Local Authority
bitch city
they should replace coffee with coke
Coffee
- Thread starter alex
- Start date
IdleRich
IdleRich
Maybe Luka or someone can advise me here. I went to this coffee shop in Moscow, the set up is like a chemistry set with all these tubes and different shaped vessels. The guy takes literally ten minutes to make each cup of coffee, explaining all the processes involved at each step (I'm told, it was in Russian so lost on me) and finally produces a cup of coffee that is.... ok. Alright, better than most of the coffee I've had in Russia but no better than a normal filter in London. Am I a philistine or is this guy wasting his time?
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Was it a siphon set-up?
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=c...ame7AaFzYC4Bw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=959&bih=459
They have a certain steampunk flair to them, although I've got no idea whether the coffee's worth the wait...
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=c...ame7AaFzYC4Bw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=959&bih=459
They have a certain steampunk flair to them, although I've got no idea whether the coffee's worth the wait...
blacktulip
Pregnant with mandrakes
I have been using a thriftstore-find syphon system for a month or two. It's fun: the quality, at its best, is just short of a really good filter coffee. God knows what beans they are using in Moscow though (provenance, age, how recently roasted).
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
In capitalist Russia, coffee grinds you!
blacktulip
Pregnant with mandrakes
Three advantages I can see so far:
1) Water never goes much further up than 75 C, which means there is little chance of overbrewing and resultant bitterness.
2) Resultant coffee is much hotter than you get from a filter setup. This is handy here as Mrs takes milk and is getting sick of cold filter coffee.
3) Pleasure of experimenting with a bunch of gear that looks like it's out of Breaking Bad.
1) Water never goes much further up than 75 C, which means there is little chance of overbrewing and resultant bitterness.
2) Resultant coffee is much hotter than you get from a filter setup. This is handy here as Mrs takes milk and is getting sick of cold filter coffee.
3) Pleasure of experimenting with a bunch of gear that looks like it's out of Breaking Bad.
blacktulip
Pregnant with mandrakes
Also the process is cool: you have one small chamber with a connecting tube to a larger, open chamber separated by a filter of some kind. You put the water in the bottom one and heat it. The air in the bottom chamber expands as it heats, and pushes the water up the tube and through the filter. You put the coffee grounds in the open one and the coffee brews in the warm water while the water too low to be pushed up the tube bubbles away. Then when it's fully extracted, you remove the heat source, the air in the bottom chamber contracts, creating a vacuum, which sucks down the brewed coffee down through the filter.
It's addictive to set up and watch too!
It's addictive to set up and watch too!
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Is this behind the sudden appearance of the 'babychino', whatever the fuck that is exactly?
I think it's just froth with chocolate on top.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
So what's the attitude of people who run trendy independent coffee shops towards those people who sit around for hours with macbooks toying with a long-cold latte and pretending they're working on a screenplay when they're blatantly actually on twitter? Is it "I love that we provide a relaxed space where people can tit around for hours without actually buying anything" or more "any chance you could fuck off and make space for some actual paying customers some time in the next two hours"?
I'd have assumed it was the latter, but remarkably few of them seem to get brained with coffee tampers...
I'd have assumed it was the latter, but remarkably few of them seem to get brained with coffee tampers...
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
There's an interesting tension you get where you want something to be really good and to be made with care and attention but also to be accessible and unpretentious, and in practice a lot of the time you have to end up choosing places that do one of those things and hoping that the availability of the other will improve over time. But one default reaction - as above - is to moan about how awful and pretentious the places that do "good" are.
Relates to coffee (in the UK and the US), also to beer (in the UK), often to food as well.
Relates to coffee (in the UK and the US), also to beer (in the UK), often to food as well.
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Leo
Well-known member
i took it as he's also saying most coffee is essentially the same, so why bother with the pretentious cafes. he likes "good" coffee, but evidently it's not a big concern for him. granted, some low-end delis/bodegas have lousy (weak or burned) coffee, but he seems to be saying that most of them have "good enough" coffee.
luka
Well-known member
Yep well said. When I worked as a barista I always paid a lot of attention to that. I never lectured anybody or talked down to them and always made a big effort to make it feel inclusive.