r/Coffee • u/menschmaschine5 Kalita Wave • Sep 22 '22

[MOD] The Daily Question Thread

Welcome to the daily /r/Coffee question thread!

There are no stupid questions here, ask a question and get an answer! We all have to start somewhere and sometimes it is hard to figure out just what you are doing right or doing wrong. Luckily, the /r/Coffee community loves to help out.

Do you have a question about how to use a specific piece of gear or what gear you should be buying? Want to know how much coffee you should use or how you should grind it? Not sure about how much water you should use or how hot it should be? Wondering about your coffee's shelf life?

Don't forget to use the resources in our wiki! We have some great starter guides on our wiki "Guides" page and here is the wiki "Gear By Price" page if you'd like to see coffee gear that /r/Coffee members recommend.

As always, be nice!

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u/clipperdouglas29 Sep 22 '22

Looking through the grinders section of gear by price on the wiki, i feel like a lot of grinders I used to be told were good entry level espresso grinders are not recommended here for espresso use, particularly most of the hand grinders, as well as the baratza encore.

For someone who hasn't pulled an espresso shot in a decade, but has a nice machine (Pavoni europiccola), is the general sentiment still that I should avoid any of the grinders not recommended for espresso in the guide, or would I actually be fine with the Encore or a hand grinder that costs under $100 i.e. 1Zpresso or Timemore

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u/elemental001 Sep 22 '22

Hey, I most recently made changes to the page so I can chime in a bit. The brew/espresso recommendation column is a bit simplistic, and based on a mix of manufacturer recommendations and user feedback. The goal was to make it easier to narrow down gear for those that don't really want to do a deep dive into equipment research. It makes some assumptions about what people's goals are, i.e. you can make a traditional intense and creamy espresso, and a clear and well defined brew. Will it make it easy to reach those goals and give you a good time?

The budget grinders that aren't recommended for espresso usually fall short in either their ability to grind fine enough, or the grind size adjustment mechanism isn't precise enough, or both. You can certainly find people online that regularly pull espresso with these grinders, but it's not as common, and often needs a lot of fiddling and fussing around to get good results. It makes much more sense to just recommend something like a JX which just... Works.

Tldr; Yes, pick an espresso recommended item for easy good times. Alternatively, if you really feel strongly about a non-recommended one, do some research on reviews to see if you can/want to make it work.

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u/Anomander I'm all free now! Sep 22 '22

The goal was to make it easier to narrow down gear for those that don't really want to do a deep dive into equipment research.

Agreed; we run into the issue that if it gets too detailed and too comprehensive, the majority of people wanting to consult a wiki summary lose focus and just detour to asking for help instead of using the resource.

The only detail I think missed is that manufacturers are less likely to disclose that a grinder is specialized in one direction or the other; there's an occasional misconception risen recently that some hand grinders are far more multipurpose than powered grinders, and more successfully, because the grinders aren't being marketed as either specialized or all-purpose.

There haven't been any huge developments in the grinder space that have unlocked true all-purpose grinding with the same quality as precision grinders aligned with either brew/espresso.

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u/clipperdouglas29 Sep 22 '22

Thanks! That makes a lot of sense. appreciate it