Coffee ☕

International Roast straight from the giant can! With a shitload of sugar and milk!

I usually just pull espresso for a lomg black from my cheap-o machine, but I do love a good, black, cold brew. Also partial to pour overs with a proper ratio.

I have a nespresso machine. For my morning coffee I use 4 pods randomly selected from my huge basket of pods (I buy in bulk every time the boxes of pods are on special at the supermarket), add 285ml of boiled water, and a milk froth cycle from the machine. I have a double-sized mug to put it all in.

I used to drink coffees through the day using two Nespresso pods and frothed milk. But I gave up on buying the Nespresso branded pods because I got sick of their website fighting me. They offer a free thing if you buy x number of pods, but literally every time I ordered and spent time carefully selecting the pods I wanted, when I got to the order screen at least one of my selections was out of stock so I would lose my free thing and have to go back and refigure out my order. Why let me select pods you aren't going to sell me? Anyway, Nespresso have lost a customer because of that. Once or twice would be tolerable but it was literally every time.

Now my day coffee is nescafe gold, make sure you add the milk before adding the water.

Gaggia Classic Pro here with the 9 bar spring mod and a VST basket. Using a Baratza Encore grinder. The quintessential "Dipping my toes into espresso" bundle.

18g grams of beans in, 36 grams of liquid out. Froth and pour in 100ml of full cream milk.

I used to have a hario hand grinder and french press.

But I just bought myself a miele full automatic

One teaspoon of cheap instant coffee and two splendas, milk.

I'm team moka pot…the Brikka variant. I used to just use pre-ground coffee but recently bought a little Kalita hand ginder and I use Humbler from Proud Mary…much more tasty. It's no worse than the 5 buck coffees I get from my local cafe, IMO.

I have an aeropress that I haven't used since I bought a $99 Delonghi espresso machine from Aldi a few years ago. It's a good little machine and makes a perfectly adequate coffee. I've recently upgraded to a Gaggia Classic Pro and the quality of the coffee I make has gone significantly downhill thanks to this machine being more demanding. I'm slowly improving, though.

As for the beans, I like to try local roasters I haven't tried before, but have a couple I fall back on either because I enjoy them or just for convenience (read: I didn't realise how low I was getting and ran out, so went with the best option to get beans ASAP.)

I really like cold iced coffee with full cream milk with or without a scoop of ice cream, although lately I have been drinking more straight espresso or long blacks (sometimes flat whites too) due to the cold weather. I have a little Nespresso pod machine with some resusable stainless steel pods that I fill with coffee I grind myself. Before this current one I had a larger and cheaper Nescafe machine (also with resuable pods) that I've since passed on to a family member. The beans don't really matter too much to me - I just rotate between different stuff depending on my mood or what's on special.

I have a bunch of other things that I use less, like one-cup filters, plungers, etc. I also tried cold brewing for a while last year but eventually got bored with that and went back to the ol' faithful pod machine. I'd like to have a proper coffee machine but in terms of size and affordability it's unrealistic. One of the things I like about my current setup is that it still replicates a lot of the things I enjoyed about making coffee on a proper machine when I worked in the industry. I still have full control over the fineness of the grind, the weight of the shot, the force of the tamp, the length of the shot, etc. I really enjoy going through the ritual every morning of preparing the shot (another reason why I prefer espresso to filtered and cold brew coffee).

We got a Delonghi (Dinamica Plus) coffee machine last year. Most of the time I go for an espresso or a cappuccino.

In terms of beans I have found a couple of local roasters nearby and tend to alternate across their blends.

The ones I've been enjoying are:

The Cats Pyjamas https://www.sevenmiles.com.au/products/catspjs?variant=39825374281918

Gusto https://www.sevenmiles.com.au/products/gusto?variant=39843759063230

9Bar Blend https://espressoservicesplus.com.au/product/9bar-coffee-bar-blend-1kg/