I'd like to read that, but seems to go to an article on fasting: Fasting lowers blood pressure by reshaping the gut microbiota.
Cool article, especially since I seem to be having so much blood pressure problem recently. Funny, I said "I just need to lose weight". Perhaps I was closer than I realized. @0patience might want to check this out, too.
WARNING: The above post may contain thoughts or ideas known to the State of Caliphornia to cause seething rage, confusion, distemper, nausea, perspiration, sphincter release, or cranial implosion to persons who implicitly trust only one news source, or find themselves at either the left or right political extreme. Proceed at your own risk.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
looking for reliable espresso machine, suggestions Peter, Chris, anyone? Not too happy with the stove-top unit I presently have. Could be my technique but I suspect it is the appliance too.
Ah, right, so what are you looking for in an espresso machine? Milk drinks or straight espresso? Serving a couple shots a day or more? Do you have a good grinder already or will you need to upgrade?
I'm the only espresso drinker here and I don't do milk drinks so I like my latest purchase which is the Cafelat Robot manual espresso maker. I have to heat up the water on the stove and pull down the levers to pull the shot but the shot quality is very good and being a simple machine there's very little to break down. It also doesn't take up too much room. I have a Baratza Vario grinder which does a good job for espresso.
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Don't know much about the Solis. From Home-Barista.com "Solis Perfetta from Seattle Coffee Gear has 54mm and adjustable temperature. This is a thermoblock machine."
What's your budget?
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With a thermoblock machine you may need to worry about temperature surfing, not sure, I don't think this one has a PID. The 54 mm basket is a bit non-standard but you probably won't be shopping for precision 58 mm baskets and tampers anyway. It's been quite a while since I used a pump machine so I don't have any solid recommendations from user experience.
Join us on Zoom vHerf (Meeting # 2619860114 Password vHerf2020 )
Where is all the new coffee?
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
A few days ago, we were alerted to a small shipment of an African coffee that just arrived. Before we even received our evaluation samples the stock was snapped up. In a blink, we missed out.
This happened largely because most of the new crops are very late getting to the USA because of the global shipping crisis. This is important news for coffee buyers and consumers because it could impact not only availability, but prices.
Box Shortage. You've probably heard that cargo shipping containers are in short supply. Between work disruptions caused by Covid, 18,000 of them clogging the Suez Canal in March and a huge spike in general consumption, there simply isn't enough shipping capacity to go around. We know of plenty of farmers that are sitting on mountains of coffee as they wait for empty containers to load.
But each container only holds about 250 sacks each (about 37,500 pounds). For perspective, one local import warehouse stores something like 50 million pounds of coffee, so one container load is really only a drop in the bucket. But with coffee going out and little coming in, warehouse supply in the US is now sitting at a 6-year low.
Prices. We are not yet sounding the alarms, but coffee prices are starting to creep up. And while Brazil (the world's largest coffee producer) had a record crop in 2020 (up 15% from 2019), forecasts for this years' crop look to be down about 23% because of low rainfall. While you may not be purchasing any Brazil coffee, this matters because all coffee prices are linked through the commodities market.
US "Coffee C Arabica" denotes the coffee commodity futures price. It was up 3.64% today. With retail dining still not fully opened in some places, demand is still somewhat muted and likely helping to keep prices in check. For now.
New Arrivals. There are a few new coffees "on the water" (on shipping vessels en route to the US) that we have our eyes on, so we are hopeful to be posting some new offerings soon. But ETAs keep getting delayed as even those full, inbound ships continue to jam up at points-of-entry. Where we are in Northern California, the average number of ships at port or waiting has more than tripled.
We attended an SF Giants game a few weeks ago and the normal unobstructed view of the SF Bay from the stadium was tiled with dozens of idling cargo ships.
Ugh.
We continue to pace in circles, waiting for good things to land.
We'll keep you posted!
Learn More Here!
Mill47.coffee
I'll tell ya, from the standpoint of someone who wants to have 15 great coffees on his website that has to replenish them at least once a year and typically more often than that, this shipping conundrum is driving me bonkers. What was once a fun hobby that covered my car insurance and property taxes is turning into a headache I don't want or need.
the Solis arrived today. After an hour going through the 38 page manual and programming brew temperature and dose volume it is up and running. (it does have a PID by the way). Seems like a decent well built machine and I liked my first cup a lot -- a full city roasted Brazil), Happy camper and looking forward to fine tuning temp and grind.
+2
· 13h ·
An already bad situation is getting worse and worse.
You are going to see shelves unfilled and prices going up by as much as 100% on certain goods.
A friend just arranged for a 20' container of SE Asian coffee that normally cost around $1800-2000. He's paying $13,000.
In another instance someone who imports small appliances is getting hit with almost $26,000 to get goods to the Midwest On goods that cost in total $27,000
My freight costs are up 600% for Europe and 400% for USA.
Crazy but I've advise my wife she should buy Christmas gifts now. I know I just bought a TV and 24 hrs after purchased it went up 18%.
We normally use this port for all our shipments- 160,000 containers stuck on the docks
I hope I am in the right area to post this... I mentioned Coffee Roasting in a post and @Peter4jc suggested posting in the Coffee thread. Seems like this forum always defaults to discussions from 2012 or so... not sure how to switch it to show the most recent posts and can't find any settings on that.
I have been roasting for about 15 years or so. I started out with a popcorn popper and then bought a Behmor 1600 around 13 years ago. Finally wore that out and upgraded with a newer Behmor 2000 last month. I usually buy green beans from Sweet Maria's but have bought from some others like Coffee Corral and such. Hope to connect with others who roast as well.
Hi Brokegunner, sounds like we have similar backgrounds in coffee. I started with a popcorn popper, then roasted on a Behmor 1600 for about 10 years and recently upgraded to a Bullet which I've been pretty happy with.
This forum doesn't seem to have a way to mark all the old messages as read so new members are stuck reading ancient messages and necroposting replies, I think you just have to power through.
Most of the time I make coffee in my Behmor Brazen coffee maker but I'll sometimes pull an espresso shot on my Robot lever espresso maker.
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Right on, @Brokegunner... I started roasting in '04. The first few batches were on a baking sheet in my oven, and then for years I used two Stir Crazy / Turbo Ovens (SC/TO), and since '09 or so greens are turned brown in an Ambex YM2K.
I may roast more beans than @Yakster but he's the resident expert when it comes to the technical side of roasting so I defer to him. @silvermouse is also a long-time roaster.
This forum doesn't seem to have a way to mark all the old messages as read so new members are stuck reading ancient messages and necroposting replies, I think you just have to power through.
From the main menu, click the star in the top right corner of the catagory. You get a pop up to "mark read". Click that and all old posts are brought up to date.
I just cleared 800 post from the old CI daily banter thread.
Don't let the wife know what you spend on guns, ammo or cigars.
@Yakster said:
How does your Behmor 2000 compare to your 1600?
I think it's probably no practical difference between the roast quality on the 1600 or 2000, but when compared to MY old 1600 it is a huge difference. I roast at least a pound a week so the past 12 or 13 years of use wore the old girl out finally.
My first impressions on the 2000 are that I absolutely LOVE the audible beeping tone of the 75% roast safety timer thing. I can't count how many times I looked up from my work bench to see the "002, 001" flash on the display right before it went into the ERROR mode. It does seem to roast faster too but I think that's just because it is so clean.
The only slight negative so far is the screen on the bean canister is not welded in enough places, so beans get trapped under the paddles and I end up with at least 2 beans trapped under each one. I do notice it depends on the size of the bean, but my old drum rarely had trouble with these beans. I have been using a bamboo chopstick to poke the stuck beans out and it only adds a few seconds to the clean up.
@peter4jc said:
Right on, @Brokegunner... I started roasting in '04. The first few batches were on a baking sheet in my oven, and then for years I used two Stir Crazy / Turbo Ovens (SC/TO), and since '09 or so greens are turned brown in an Ambex YM2K.
I may roast more beans than @Yakster but he's the resident expert when it comes to the technical side of roasting so I defer to him. @silvermouse is also a long-time roaster.
I have kind of a funny story on how I got started... hopefully I can make it not too long.
I was dating my current wife and she was addicted to Starbux, which I had only tried a few times and was not a fan of charred coffee. On a typical saturday she would have me stop there twice and the daily total was up over $20 so I figured maybe I could do this at home and save money in the long run.
I bought a Kitchen Aid espresso machine ($700+) and as I was leaving the store, they asked if I had a grinder, so I spent my last $40 buying a cheap grinder. I spent months wondering why my espresso looked like black tea (it was the grinder) and thought I had the best results with very fresh roasted coffee so I thought that was the solution. I lived in the Bay Area at the time and heard of Sweet Maria's, so I rode my Harley bagger over to Oakland and bought 40lbs of fresh roasted coffee... or so I thought. As the guy came back from the office to bring my receipt, I asked why the beans were yellow... "there must be some mistake, I wanted roasted coffee" but he explained they don't sell roasted coffee, only green. He told me I could spend a few hundred on a real roaster or I could get a popcorn popper so I went to CVS and had beans in the left saddlebag and an Air-Popper in the right saddlebag and went home.
An hour later my woman walked in to the house to find it was filled with smoke and all of the fire alarms going off. I was standing at the back door with dark beans on a baking sheet and fanning them with another baking sheet trying to cool the beans off. She just gave me THE LOOK that all women give when you are doing stupid things that leave them speechless...haha
Now she is my biggest fan of my roasted beans and we are still sharing a cup of the good stuff every morning.
That's a great story. I used to buy Light Rail passes from a local grocery that served the Ethiopian and Eritrean community in San Jose at the light rail station and they had plastic baggies of unroasted, unlabeled Ethiopian coffee. I bought some and first tried the convection oven on 500 in the house with a perforated pizza pan.
That was the first and last time I was allowed to roast in the house. I filled it with acrid smoke, but even though the beans were mottled from the uneven roasting they still blew my mind. I tried a heat gun/dog bowl but my old tired heat gun didn't cut it. I even tried the heat gun with a bread maker. I tried in a skillet but that was too much work so I got some poppers and that lasted about a year until I got tired of the small batches and upgraded to the Behmor, which was a refurb unit which served me well for 10+ years.
My Wife blames me for ruining her for coffee, she can't stand Starbucks anymore. Back then, fresh coffee was harder to find, nowadays there's a lot more small roasters selling fresh coffee but now I'm hooked and enjoy buying green coffee at half the price of roasted.
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Comments
Cool article, especially since I seem to be having so much blood pressure problem recently. Funny, I said "I just need to lose weight". Perhaps I was closer than I realized. @0patience might want to check this out, too.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
Interesting video, Chris.
I know, You're a big dog and I'm on the list.
Let's eat, GrandMa. / Let's eat GrandMa. -- Punctuation saves lives
It'll be fine once the swelling goes down.
You all are making it really hard to stay on top, at the mouth of the rabbit hole.
MOW badge received.
Nice Edward, I mean. Some people like it.
looking for reliable espresso machine, suggestions Peter, Chris, anyone? Not too happy with the stove-top unit I presently have. Could be my technique but I suspect it is the appliance too.
Ah, right, so what are you looking for in an espresso machine? Milk drinks or straight espresso? Serving a couple shots a day or more? Do you have a good grinder already or will you need to upgrade?
I'm the only espresso drinker here and I don't do milk drinks so I like my latest purchase which is the Cafelat Robot manual espresso maker. I have to heat up the water on the stove and pull down the levers to pull the shot but the shot quality is very good and being a simple machine there's very little to break down. It also doesn't take up too much room. I have a Baratza Vario grinder which does a good job for espresso.
Thanks. Now I think my choices are either the Robot or the Solis, here... (My wife likes milk sometimes)
https://www.seattlecoffeegear.com/solis-barista-perfetta-espresso-machine
I have a Mueller grinder that will go very fine.
Don't know much about the Solis. From Home-Barista.com "Solis Perfetta from Seattle Coffee Gear has 54mm and adjustable temperature. This is a thermoblock machine."
What's your budget?
Check out this thread for ideas: https://www.home-barista.com/advice/newbie-with-1000-budget-for-espresso-machine-and-grinder-for-lattes-t73098.html
With a thermoblock machine you may need to worry about temperature surfing, not sure, I don't think this one has a PID. The 54 mm basket is a bit non-standard but you probably won't be shopping for precision 58 mm baskets and tampers anyway. It's been quite a while since I used a pump machine so I don't have any solid recommendations from user experience.
Oooo... Oooo! Look! A man who takes advice and follows instructions!
Where is all the new coffee?
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
A few days ago, we were alerted to a small shipment of an African coffee that just arrived. Before we even received our evaluation samples the stock was snapped up. In a blink, we missed out.
This happened largely because most of the new crops are very late getting to the USA because of the global shipping crisis. This is important news for coffee buyers and consumers because it could impact not only availability, but prices.
Box Shortage. You've probably heard that cargo shipping containers are in short supply. Between work disruptions caused by Covid, 18,000 of them clogging the Suez Canal in March and a huge spike in general consumption, there simply isn't enough shipping capacity to go around. We know of plenty of farmers that are sitting on mountains of coffee as they wait for empty containers to load.
But each container only holds about 250 sacks each (about 37,500 pounds). For perspective, one local import warehouse stores something like 50 million pounds of coffee, so one container load is really only a drop in the bucket. But with coffee going out and little coming in, warehouse supply in the US is now sitting at a 6-year low.
Prices. We are not yet sounding the alarms, but coffee prices are starting to creep up. And while Brazil (the world's largest coffee producer) had a record crop in 2020 (up 15% from 2019), forecasts for this years' crop look to be down about 23% because of low rainfall. While you may not be purchasing any Brazil coffee, this matters because all coffee prices are linked through the commodities market.
US "Coffee C Arabica" denotes the coffee commodity futures price. It was up 3.64% today. With retail dining still not fully opened in some places, demand is still somewhat muted and likely helping to keep prices in check. For now.
New Arrivals. There are a few new coffees "on the water" (on shipping vessels en route to the US) that we have our eyes on, so we are hopeful to be posting some new offerings soon. But ETAs keep getting delayed as even those full, inbound ships continue to jam up at points-of-entry. Where we are in Northern California, the average number of ships at port or waiting has more than tripled.
We attended an SF Giants game a few weeks ago and the normal unobstructed view of the SF Bay from the stadium was tiled with dozens of idling cargo ships.
Ugh.
We continue to pace in circles, waiting for good things to land.
We'll keep you posted!
Learn More Here!
Mill47.coffee
I'll tell ya, from the standpoint of someone who wants to have 15 great coffees on his website that has to replenish them at least once a year and typically more often than that, this shipping conundrum is driving me bonkers. What was once a fun hobby that covered my car insurance and property taxes is turning into a headache I don't want or need.
the Solis arrived today. After an hour going through the 38 page manual and programming brew temperature and dose volume it is up and running. (it does have a PID by the way). Seems like a decent well built machine and I liked my first cup a lot -- a full city roasted Brazil), Happy camper and looking forward to fine tuning temp and grind.
Nice!
might have posted this before. Nice overview of the different varieties of coffee plants;
https://sca.coffee/research/coffee-plants-of-the-world
Joe Behm shared a link.
+2
· 13h ·
An already bad situation is getting worse and worse.
You are going to see shelves unfilled and prices going up by as much as 100% on certain goods.
A friend just arranged for a 20' container of SE Asian coffee that normally cost around $1800-2000. He's paying $13,000.
In another instance someone who imports small appliances is getting hit with almost $26,000 to get goods to the Midwest On goods that cost in total $27,000
My freight costs are up 600% for Europe and 400% for USA.
Crazy but I've advise my wife she should buy Christmas gifts now. I know I just bought a TV and 24 hrs after purchased it went up 18%.
We normally use this port for all our shipments- 160,000 containers stuck on the docks
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/satellite-images-show-backlog-of-containers-awaiting-export-at-port-of-yantian-after-covid-outbreak/ar-AAL9iSh
I hope I am in the right area to post this... I mentioned Coffee Roasting in a post and @Peter4jc suggested posting in the Coffee thread. Seems like this forum always defaults to discussions from 2012 or so... not sure how to switch it to show the most recent posts and can't find any settings on that.
I have been roasting for about 15 years or so. I started out with a popcorn popper and then bought a Behmor 1600 around 13 years ago. Finally wore that out and upgraded with a newer Behmor 2000 last month. I usually buy green beans from Sweet Maria's but have bought from some others like Coffee Corral and such. Hope to connect with others who roast as well.
"Not all heroes eat crepes"
Hi Brokegunner, sounds like we have similar backgrounds in coffee. I started with a popcorn popper, then roasted on a Behmor 1600 for about 10 years and recently upgraded to a Bullet which I've been pretty happy with.
This forum doesn't seem to have a way to mark all the old messages as read so new members are stuck reading ancient messages and necroposting replies, I think you just have to power through.
Most of the time I make coffee in my Behmor Brazen coffee maker but I'll sometimes pull an espresso shot on my Robot lever espresso maker.
Right on, @Brokegunner... I started roasting in '04. The first few batches were on a baking sheet in my oven, and then for years I used two Stir Crazy / Turbo Ovens (SC/TO), and since '09 or so greens are turned brown in an Ambex YM2K.
I may roast more beans than @Yakster but he's the resident expert when it comes to the technical side of roasting so I defer to him. @silvermouse is also a long-time roaster.
How does your Behmor 2000 compare to your 1600?
Peter has coffee wisdom, I have sought knowledge and hope to acquire some wisdom.
@Yakster said:
From the main menu, click the star in the top right corner of the catagory. You get a pop up to "mark read". Click that and all old posts are brought up to date.
I just cleared 800 post from the old CI daily banter thread.
Don't let the wife know what you spend on guns, ammo or cigars.
I think it's probably no practical difference between the roast quality on the 1600 or 2000, but when compared to MY old 1600 it is a huge difference. I roast at least a pound a week so the past 12 or 13 years of use wore the old girl out finally.
My first impressions on the 2000 are that I absolutely LOVE the audible beeping tone of the 75% roast safety timer thing. I can't count how many times I looked up from my work bench to see the "002, 001" flash on the display right before it went into the ERROR mode. It does seem to roast faster too but I think that's just because it is so clean.
The only slight negative so far is the screen on the bean canister is not welded in enough places, so beans get trapped under the paddles and I end up with at least 2 beans trapped under each one. I do notice it depends on the size of the bean, but my old drum rarely had trouble with these beans. I have been using a bamboo chopstick to poke the stuck beans out and it only adds a few seconds to the clean up.
"Not all heroes eat crepes"
I have kind of a funny story on how I got started... hopefully I can make it not too long.
I was dating my current wife and she was addicted to Starbux, which I had only tried a few times and was not a fan of charred coffee. On a typical saturday she would have me stop there twice and the daily total was up over $20 so I figured maybe I could do this at home and save money in the long run.
I bought a Kitchen Aid espresso machine ($700+) and as I was leaving the store, they asked if I had a grinder, so I spent my last $40 buying a cheap grinder. I spent months wondering why my espresso looked like black tea (it was the grinder) and thought I had the best results with very fresh roasted coffee so I thought that was the solution. I lived in the Bay Area at the time and heard of Sweet Maria's, so I rode my Harley bagger over to Oakland and bought 40lbs of fresh roasted coffee... or so I thought. As the guy came back from the office to bring my receipt, I asked why the beans were yellow... "there must be some mistake, I wanted roasted coffee" but he explained they don't sell roasted coffee, only green. He told me I could spend a few hundred on a real roaster or I could get a popcorn popper so I went to CVS and had beans in the left saddlebag and an Air-Popper in the right saddlebag and went home.
An hour later my woman walked in to the house to find it was filled with smoke and all of the fire alarms going off. I was standing at the back door with dark beans on a baking sheet and fanning them with another baking sheet trying to cool the beans off. She just gave me THE LOOK that all women give when you are doing stupid things that leave them speechless...haha
Now she is my biggest fan of my roasted beans and we are still sharing a cup of the good stuff every morning.
"Not all heroes eat crepes"
That's a great story. I used to buy Light Rail passes from a local grocery that served the Ethiopian and Eritrean community in San Jose at the light rail station and they had plastic baggies of unroasted, unlabeled Ethiopian coffee. I bought some and first tried the convection oven on 500 in the house with a perforated pizza pan.
That was the first and last time I was allowed to roast in the house. I filled it with acrid smoke, but even though the beans were mottled from the uneven roasting they still blew my mind. I tried a heat gun/dog bowl but my old tired heat gun didn't cut it. I even tried the heat gun with a bread maker. I tried in a skillet but that was too much work so I got some poppers and that lasted about a year until I got tired of the small batches and upgraded to the Behmor, which was a refurb unit which served me well for 10+ years.
My Wife blames me for ruining her for coffee, she can't stand Starbucks anymore. Back then, fresh coffee was harder to find, nowadays there's a lot more small roasters selling fresh coffee but now I'm hooked and enjoy buying green coffee at half the price of roasted.