I'm installing an Astoria espresso machine in my shop today! It's an old workhorse that has seen many years but it just got refurbished by an old master. Two more inspections and I should be a proud owner of an open coffee shop. Few other problems to iron out but mostly good at this point. At home I'm brewing with a Grosse stainless steel drip cone that I'm pretty happy with. How are you making your coffee?
I just recently started using a dripper! It has been amazing! I love the control you get while brewing. Started doing it on a little scale so I can get the water to bean ratio down more perfectly and I gotta say, it has been an incredible difference. I've been experimenting with the water temperature a little lately just to see what kind of difference it makes. All in all, it has been incredibly good fun! Although I still think the perfect breakfast is an expertly pulled espresso with a pain au chocolat accompanying it.
I've kind of prided myself on not being too fussy when it comes to brewing, but after doing it for X amount of time, I've been unable to avoid the conclusion that weighing and measuring your inputs really does wonders for a consistent good cup. Also, I'm on that mailing list too :)Started doing it on a little scale so I can get the water to bean ratio down more perfectly and I gotta say, it has been an incredible difference.
I've got a Hario Mini Mill - They're 30 bucks. I definitely find a difference, but I also generally do french press - there's very little between me and the beans, so it's one of the few things I could change.
What a former roommate and I used to do was hook up his Hario to a cordless drill. Instant power grinder, AND it's a multitasker! but I definitely understand where you're coming from.
And I approve of him - though I wish he'd do more actual cookery, and less cutthroat kitchen. And also less of his variety show tour. Really I just want more Good Eats.
Should it be? You watch Alton Brown make something, and you are told in no uncertain terms that there is ONE RIGHT WAY TO DO IT. You're given an elaborate background as to the science and meaning behind this, so it must be true. Then you are shown the ONE RIGHT WAY TO MAKE IT involving the ONLY GOOD TOOLS YOU SHOULD USE because everything else is a "unitasker." Unitasker, by the way, is Brown-speak for "tool I don't like." If you actually watch him cook, you'll see he's surrounded by "unitaskers" that are somehow blessed, while at least once per episode some kitchen gadget or other is held up to shame and ridicule. Meanwhile you are given something that involves seven steps all of equal (high) importance and given nothing in the way of a timeframe. So when you set out to make Alton Brown's magic munchies, you find that you've spent three hours making a pie crust that tastes remarkably like wallpaper paste. I made Alton Brown's turkey two years in a row. The third year, I recognized that the likelihood of my needing to spend $40 on vegetable broth for brining was slim to none, seeing as brine is mostly salt. Guess what? Turkey's just as good if you just use salt. As a ward against evil spirits I throw a bunch of herbs in there but nobody has ever commented. It doesn't even change the flavor of the gravy. Now, when we see Alton Brown cooking something we look up the reviews online. They're universally terrible. Of course, those are all the reviews not on Food Network, so how much credibility do they have? Again, I'm a fan of Alton Brown. I think his was the best show on Food Network. But it definitely panders to a crowd that likes to watch cooking, as opposed to a crowd that likes to cook. You know the Thomas Keller roast chicken? The one that /r/food worships like it's the fuckin' 10 commandments? The one where he waves a sprig of rosemary over the chicken, but out of view of its neck hole so that he doesn't upset the chicken's dear, departed spirit? Go check out Julia Child's roast chicken and compare and contrast. Better yet, make 'em both. The point is not that Thomas Keller sucks - the point is that the modern food fetishism - led by Alton Brown - is bad for cooking. Great for TV, sure... but bad for people who actually want to make food.
My favorite cooking resource is cooks magazine. If you never picked one up it's not glossy and mostly just recipes. They pick a dish, make it a gazillion times outlining what they tried and what worked well and what didn't and leave you with their favorite. There are a few gadget reviews and ingredient rundown but mostly just practical food that isn't impossible to make.
I need to rewatch his one on shucking clams - working in a kitchen has made me want to improve my knife skills, and shucking is one of those "high likelihood of laceration" areas. I also need to try his winter vegetable soup that is actually 100% vegetarian. I mostly just think it's an impressive feat - It's surprising the amount of veg soups that have a meat broth base. basically, I just need to rewatch the entirety of good eats.
You shouldn't need to clean every grind if you have a decent grinder. Grind is the next step in improving taste and with a consistant grind you could ditch the paper filter if your gold is fine enough. My stainless could go a hair slower but It's leaving almost no visible solids even when I'm not bothering to head to the shop to Burr grind.
My problem is that ground coffee goes rancid and stale and I can taste that rancid staleness that comes out of grinders that have been sitting. I suspect it's less of a problem in a high-capacity environment but at my house, I'm the only one who drinks coffee and I usually only grind about 4tbsp per day.
I also do not grind much coffee per day. I use an inexpensive (sub $100) Capresso burr grinder. It is consistent and has steel burrs. And you simply lift the top burr off the top as seen in the picture below, and you can take a stiff brush on which your maybe cut the bristles down to the inside for fairly effortless cleaning. The chute the grounds slide down isn't terribly vertical though, so you will leave coffee behind unless you tap it on the counter. That's the main flaw with this one imo. But I've not found it bad at all as far as cleaning goes. Also, I wouldn't try an espresso grind in it. This is probably where it would show it's price range the most I'm guessing.
The weight of good beans at retail keeps going down and the price stays the same here. First it was a thee quarters of a pound than some shops went metric and got down to around a half pound, the other day I saw a third pound of decent but not amazing coffee for fourteen a pound. If these shifty trends continue you will be able to get through a bag in a week.
That is really cool that you're opening up a coffee shop! That's a long term goal of mine. What are some things you know now that you're about to open, that you wish someone had told you when you first started working on it?
I wish that I hadn't done a build out on an older building. The best way is to buy an existing business gets you around a ton of permitting headaches. A newer building will avoid many of the problems that an older building will have during permitting. An old building that wasn't zoned specifically for food is a fucking nightmare. Permitting was hellish. I spent two months while the permit office repeatedly changed it's mind over the dangers of a property line to my ADA door, a property line that connected two lots owned by the same guy, . The owner of the lot could hypothetically at some time in the future choose to build on the adjacent lot that was a parking lot right now. Such a building would be within 4-5 feet of my ADA door and that would be a cosmic level horror. The landlord agreed to sign a document that he would never build such a structure without resolving the ADA door problem (which at some point in the process he would have had to do) but instead the whole thing had to go through a big review process that cost money. Took them about two months to decide on the review thing and I was about to file it and than poof! The whole thing stopped construction dead for two months, I had to pursue some legal help and run all around town trying to clear the fucking thing up. Then all of a sudden the whole thing disappeared from my file, no one ever mentioned it again. Just letting it ride was never one of the half dozen or so ways to solve the problem. Thats just one of many problems that stopped me dead in my tracks a few times. The time I was installing a 2nd bathroom (anywhere with food that is over 700 sq ft now needs two bathrooms) and we found out an entire wall of the building was about fall down. The wall was just stucco over wire mesh, it was all about to go. Spent a month rebuilding that shit. It goes on and on. Buy and existing business that is open. Don't build in an old building no matter how good the location is. Get a great architect who is good a bullshitting the permit people.
Here is another good one. I was told that I only needed a modest garbage area.
Chain link walls with a gate and privacy slats. Coming up to final approval it was determined that I needed a weather resistant, fire resistant garbage area with drainage to the sanitary sewer, in which falling rain on the roof would enter inside the structure and go down a slope to the sanitary sewer.... Ok a week for the architect to get the design, two weeks for permiting to reject the design over a little detail, back to the architect for a two day turn around, two weeks for approval. Add the time to build out the now almost $7k garbage area in the building plan, add the inspection time to have them come and look at the damn thing.
Currently I'm drinking drip because my mom and I both drink a lot of coffee in the morning and it's the most efficient and inexpensive for her and I, but I usually drink French press coffee - Light roast usually. I have some sort of glass Bodum-alike.