasons people come here: to learn.
Within the minority tho? Oh lawd there are some ridiculously good sharpeners xD
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Go for more medium roasts, with an aeropress depending on grind size you get something like a coffee/spresso...without boiler pressure you probably are looking at adding water at the boiling point to alleviate the pretty large initial temp drop after pouring water in.
There are some decent baratza grinders, and some that suck...it's a brand but the model and which burrs are inside is what makes the difference.
to me coffee is either good or not good. same with wine 
no cream or sugar or sweet wines.
also prefer tea unfooked with. but do on occasion like flavored tea like peach or berry.
no cream or sugar or sweet wines.also prefer tea unfooked with. but do on occasion like flavored tea like peach or berry.
aporigine
The slow blade penetrates the winter squash
I’ll pass.
I don't have a ton of experience with different grinders, but comparing my DF64 to Sette 270 for espresso and DF64 to Baratza Virtuoso for pourover didn't leave me feeling like flat > conical. Differences in taste were so minor that it could have been variation in that specific shot or brew, and the DF64 had so much variation I went back to the Sette. I'd say most conical Baratza grinders are totally serviceable for brew methods, even for light roasts. Could be a totally different story at the high end of grinders.
Of all my grinders (Sette, DF64, Virtuoso, Kinu M47), the Virtuoso makes the best pourover. I find espresso much more demanding on the equipment, so I don't bother with light roasts or single origins with my Sette + PID Gaggia Classic setup.
Baratza catches a lot of flak for using a lot of plastic, but for home use they make good equipment at reasonable prices. I did replace my plastic Virtuoso burr carrier once because it developed a small crack, otherwise they've both served me well for 4+ years each making 1-2 coffees daily, and their customer service is great.
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Hmm maybe it's just me, my df83 with ssp burrs is a massive improvement over my old conical and mignon. But I only do espresso.
Hacienda La Esmeralda - Coffee Collective does a super light roast that has so much bergamotte flavor that you think it's tea.
On the other hand I've never had a light roast from Square Mile that didn't make decent espresso
The picture is a lot more complex that flat = clarity, conical = body. All else equal a unimodal flat could have greater clarity and separation than a conical, but overall grinder and burr quality also plays a role. I don't think switching from a Weber Key or Monolith conical to a DF54 would yield increased clarity for instance.
But yeah, the lighter the roast and finer the grind needs to be, the more grinder quality is at a premium. Nordic roast espresso requires a totally different level of grinder compared to a dark roast in a drip machine. Aeropress and to a lesser extend v60 are probably more in line with espresso than a dripper in terms of the demands placed on a grinder.
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OkayMode
I am the pig Daveb's mama was talking about
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Timemore 078 has been my first flat burr grinder and whilst I still really like the 1ZPresso K Plus I had as my daily driver before that, the clarity of flavour I get from the former is awesome.
I quite like the higher acidity and clarity, lower body styles most of the time though, and I only brew pourover at home.
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Well of course, in the post before I said it's not a hard and fast rule. But in general, I am of the opinion that bigger flat burrs does better with lighter specialty roasts, but that is my preference. It is a rabbit hole, have gone through 3 different burr sets with my grinder
Truth be told, if money was no object I'd probably get a Monolith Max to keep alongside my HG1, but until such a time comes I'm more than satisfied with the conical burr-set I have and I primarily drink funky lighter roast modern coffees. Plenty of clarity and flavor separation. If I drink primarily washed African v60 I'd probably want something different though.
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I like coffee, but I don't have the palette some do I can just tell if it is good, meaning I like it or bad I don't. I can't tell fine nuance though. I generally don't like sour coffees that some enjoy. It is pretty universally believed that grinder makes a huge difference, but I could never find an explanation that made sense to me. Why does the way you grind make a difference? All you are doing is braking a bean into powder why does the way you get there makes a difference. I could understand if for example one method broke it in one step vs taking more time and processing, but that's not really even the case. So what is it that makes it so?
It's about the uniformity of the grind. The more uniform the grind the more even and also higher extraction can be. There are a few reasons for that, but for starters smaller pieces extract faster than larger pieces as there is greater surface area for a given weight. You can grind finer with a better grinder because there are less "fines" (hyper-pulverized bean bits) produced and those fines clog up filters and limit rate. With more consistent particle size you also have more even extraction in that you don't have over extracted fines creating bitterness and under extracted boulders making things overly sour. Everything from burr size, shape, geometry, alignment, flex, etc lead to the resulting grind quality.
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Damn beat me to it. Motor speed also makes a difference, how fast the burrs grind...so many variables. I forgot which Lance Hedrick/James Hoffman video showed testing, but particle distribution analysis is always interesting:
Edit: Here is one I was talking about:
Edit: Here is one I was talking about:
I stick to redbull
With espresso, I found, one can also definitely get to a point where measuring particle distributions, extraction yields, pressure curves, etc etc suddenly becomes more of the obsession than taste. I’m always down to nerd out over some extraction theory, but my espresso got a lot better when I started focusing on taste and adjusting from there and stop worrying about brewing to numbers
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Agreed. I was spending days trying to get my new burrs perfectly aligned and I just said screw it, it's good enough and I don't think about it anymore. It does feel foreign to me weighing doses even, I used to just go by time and approximate lol. Never had a problem with that.
Right now, I weight, RDT, and WDT, and as long as I get a 1-2/2.5 in like 20-40 seconds I will drink it.
This is exactly my set up at home too with similar preferences and I've been pretty damn satisfied lately. I still lust after a few grinders if budget was no option but the more I taste from different "end game" I do think they might be reaching past the point of diminishing returns for me (Lagom 01 for example).
These days I wonder if often times people are first using lots of confirmation bias on their ultra fancy grinders that happen to also taste the best to them after they've spent a lot of money but also I think a lot of people fall down the rabbit whole of thinking nicer and more expensive gear will always make their coffee suddenly taste better to them when often better explained by it being a skill issue. Reminds me a bit like a lot of the sharpening discussions that end up happening on here and my own experience sharpening. More time practicing/learning from more experienced sharpeners has had way more pay off for me than any new stone. Even if I do love my vintage coticule I got from Cotedupy for example
Just like you guys are saying, probably better to just save the money for beans and spending the time tasting more and learning/enjoying from there
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I think our hard London water is probably the single biggest limiting factor at this point, even when filtered through a BWT.
I don’t like the hassle/environmental impact of buying bottled water.
The Timemore is my first electric grinder after 10 years of coffee herders, and I’m pretty content. Part of the enjoyment of pour over for me is that once you have a good grinder, inoffensive water, and good beans, that’s kind of it in terms of reasonable upgrades.
The coffee I make at home improved the most when I was bored over COVID and became slightly neurotic about developing my palette, jotting down flavour notes and getting more familiar with what under and over extraction tastes like, versus when I’ve ever bought new kit.
To be fair, I also had an early version of the DF64, which was horribly inconsistent until I got an antipopcorning insert, and is still pretty bad after that with the stock clump crusher that creates a ton of fines from regrinding. It may not be the fairest comparison for flat vs conical burrs when it's these other flaws that were the problem. That kind of turned me off from their other offerings to be honest, even though the DF83 seems like a great price for what it is. Even on the newer versions the bellows are still on the upper burr carrier that uses a spring for spacing, meaning when you press the bellows, you also press the burrs closer together.
Thank you. Uniformity of the grind and its size make sense and it also makes sense that there could be an optimal size for extraction with given pressure, flow. I am still not sure it matters how you get there conical vs flat vs jumping on it as long as the end result is uniform, correct size and you get there in reasonable time.
Nope, doesn’t really matter - just the result. All else equal unimodal flats have more uniformity than conicals and bigger burrs are more uniform than smaller burrs. As always though the statement “all else equal” is implying a lot.
I've been doing the bottled water move for a bit now and not enjoying the hassle/environmental impact either. Has anyone had the chance to use a Zero water pitcher? Been looking at that + remineralization as a possible solution
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@Barmoley
A grinder is like a mechanical kitchen knife for coffee beans, automatically making it into a burinoise or fine dice. Some grinders are less even, so it's like an uneven dice . . . Except the fines and like powder. To use the diving comparison, it's like a puree. So with an uneven dice and puree, it will cook unevenly. So with a uniform size, uniform cook time.
I like to use a seive for immersion and pour over, I like to use the fellow coffee seive in addition to a nicer grinder. This gets the fines out from overextracting -- those tend to make a thicker body, and coat and clog my tongue, tend to be more bitter and roasty, overly sour.
But I like to grind coarse too. Different temperature and times tend to make different flavor. If I immerse grounds at room temperature water, the floral, sweet, and acid come out, some malt, and the carbonation from roasting add extra acidity and in fact makes it taste fizzy, more noticeable with a smaller amount of water. A higher temperature drives out the carbonation, more roasty, chocolatey, nuts, wood, for me.
But yeah it's like dice size. A burr grinder is the biggest upgrade from the cheap fast spinning ones. Then one with precise machining for burr clearance. After that not as much. I use the 1zpreseo zp6.
I didn't like lighter more sour coffee at firs, but now with a more careful extraction i do now, tastes like ripe fruit.
A grinder is like a mechanical kitchen knife for coffee beans, automatically making it into a burinoise or fine dice. Some grinders are less even, so it's like an uneven dice . . . Except the fines and like powder. To use the diving comparison, it's like a puree. So with an uneven dice and puree, it will cook unevenly. So with a uniform size, uniform cook time.
I like to use a seive for immersion and pour over, I like to use the fellow coffee seive in addition to a nicer grinder. This gets the fines out from overextracting -- those tend to make a thicker body, and coat and clog my tongue, tend to be more bitter and roasty, overly sour.
But I like to grind coarse too. Different temperature and times tend to make different flavor. If I immerse grounds at room temperature water, the floral, sweet, and acid come out, some malt, and the carbonation from roasting add extra acidity and in fact makes it taste fizzy, more noticeable with a smaller amount of water. A higher temperature drives out the carbonation, more roasty, chocolatey, nuts, wood, for me.
But yeah it's like dice size. A burr grinder is the biggest upgrade from the cheap fast spinning ones. Then one with precise machining for burr clearance. After that not as much. I use the 1zpreseo zp6.
I didn't like lighter more sour coffee at firs, but now with a more careful extraction i do now, tastes like ripe fruit.
I use a Moka pot with pre-ground Lavazza at home. At work I just tell one of the baristas I need a shot.
They measure every shot by the gram and the second and the degree. Both are caffeine in a highly concentrated form. How could you go wrong?
This is the bag of square mile I tried earlier this year. Awesome bag. For people who don’t like sourness or fruity coffee though, I imagine this would be undrinkable. I don’t think you need a crazy nose to detect the pineapple note in here.Hacienda La Esmeralda - Coffee Collective does a super light roast that has so much bergamotte flavor that you think it's tea.
On the other hand I've never had a light roast from Square Mile that didn't make decent espresso
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