00:00SPEAKER- I think it's about that time again.
00:02SPEAKERI think the hunger is about to overtake me.
00:05SPEAKERI think the hunt is on.
00:07SPEAKER- What, what, wait, what are we hunting for?
00:09SPEAKERIs it people this time?
00:10SPEAKERI'm ready.
00:11SPEAKER- Dude, we promise not to talk about that.
00:13SPEAKER- Oh. - In public.
00:15SPEAKER- We were not recording yet, it's my time.
00:18SPEAKER- Hang on, all right, let me click record here.
00:19SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, start now.
00:21SPEAKER- Hey, did you ever, it's time to buy a new domain.
00:25SPEAKER- Ooh, what you gonna get?
00:26SPEAKER- I don't know. - You gonna get like
00:27SPEAKERsomething, you got a new, wait,
00:30SPEAKERyou're not doing a new podcast, are you?
00:32SPEAKER- No, not. - Okay, okay.
00:33SPEAKER- I hope, God, I hope not.
00:36SPEAKERIt's time for a new domain.
00:38SPEAKERI won't get into why, I just need another domain in my life.
00:40SPEAKER- We all need, you know, sometimes you just need
00:44SPEAKERa new domain.
00:45SPEAKER- That's, you know, like it's just nice
00:46SPEAKERto have a list of them.
00:47SPEAKERI've got like six of them that just renew every year
00:50SPEAKERfor like six to eight dollars a piece,
00:51SPEAKERand I'm like, I'll probably never use those,
00:53SPEAKERbut they're cool.
00:54SPEAKER- You know, you never know when you're gonna need one.
00:56SPEAKERYou never know when it's gonna show up.
00:57SPEAKER- That's right.
00:58SPEAKER- I had content.town for years.
01:01SPEAKER- Right, that's an amazing domain.
01:03SPEAKER- And one day, I was like, hey, what about,
01:05SPEAKERwe should do a, we should have a website for our podcast,
01:07SPEAKERand you were like, ah, well, we'd have to go find a domain,
01:10SPEAKERand I was like, hey, what about content.town?
01:13SPEAKERYou were like, that is exactly the kind of town
01:15SPEAKERI would like to live in, the one filled with content.
01:17SPEAKERThus, a podcast was born.
01:19SPEAKER- As always, the most desirable and least attainable trait
01:25SPEAKERof a new domain is brevity.
01:28SPEAKERYou want a short domain, and you can never get one,
01:30SPEAKERso that's kind of, that's the angle.
01:32SPEAKER- So this is a former CNET guy thing,
01:34SPEAKERbecause when I worked at Future, we literally,
01:37SPEAKERlike there was no, like you all kind of had a whole,
01:44SPEAKERI don't know, I don't wanna call it like a fetishization,
01:46SPEAKERbut it was kind of a fetishization
01:47SPEAKERof very short domain names, and in the magazine world,
01:52SPEAKERwe were just going for the stupidest possible names
01:54SPEAKERwhen we were buying domains.
01:55SPEAKERWe were looking for goofy, not necessarily a brief.
02:00SPEAKER- God, what was it that, CNET owned a domain,
02:02SPEAKERlike a .com that was insanely short,
02:05SPEAKERthat I think they used to serve all of their images from.
02:07SPEAKERI cannot remember what it was.
02:08SPEAKER- It was like a.com or something like that.
02:10SPEAKER- Something like that.
02:11SPEAKER- A single letter one that somebody had bought early on.
02:13SPEAKER- It was ridiculous.
02:14SPEAKERSo my strategy here, I decided,
02:18SPEAKERI'm not gonna get a .org or anything super cool and classic.
02:22SPEAKERI think if I want a short domain,
02:23SPEAKERI'm gonna have to go for the new top level domains.
02:25SPEAKER- Oh, you're gonna get a .pizza?
02:27SPEAKER- Those will be the least bought up.
02:28SPEAKERWell, so I pulled up a list here.
02:30SPEAKERI pulled up a reverse list of TLDs by launch date.
02:35SPEAKER- Ah.
02:35SPEAKER- So here I've got what came out in the last year.
02:38SPEAKERI might be able to roll back years before that,
02:40SPEAKERbut I think more than a year old is pointless, right?
02:44SPEAKER- Like is .weed a domain name yet?
02:47SPEAKERI assume it is. - It has to be.
02:48SPEAKERI should probably cross-reference.
02:50SPEAKERActually, I do have the, okay, .weed is not.
02:53SPEAKER- Oh, .green is the cannabis related domain.
02:56SPEAKER- Was that real?
02:57SPEAKER- Yes, that is a real thing.
02:59SPEAKER- That is, that is a real,
03:01SPEAKERdescribes it as environmentally focused,
03:03SPEAKERbut you know, that's a type of environmental.
03:06SPEAKER- It's true. - I suppose, I suppose.
03:07SPEAKEROkay.
03:08SPEAKER- I just bought WillSmith.fun a couple of weeks ago.
03:10SPEAKERIt's my Blue Sky handle.
03:11SPEAKER- That's pretty good.
03:12SPEAKER- I also bought WillSmith.actor.
03:13SPEAKERI can switch between them interchangeably for lulls.
03:16SPEAKER- Yeah.
03:17SPEAKERI have one that I am thinking about deploying
03:20SPEAKERon Blue Sky eventually, but not yet.
03:24SPEAKER- BradShoemaker.green?
03:25SPEAKER- It is all of eight letters.
03:27SPEAKERIt is, start to finish, it is an eight letter domain name.
03:30SPEAKER- Okay, that's pretty good.
03:32SPEAKER- All right, here's what came out in the last year.
03:34SPEAKER- What you got?
03:35SPEAKER- In reverse order.
03:37SPEAKERNot six weeks ago, .watches and .channel.
03:40SPEAKER- Oh, .channel is pretty good.
03:41SPEAKER- It's okay. - A little long.
03:43SPEAKER- I like it.
03:44SPEAKERI like a TLD to not be more than three characters,
03:46SPEAKERif possible. - Wow.
03:47SPEAKER- So .za, not .pizza. - Yes, .dad.
03:52SPEAKER- .dad's pretty good.
03:53SPEAKER- .esque, as in Esquire, ESQ.
03:57SPEAKER- Okay.
03:58SPEAKER- Or esque, as in ESQUE, maybe?
04:03SPEAKERThat would actually not be bad.
04:04SPEAKER- Yeah, that's pretty good.
04:06SPEAKER- .foo.
04:08SPEAKER- I like a .foo.
04:09SPEAKER- Yeah, I actually, I might give .foo a look
04:14SPEAKERand see what I can find.
04:15SPEAKER.Nexus, .prof, as in Professor.
04:18SPEAKER- That's pretty good, that's very Star Trek .Nexus.
04:20SPEAKER- Okay, this might actually be the reason
04:23SPEAKERthat we're even talking about this.
04:25SPEAKERNow we come to the real decision point.
04:27SPEAKER- Okay.
04:28SPEAKER- .zip and .mov.
04:31SPEAKER- Wait, is prof. P-R-O-F like prof, like professor?
04:34SPEAKER- Not really, like professor, yes.
04:36SPEAKER- Okay, or professional, I guess.
04:39SPEAKER- So we come to zip and mauve.
04:42SPEAKER- Okay, .zip is a crime and shouldn't be allowed to exist.
04:45SPEAKER- No, that's why I bring that up,
04:46SPEAKERis that those are probably the least popular TLDs
04:49SPEAKERto be introduced in a very long time.
04:51SPEAKER- I'm gonna suggest that there probably is a lot of,
04:54SPEAKERthere are a lot of people that are buying those .zip.
04:57SPEAKER- Actually, you're right.
04:58SPEAKERActually, if anything, scammers have probably bought up
05:00SPEAKERas many of those as they can get their hands on.
05:02SPEAKERSo maybe I'll just pass those by.
05:05SPEAKER- I could get will.art for $12,999.
05:09SPEAKER- That's maybe a little out of impulse purchase territory.
05:12SPEAKER- The renewal's only 60 bucks a year, though,
05:13SPEAKERso it's a pretty good deal once you get through
05:15SPEAKERthat first year.
05:17SPEAKER- It's just an investment that you make in yourself.
05:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I feel like I'd have to be better at art first.
05:23SPEAKERWhat else you got?
05:25SPEAKERIt's hard to know what I should do here,
05:27SPEAKERwhat I should recommend here
05:28SPEAKERwithout knowing what this domain is.
05:31SPEAKERI mean, I know what this domain is for,
05:32SPEAKERbut the listeners don't, so I don't wanna like,
05:34SPEAKERwhat about brad.tax?
05:35SPEAKERCould you get that?
05:36SPEAKERThat's a $46 a year.
05:38SPEAKER- Is that available?
05:39SPEAKER- Well, will.tax is available.
05:42SPEAKER- What's your domain search of choice?
05:44SPEAKER- I'm a hover, I use hover for searches.
05:47SPEAKERI could get will.surf for $29 a year.
05:50SPEAKER- Dot surf?
05:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I could get will.organic for 85 bucks.
05:54SPEAKERThat's a bit out of my range.
05:55SPEAKERWill.vin.
05:56SPEAKER- Wait, this cannot be real.
05:58SPEAKER- What?
05:59SPEAKER- If I say this out loud, okay, brad.tax is taken.
06:02SPEAKER- Oh, boo.
06:03SPEAKER- Brad.tech is $719.
06:07SPEAKER- That's too much.
06:08SPEAKER- That's too much.
06:09SPEAKERI might, you know what, I'm just gonna have to buy this
06:11SPEAKERbefore this episode posts.
06:13SPEAKERBrad.fun is five bucks.
06:15SPEAKER- Brad.fun, you got brad.fun?
06:17SPEAKER- It says, unless there's something about hover
06:19SPEAKERthat I'm not, it's literally, it says sale $4.99.
06:23SPEAKER- And you should buy that.
06:24SPEAKER- Is dot fun new?
06:26SPEAKER- Dot fun is relatively new.
06:27SPEAKERI think you're fun enough to be brad.fun
06:30SPEAKERif we're being real.
06:30SPEAKER- Click through to cart.
06:31SPEAKERI have gone all the way through to the point
06:34SPEAKERwhere I can register this domain.
06:36SPEAKERIt's $5.17.
06:37SPEAKER- This is bunk, 'cause will.fun is available,
06:41SPEAKERbut because will is the future tense of the B verb,
06:44SPEAKERit's $379 a year instead of $5.
06:48SPEAKERI feel, I don't feel good about it.
06:50SPEAKERI feel a little bit taken here for a ride.
06:53SPEAKER- Okay, well, now that I've said, as always,
06:56SPEAKERnow that I've said out loud a domain, shoe.fun is $1,400.
07:01SPEAKER- Well, I mean, that makes more sense.
07:03SPEAKERWill.tattoo for five bucks.
07:05SPEAKER- I could get shoe.computer.
07:08SPEAKER- Oh, that's pretty good.
07:09SPEAKERComputer's too long though.
07:10SPEAKER- Shoe.systems, shoe.industries,
07:13SPEAKERis there really an industries?
07:15SPEAKER- Shoe.industries is pretty good.
07:16SPEAKER- That's pretty long, man.
07:18SPEAKERShoe.band.actor.art is 1300 bucks.
07:24SPEAKER- Oh man, will.move is $719.
07:27SPEAKERI don't know, will.actor was the most expensive
07:29SPEAKERwhen I bought, willsmith.actor was the most expensive
07:31SPEAKERwhen I bought in a long time.
07:32SPEAKERIt was like $30, I think.
07:33SPEAKER- Ooh, shoe.tax is available.
07:36SPEAKER- Shoe.tax is pretty good.
07:38SPEAKER- All right, enough of this as I say, ooh.
07:41SPEAKER- Oh no, that's an expensive sound.
07:44SPEAKER- Shoe.fm for $90.
07:46SPEAKER- Oh, that's good.
07:47SPEAKER- 'Cause the registration per year
07:49SPEAKERis not gonna be that much.
07:50SPEAKER- Well, you have to look, it tells you.
07:52SPEAKER- This is, okay, we're gonna stop this.
07:54SPEAKERI'm sure this is highly self-indulgent for the listeners.
07:57SPEAKER- Will.singles, $33.99.
08:00SPEAKER- The thing I was starting to say earlier,
08:01SPEAKERnow that I've said out loud a domain
08:03SPEAKERthat I want to purchase on content, as always happens,
08:06SPEAKERwe have to end this so I can go get it right now.
08:09SPEAKER- Hey, Brad, if I get Will.phd,
08:12SPEAKERdoes that mean I'm a doctorate?
08:14SPEAKER(upbeat music)
08:36SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
08:42SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."
08:45SPEAKERI'm Will.
08:46SPEAKER- I'm Brad.
08:47SPEAKER- Good morning, Brad.
08:47SPEAKER- Good morning.
08:49SPEAKER- Early afternoon, Brad.
08:51SPEAKER- Do you need to pretend this is still morning
08:53SPEAKERwhen we are posting meridian?
08:54SPEAKER- I got up.
08:56SPEAKERWe're pre-meridian still,
08:57SPEAKER'cause it's daylight savings time, sir.
08:59SPEAKER- Oh, fair.
09:00SPEAKER- I live on solar noon, not calendar noon.
09:04SPEAKER- Technically.
09:05SPEAKER- We spoke this morning before I had made coffee.
09:11SPEAKERAnd then I got up and I muddled my way into the kitchen
09:14SPEAKERand I turned on the kettle and I ground 22 grams of coffee
09:17SPEAKERand poured it into a small French press
09:19SPEAKERand then filled that with 300 degree,
09:21SPEAKER300 grams of near boiling water
09:24SPEAKERand let it sit for four minutes and poured it into a cup
09:27SPEAKERand drank it and saw God.
09:32SPEAKER- As you do every day?
09:33SPEAKER- As I do every day, yeah.
09:34SPEAKER- Every day.
09:36SPEAKERDo you still drink coffee every day?
09:37SPEAKERI think you're, okay, we're talking about coffee here
09:39SPEAKERjust to get it out of the way.
09:39SPEAKER- This is a coffee episode.
09:41SPEAKERWe've tried to do this for a long time for the record.
09:43SPEAKERSo let's see, I'm gonna put some disclaimers up front.
09:46SPEAKERIf you drink coffee and you enjoy it,
09:48SPEAKERyou will learn something interesting today.
09:50SPEAKERIf you do not care about coffee,
09:52SPEAKERthis is a great episode for you to skip.
09:54SPEAKERYou're probably good.
09:55SPEAKER- Well, I don't know.
09:56SPEAKERI mean, as we will see,
09:58SPEAKERthe quality of coffee is highly variable
10:00SPEAKERdepending on about 8,000 different factors.
10:03SPEAKERSo even people who think they don't care about coffee,
10:05SPEAKERmaybe they just haven't had the right coffee for them yet.
10:08SPEAKER- I would say people, so some people don't like coffee
10:11SPEAKER'cause they're sensitive to bitter and sour, right?
10:15SPEAKERBitter and sour, bitter especially is,
10:18SPEAKERgood coffee should have a little bit of bitterness,
10:20SPEAKERshouldn't be super sour for the most part.
10:22SPEAKERSo that means you've done a bad job
10:24SPEAKERor major coffee's done maybe a not great job.
10:27SPEAKERBut yeah, some people are more sensitive to that.
10:28SPEAKERAnd people who have a lot of taste buds
10:30SPEAKERgenerally less likely to like coffee
10:32SPEAKERor they put a lot of stuff in it,
10:33SPEAKERwhich is fine.
10:36SPEAKERBut yeah, we're going to talk about coffee.
10:37SPEAKERI have, I've cared about coffee a lot
10:40SPEAKERfor a really long time.
10:40SPEAKERI am not an expert by any way, shape or form,
10:44SPEAKERbut I have talked to a lot of experts over the years
10:47SPEAKERand I've done a lot of reading
10:48SPEAKERand I've read all the books
10:49SPEAKERand I can brew a pretty decent cup of coffee
10:52SPEAKERat this point, I think.
10:54SPEAKER- I mean, if you're using a scale every day
10:55SPEAKERthat puts you at a higher tier of production,
10:58SPEAKERI think, than a lot of people.
11:00SPEAKER- I mean, it's just about measuring.
11:01SPEAKERIt's just the easier way to measure.
11:04SPEAKERLike I don't have a 22 gram scoop, right?
11:08SPEAKERBut yeah, we're going to talk about coffee.
11:09SPEAKERWe're going to talk about how it's made,
11:11SPEAKERhow it's produced, the whole thing.
11:13SPEAKERLike from picking coffee cherries off of bushes
11:17SPEAKERin the equatorial regions of the world
11:21SPEAKERto drying them and processing them
11:23SPEAKERso they're ready to be roasted,
11:24SPEAKERto roasting, to blending, to brewing.
11:30SPEAKERAnd all the other stuff.
11:33SPEAKERWe're going to talk about Brad's favorite diner cups.
11:37SPEAKERThey're on the list down here.
11:40SPEAKERThere's a lot to it.
11:42SPEAKERSo the starting, the place I want to start,
11:45SPEAKERI didn't put this at the beginning of the notes,
11:46SPEAKERbut I should have,
11:47SPEAKERthere's kind of not a wrong way to make coffee, right?
11:52SPEAKERLike the way you like coffee
11:54SPEAKERis the way that's the right way to make coffee for you.
11:56SPEAKERAnd there are ways that are unwise.
11:58SPEAKERLike you can buy really expensive beans
12:00SPEAKERand then brew them in a way
12:01SPEAKERthat they taste like shitty Folgers.
12:03SPEAKERAnd like, that's a personal choice.
12:05SPEAKERI'm not going to judge you for that.
12:06SPEAKERThat's if you want to, it's just wasting money.
12:08SPEAKERThat's fine if you want to do it, I'm not going to complain.
12:10SPEAKER- That's like the, that's the buying a 21 year scotch
12:14SPEAKERand putting it in Coke.
12:16SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.
12:17SPEAKER- Equivalent.
12:18SPEAKER- Yeah, it's the same thing.
12:20SPEAKERCoffee is, but coffee is interesting.
12:21SPEAKERIt's funny, it's interesting you bring up scotch
12:23SPEAKERbecause scotch, like distilled liquors,
12:27SPEAKERa lot of beers also as well, like hops.
12:30SPEAKERThere's plants that have interesting chemical makeup
12:34SPEAKERthat produce a lot of flavorful compounds
12:36SPEAKERwhen they're processed however you process them.
12:38SPEAKERFor hops, it's drying and then I think boiling.
12:41SPEAKERFor scotch, it's making the mash
12:46SPEAKERand then distilling that out.
12:47SPEAKERAnd the flavors of the malt and the fermentation
12:50SPEAKERand all that stuff come through the distillation process.
12:52SPEAKER- Malt, malting the barley.
12:54SPEAKERI don't know if malting is the term.
12:55SPEAKERYou are producing malted barley,
12:57SPEAKERbut I don't know if the process is malting
12:59SPEAKERor if it's like roasting or something, but...
13:01SPEAKER- There's a malting step in there.
13:04SPEAKERI went on a distillery tour once, but it was for bourbon.
13:06SPEAKERI think that there's, I vaguely remember a malting step.
13:10SPEAKER- And if you're doing Islay,
13:11SPEAKERyou're throwing like peat, bog peat in there somewhere.
13:15SPEAKER- Dirt, it's booze with dirt in it, great.
13:19SPEAKERBut the upshot is you get a lot, wine is the same thing.
13:23SPEAKERYou get a lot of interesting flavor compounds
13:25SPEAKERthat your nose can detect.
13:26SPEAKERThe human nose is an incredibly sensitive instrument.
13:30SPEAKERYou can pick out a lot of different flavors
13:33SPEAKERand a lot of different complexity.
13:34SPEAKERAnd just to be clear, we talked about this
13:36SPEAKERwhen we talked to Adam Rogers
13:37SPEAKERabout his book "Proof" a few years ago,
13:39SPEAKERbut there's been science about this.
13:41SPEAKERAt Davis, they did a study where they took 10 people
13:44SPEAKERor 12 people or something
13:45SPEAKERthat had no experience wine tasting,
13:47SPEAKERand they taught them to recognize flavors and complexity
13:51SPEAKERin these beverages.
13:52SPEAKERCoffee works a lot the same way.
13:53SPEAKER- Yeah, did we talk about supertasters on that episode?
13:57SPEAKER- I don't think we,
13:58SPEAKERsupertasters matter a little bit less for liquor
14:00SPEAKERbecause there's not, liquor is mostly a smell.
14:04SPEAKERAnd supertasters is about the density
14:06SPEAKERof taste buds on your tongue.
14:07SPEAKER- I'm just gonna let that one pass by without comment.
14:11SPEAKER- Okay.
14:12SPEAKER- There's plenty of taste there too.
14:14SPEAKER- No, no, I know, but you're not getting the five or six,
14:20SPEAKERdepending on how you count them, the sweet, salty, sour,
14:24SPEAKERbitter, you get one or two of those,
14:26SPEAKERnot like all at once like you do
14:27SPEAKERin something more complicated.
14:28SPEAKER- Yes.
14:31SPEAKER- So, okay, so coffee starts with beans, right?
14:35SPEAKER- Or cherries, like you mentioned that earlier,
14:37SPEAKERbut when I came across the phrase coffee cherries
14:40SPEAKERin this notes document, it threw me for a loop.
14:42SPEAKER- Well, so the bean is the seed inside of a fruit,
14:45SPEAKERlike the coffee bean that you're used to seeing,
14:47SPEAKERthe thing that you get out of your tub
14:49SPEAKERor you see in the wall at Starbucks
14:50SPEAKERif you buy ground coffee is the seed
14:54SPEAKERfrom inside of a cherry.
14:55SPEAKERThe cherries are about an inch and a half to an inch.
14:58SPEAKERThey vary in size based on the species and the variety,
15:01SPEAKERbut they grow as like a red cherry looking thing
15:04SPEAKERon the side of the thing.
15:05SPEAKERAnd then those, coffee's hard to grow.
15:11SPEAKERSo that fruit is then processed to remove the fruit
15:16SPEAKERand the shell and all the stuff that comes with it
15:18SPEAKERfrom the bean, at which point it's a green bean.
15:21SPEAKERAnd then that green bean is shipped in a bag,
15:24SPEAKERusually like a big 50 pound bag
15:26SPEAKERto one of the coffee importation ports around the world.
15:29SPEAKERHouston is a big one.
15:31SPEAKERI think Portland is one of the big ones.
15:33SPEAKERBoston is another one.
15:35SPEAKERAnd there it's distributed, like in the US,
15:37SPEAKERit's distributed to roasters within the country.
15:40SPEAKERIn more industrial coffee productions,
15:42SPEAKERlike if you're talking about Nestle
15:44SPEAKERor one of the big industrial coffee producers,
15:46SPEAKERthey often do the roasting.
15:47SPEAKERYou usually want to do the roasting
15:49SPEAKERas close to the consumer as you can
15:50SPEAKERbecause green beans store for a really long time, years.
15:54SPEAKERAnd roasted coffee has a shelf life measured in,
15:58SPEAKERdepending on who you ask, months to days or weeks.
16:02SPEAKERSo the faster, like there's a degradation in flavor
16:04SPEAKERover time, the longer the ground coffee,
16:07SPEAKERthe roasted coffee sits.
16:08SPEAKERAnd then that's further accelerated
16:09SPEAKERonce you grind the coffee.
16:10SPEAKERSo if you buy ground coffee from the store,
16:13SPEAKERyou can get less flavorful, less good tasting coffee
16:17SPEAKERthan if you grind it in the morning
16:18SPEAKERbefore you pour the water in it.
16:19SPEAKER- Everything you're saying is throwing off my plan
16:23SPEAKERto start buying in extreme bulk,
16:25SPEAKERwhich I was going to ask you about later,
16:26SPEAKERbut we'll get there.
16:27SPEAKER- I was going to tell you that was a bad idea later,
16:28SPEAKERbut I'll tell you it's a bad idea now if you want.
16:31SPEAKER- Real quick before we move on,
16:32SPEAKER'cause I doubt we'll talk about the fruit again.
16:34SPEAKERDoes the coffee fruit have any uses or applications?
16:37SPEAKERIs it edible?
16:39SPEAKERDo people cook with it?
16:41SPEAKER- So we're going to talk about the fruit actually.
16:43SPEAKER'Cause the fruit, like the whole thing's really interesting.
16:46SPEAKERThe fruit is, people, the fruit's called cascara.
16:51SPEAKERLike if you see a cascara,
16:52SPEAKERlike oftentimes you'll go to a coffee shop
16:54SPEAKERand you'll see a cascara beverage on the menu.
16:56SPEAKERAnd that'll be something that's made with the coffee cherry,
16:59SPEAKERthe ripe coffee cherry.
17:00SPEAKERAnd it's a very sweet, it's a delicious thing.
17:03SPEAKERI don't know if you can actually eat the fruit unprocessed.
17:05SPEAKERI don't know about that.
17:06SPEAKERI've never encountered that.
17:09SPEAKERBut so like one of the things people ask
17:13SPEAKERwhen they're asking about coffee
17:14SPEAKERis what's the difference between the cheap coffee,
17:16SPEAKERyou know, your Nestle, Folgers, whatever,
17:18SPEAKERyour grocery store coffee that comes in the big plastic tubs
17:23SPEAKERand then the stuff that comes in little bags
17:24SPEAKERat your fancy local roaster.
17:28SPEAKERAnd it starts with the growing.
17:31SPEAKERA lot of, there's two main varietals, cultivars of coffee,
17:35SPEAKERArabica and Robusta.
17:38SPEAKERArabica is grown, they're both grown in hot white climates.
17:42SPEAKERThe Arabica is a little more fiddly
17:43SPEAKERand a little more susceptible to disease.
17:45SPEAKERIt requires a little bit less rain
17:47SPEAKERand a little bit lower temperatures.
17:48SPEAKERThe Robusta grows hotter and wetter.
17:50SPEAKERSo you can grow in places where there's monsoons.
17:52SPEAKERA lot of Robusta is grown in Vietnam
17:55SPEAKERand that's a relatively recent,
17:56SPEAKERI mean, they've been growing coffee in Vietnam
17:58SPEAKERfor a long time,
17:59SPEAKERbut the growth of commercial Robusta farming
18:02SPEAKERin Vietnam is relatively new.
18:04SPEAKERAnd the Arabica production there is also increasing.
18:08SPEAKER- Real quick, as somebody who knows next to nothing
18:11SPEAKERabout agriculture, is it cultivars?
18:13SPEAKERIs that like the product of selective breeding?
18:15SPEAKERIs that like a strain essentially?
18:16SPEAKER- Yeah, so varietal is something that evolved naturally
18:19SPEAKERand a cultivar is something that we have selectively bred
18:22SPEAKERto produce, in the coffee world, at least.
18:24SPEAKERI don't know if that's in the outside world as well.
18:28SPEAKER- I believe I have seen the term in other domains.
18:31SPEAKER- It's used differently in different places
18:34SPEAKERfrom what I understand,
18:35SPEAKERbut that is my general understanding.
18:37SPEAKERIt's cultivars, human directed evolution, right?
18:40SPEAKER- Okay.
18:41SPEAKER- So Arabicas are generally better coffees.
18:45SPEAKERThe Robustas generally are used for darker roast
18:48SPEAKERand used in cheaper coffees and instant coffee
18:50SPEAKERand stuff like that.
18:51SPEAKERThere are exceptions.
18:52SPEAKERThere are some really tasty Robustas from like Indonesia
18:55SPEAKERand stuff like that.
18:57SPEAKERBut the thing about coffee growing is it's fiddly.
18:59SPEAKERIt's slight changes in elevation or climate,
19:03SPEAKERamount of rain, temperature,
19:05SPEAKERall of that can have an enormous impact on the crop
19:07SPEAKERon any given year.
19:09SPEAKERSo you can have a farmer in Columbia
19:13SPEAKERand Columbia is very mountainous, right?
19:15SPEAKERSo you can have a farmer in Columbia
19:16SPEAKERwith fields at three different elevations
19:19SPEAKERthat are 100 meters different from each other, right?
19:22SPEAKERAnd they'll produce wildly different tasting coffees,
19:24SPEAKERwhich is within a two mile radius of each other.
19:27SPEAKERIt's one of the things that there's a coffee convention
19:30SPEAKERthat the Specialty Coffee Association of America puts on.
19:33SPEAKERAnd one of the things I went to at one of those
19:36SPEAKERwas a grower who'd brought his coffee
19:38SPEAKERand he had the same person roast it.
19:41SPEAKERHe was working with a roastery that he knew from the U.S.
19:46SPEAKERAnd they roasted the coffee.
19:48SPEAKERThey prepared the coffee the same way, basically.
19:51SPEAKERAnd you got to taste the three different coffees
19:53SPEAKERfrom three of his fields that were,
19:56SPEAKERlike one was really light and nasty
19:58SPEAKERand had a lot of blueberry flavor.
20:00SPEAKERAnd the other one was just like a bog standard ass coffee.
20:04SPEAKERAnd it was a shocking demonstration, really.
20:11SPEAKER- So, Arabicas taste better.
20:14SPEAKERThey have more complexity of flavor, typically.
20:17SPEAKERRobustos are a little oilier, a little darker.
20:20SPEAKERThey're easier to grow.
20:22SPEAKERGenerally Nestle and the big coffee producers,
20:24SPEAKERand just to be clear, Nestle's a shit company
20:26SPEAKERthat does awful things, both to customers,
20:30SPEAKERto the people who are growing the coffee.
20:34SPEAKERThey exploit the hell out of every step along the way
20:37SPEAKERand should be avoided, in my opinion.
20:39SPEAKER- Nestle is the one that wanted to start
20:41SPEAKERcontrolling water rights.
20:43SPEAKER- Nestle is the one that convinced people
20:45SPEAKERin the global south that they should use formula
20:47SPEAKERinstead of breast milk for their children.
20:51SPEAKEREven in areas where there was not reliable access to water,
20:55SPEAKERso you had babies dying of dysentery, Nestle sucks.
20:57SPEAKERNestle is really fucking bad.
21:01SPEAKERAnd that means that, and they've also,
21:03SPEAKERlike the instant, the espresso pods and all the stuff
21:05SPEAKERthey make all in the same category.
21:07SPEAKERNestle does a lot of robust production in Vietnam.
21:12SPEAKERAnyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.
21:14SPEAKERThe upshot of this is that the entire coffee production
21:16SPEAKERfor the world is one of the first industries
21:18SPEAKERthat was impacted by climate change.
21:20SPEAKERThat's why the price of coffee has gone up,
21:22SPEAKERis 'cause global production, especially of high-end arabicas
21:25SPEAKERhas gone down, 'cause the fields have a spin-up time
21:28SPEAKERmeasured in years.
21:30SPEAKERSo you can't, if your facing of the mountain
21:35SPEAKERchanges the amount of rain it gets, then your production
21:37SPEAKERis gonna go down, right?
21:39SPEAKERWhich means that you then have to migrate your production
21:42SPEAKERin someplace in a different area of where you are,
21:44SPEAKERwhich involves cutting down trees,
21:46SPEAKERwhere there's climate impacts for that.
21:48SPEAKERThere's all sorts of other stuff that has to happen.
21:49SPEAKERAnd it's like they were feeling the change in production
21:54SPEAKERas long as 10 or 12 years ago.
22:00SPEAKERObviously, a lot of the stuff that Nestle has done
22:02SPEAKERin Vietnam and other places is a result of that.
22:05SPEAKERThere are also, I also don't wanna make people think
22:08SPEAKERthat there's only two cultivars that are arabica
22:11SPEAKERand robusta, there's a massive amount of variation
22:13SPEAKERinside those two varieties from the different cultivars.
22:17SPEAKERThere's also a bunch of different varieties
22:19SPEAKERthat are in much lower production.
22:21SPEAKERThose are just the two popular ones.
22:23SPEAKERRobusta is also generally disease resistant,
22:25SPEAKERso it's a little bit easier.
22:27SPEAKERYour fancy third wave coffee shops, sorry,
22:31SPEAKERgenerally arabicas, they're preferred.
22:34SPEAKER- I think third wave coffee shop was right after
22:38SPEAKERcoffee cherry in the list of phrases that I was like, huh.
22:41SPEAKER- Okay, so third wave coffee, first wave coffee
22:44SPEAKERis when you just go, everything's just coffee, right?
22:47SPEAKERLike you go into a store and you order a coffee
22:49SPEAKERand it's like, okay, I got your coffee.
22:50SPEAKERAnd then the woman pulls it out of the bun
22:52SPEAKERand you get the waitress at the diner,
22:55SPEAKERpours it out of the bun and you have the-
22:56SPEAKER- Your truck stop coffee.
22:58SPEAKER- It's coffee, coffee ass coffee.
23:01SPEAKERSecond wave started in the 70s with Pete's actually.
23:04SPEAKERPete's was the first kind of specialty brewer
23:06SPEAKERin the United States.
23:08SPEAKERThey specialized in a darker roast
23:11SPEAKERand they inspired Seattle Brewing Company
23:15SPEAKERand Starbucks and all the other places.
23:17SPEAKERIt's kind of, there's two things.
23:19SPEAKEROne is that you paid, you were maybe more aware
23:21SPEAKERof where your coffee came from.
23:22SPEAKERIt's when you started seeing people advertising
23:24SPEAKERColombian coffee or Brazilian coffee or African coffee.
23:29SPEAKERAnd also the general rise and availability
23:32SPEAKERof espresso drinks in the United States for US people.
23:37SPEAKER- Can I ask, I assume we're probably gonna be talking
23:38SPEAKERabout Arabica mostly in this episode,
23:41SPEAKERbut since we're talking about-
23:42SPEAKER- I mean, kind of, yeah.
23:44SPEAKERThere was a stigma for a long time about Robusta's,
23:47SPEAKERbut they're kind of on the rise.
23:49SPEAKER- Can I, just to cover our bases
23:51SPEAKERfor the very cheapest end of things.
23:54SPEAKER- Yeah.
23:55SPEAKER- What is instant coffee made of?
23:57SPEAKER- Coffee.
23:58SPEAKER- Is it just coffee?
23:59SPEAKERThere's not some chemical process there or like crystals.
24:02SPEAKERI got like Folgers crystals, I guess,
24:04SPEAKERis what I'm asking about.
24:05SPEAKER- Yeah, so I think instant coffee is brewed coffee
24:07SPEAKERthat they then dehydrate.
24:08SPEAKERAnd so you have a solid, it's basically solid version
24:12SPEAKERof the stuff that's dissolved and floating around
24:17SPEAKERin the water, in the hot water.
24:18SPEAKER- Solute?
24:19SPEAKER- Solute, yeah.
24:21SPEAKERI, to skip ahead a little bit,
24:23SPEAKERI have been dabbling with cold brew coffee
24:25SPEAKERand that's definitely been making me refresh my memory
24:28SPEAKERon solutions and suspensions and saturation points
24:33SPEAKERand stuff like that.
24:34SPEAKER- Well, so the instant coffee is an interesting place
24:36SPEAKERbecause it's typically where good flavor goes to die.
24:41SPEAKERThe exception is that you can get, I think Kona Girl,
24:45SPEAKERwhich is a Hawaiian brand,
24:46SPEAKERmakes a really good instant coffee.
24:48SPEAKERI learned about it because it's what they serve
24:50SPEAKERon the space station and we had it when we went
24:54SPEAKERto Johnson Space Center with Tested
24:56SPEAKERand tasted a bunch of space food.
24:57SPEAKERAnd I was like, this is frigging awesome coffee.
25:01SPEAKERHow are you making good coffee that's instant?
25:03SPEAKERAnd they were like, oh, well,
25:04SPEAKERI think I wasn't supposed to tell anybody,
25:06SPEAKERbut anyway, don't tell the NASA people.
25:08SPEAKER- Wave your hands around and go science.
25:11SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.
25:13SPEAKERSo, and then third wave coffee is when people started caring
25:18SPEAKERabout individual like producers, right?
25:20SPEAKERLike the characteristics of individual beans,
25:24SPEAKERtrying to brew to get specific flavors
25:25SPEAKERrather than a general coffee flavor,
25:27SPEAKERor trying to roast to get specific flavors
25:29SPEAKERrather than a general idealized coffee flavor,
25:32SPEAKERet cetera, et cetera.
25:35SPEAKERAlso third wave usually indicates that there's some sort
25:38SPEAKERof a component that involves showmanship
25:42SPEAKERin production of the coffee.
25:44SPEAKER- Sure, I could see it.
25:46SPEAKERSo like in San Francisco, you're third,
25:48SPEAKERalmost all of your non Starbucks or Pete's
25:51SPEAKERkind of chain coffee shops are gonna be third wave shops
25:54SPEAKERat this point probably.
25:59SPEAKERSo yeah, that's it, that's beans.
26:01SPEAKERThere's a lot of coffee that's farmed
26:03SPEAKERthat's not economically sustainable
26:04SPEAKERfor the people working in farms,
26:07SPEAKERdespite the fact that the end product
26:09SPEAKERis a really high dollar luxury cash crop.
26:11SPEAKERSo you wanna buy ethically sourced coffee
26:14SPEAKERis my advice if you're concerned about that.
26:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I think coffee is like the category
26:20SPEAKERthat made me aware of the term fair trade, I believe.
26:23SPEAKER- Yeah, and all that means is that everyone along the path
26:27SPEAKERis getting paid a fair living wage, right?
26:30SPEAKERLike the producers, the people working
26:32SPEAKERat the production farms, the people doing the processing,
26:35SPEAKERthe people doing the harvesting,
26:36SPEAKERthe people doing the roasting, everybody gets enough.
26:38SPEAKERAnd it costs more because those people gotta get paid,
26:42SPEAKERpeople gotta eat.
26:45SPEAKEROn the non-fair trade side,
26:46SPEAKERthere's a lot of graft and exploitation.
26:48SPEAKERAnd I don't wanna say it's not, slave labor isn't that,
26:53SPEAKERbut there's a lot of like really borderline indentured
26:57SPEAKERservitude, migrant farming type stuff happening
26:59SPEAKERin certain parts of the world.
27:02SPEAKERThe harvesting is generally done by hand
27:04SPEAKERfor high quality coffee.
27:06SPEAKERYeah, the high quality stuff is harvested by hand.
27:09SPEAKERYou have to pick the beans to make sure
27:11SPEAKERthat they're the right, the cherries
27:12SPEAKERto make sure that they're the right ripeness.
27:14SPEAKERSo that involves labor.
27:15SPEAKERYou can machine harvest, but then there's a lot of waste
27:18SPEAKERbecause the unripe or overripe cherries
27:20SPEAKERare sorted out in the processing
27:21SPEAKERrather than multiple paths through the fields
27:24SPEAKERto get all the fruit.
27:30SPEAKERProcessing is really interesting.
27:32SPEAKERThere's a lot of stuff that happens in processing as well.
27:34SPEAKERSo the traditional way that coffee is processed
27:36SPEAKERis you pick the cherries, you lay them out under the sun,
27:39SPEAKERusually under some sort of like clear cover
27:41SPEAKERor like they're plastic or something.
27:43SPEAKERAnd then you let them dry out for a month or two.
27:46SPEAKERYou run them through a huller,
27:47SPEAKERwhich knocks off the dried fruit at that point
27:50SPEAKERand leaves behind just the green bean,
27:52SPEAKERwhich is literally, it looks like a coffee bean,
27:54SPEAKERbut it's usually kind of bumpy and green and it looks matte.
27:59SPEAKERIt almost looks like it has a matte coat on,
28:01SPEAKERwhich sometimes is polished off.
28:02SPEAKERSometimes it's just left on depending on the processor.
28:06SPEAKERAnd it takes time.
28:07SPEAKER- What a little plumper than a roast bean, maybe.
28:09SPEAKER- No, they're almost exactly the same size.
28:11SPEAKERSo they don't really shrink much when you roast them,
28:16SPEAKERbut it takes a long, long time.
28:18SPEAKERThere's a process that was introduced a couple of decades ago
28:23SPEAKERthat accelerated the production
28:24SPEAKERin places that typically had not produced good coffee.
28:27SPEAKERSo a lot of Vietnam produced kind of under par coffee
28:31SPEAKERbecause the drying,
28:32SPEAKERit was too wet for the drying to work properly.
28:35SPEAKERAnd you'd end up with a lot of fermented beans
28:37SPEAKERor beans would get ruined in the drying process.
28:40SPEAKERSo they have a wet method now that uses machinery
28:43SPEAKERand some special solutions and water
28:45SPEAKERto basically remove the cherry from the seed
28:47SPEAKERbefore it's dried.
28:49SPEAKERIt cuts the time from the harvest to the roaster
28:52SPEAKERdown to like a couple of days versus a couple of months.
28:55SPEAKERSo there's a lot less storage,
28:56SPEAKERwhich means it's a lot less expensive.
28:58SPEAKERIt also involves a lot of machinery,
29:00SPEAKERwhich gives them pressure over the producers,
29:03SPEAKERwhich is the only way to get their coffee out to market,
29:06SPEAKERwhich, you know, convenient.
29:09SPEAKER- Very convenient, yes.
29:10SPEAKERI always wonder about like what are the available parameters
29:15SPEAKERfor industrial sorting that like we're talking about here,
29:17SPEAKERlike weight and size are the obvious ones
29:19SPEAKERor anything else that they're able to,
29:22SPEAKERwhen you're talking about like, you know,
29:23SPEAKERunder ripe, over ripe, like the good ones,
29:25SPEAKERlike how you're, and then also there's also
29:27SPEAKERan error margin there, right?
29:29SPEAKEROf like maybe the sorting is not actually that good.
29:31SPEAKER- Yeah, so the sorting is tricky
29:32SPEAKER'cause they like industrially they'll do,
29:35SPEAKERthey'll float in the wet process.
29:36SPEAKERThey float the bad beans and the good beans sinker,
29:39SPEAKERmaybe it's the other way around, I can't remember,
29:40SPEAKERbut they do size sorting.
29:45SPEAKERUsually at the end, there's a human sort
29:47SPEAKERwhere they look for like insect holes
29:49SPEAKERand rotten beans and stuff like that.
29:52SPEAKER'Cause the green beans do still have
29:53SPEAKERa fair amount of water content,
29:54SPEAKERwhich means that they can ferment
29:56SPEAKERand you don't want fermented green beans in your roast.
29:59SPEAKER- Maybe you don't.
30:01SPEAKER- I am pretty sure.
30:03SPEAKERAnyway, the wet method for processing
30:07SPEAKERis generally considered to produce inferior results.
30:10SPEAKERIt's one of the ways that they turn,
30:12SPEAKERthat they make robust taste more like a good Arabica coffee.
30:19SPEAKERAnd then after that's done,
30:21SPEAKERthose processed beans are bagged up.
30:23SPEAKERThey put in those big 50 pound sacks
30:26SPEAKERand shipped by boat generally to ports around the world.
30:30SPEAKERAnd the green beans last a long time.
30:31SPEAKERLike you can buy green beans,
30:33SPEAKERlet them sit for a really long time.
30:35SPEAKERThe clock starts ticking when you roast them.
30:37SPEAKER- This is not really a problem,
30:39SPEAKERbut I know you're also from the South.
30:40SPEAKERSo maybe you experienced this as well.
30:42SPEAKEREvery time you say green beans,
30:43SPEAKERI think of something extremely different
30:45SPEAKERthan what we're actually talking about here.
30:47SPEAKER- Yeah, it's look, you don't put any pork.
30:50SPEAKERI mean, I guess you could put pork fat in these,
30:51SPEAKERbut I would not probably.
30:55SPEAKERSo the roasting is when you transform the flavor
30:57SPEAKERof the bean by cooking it.
30:59SPEAKERThere's a couple of different stages.
31:01SPEAKERThere's a drying stage at the beginning.
31:03SPEAKERThen there's this browning,
31:04SPEAKERwhich is where the Maillard reaction happens.
31:06SPEAKERThe Maillard reaction basically fuses fats and makes,
31:10SPEAKERit's what brown,
31:10SPEAKERwhen you put a piece of meat in a pan or on a grill,
31:13SPEAKERit's what makes the meat, the outside of the meat brown.
31:15SPEAKERIt caramelizes sugars and it breaks down proteins
31:18SPEAKERand a bunch of other things happen.
31:21SPEAKERThe upshot is Maillard reaction develops a lot of flavors
31:24SPEAKERthat are detectable by human palate.
31:26SPEAKER- Is it that same reaction on like literally everything
31:29SPEAKERyou would pan roast or grill like vegetables as well,
31:32SPEAKERor are there different processes going on
31:34SPEAKERdepending on the food?
31:35SPEAKER- Generally speaking, if you put it on fire
31:37SPEAKERand it turns brown, it's my art.
31:38SPEAKER- Okay, yeah.
31:41SPEAKER- So at the end, after the browning phase,
31:46SPEAKERbetween the browning phase and the development roast,
31:49SPEAKERthere's a crack and that crack is stuff
31:52SPEAKERinside the cellulose structure.
31:54SPEAKERIt's like popcorn.
31:55SPEAKERStuff inside the cellulose structure
31:57SPEAKERis increasing pressure, is boiling.
31:59SPEAKERIt cracks the dried cellulose structure
32:02SPEAKERand it makes a noticeable sound.
32:03SPEAKERYou hear it.
32:04SPEAKERIt's like crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack,
32:05SPEAKERcrack in the inside the roaster.
32:08SPEAKERThat first crack indicates
32:09SPEAKERthat you're starting to develop flavors.
32:12SPEAKERAnd this is the point that like roasting,
32:15SPEAKERjust to be clear, really hard.
32:17SPEAKERLike it requires some specialized equipment.
32:20SPEAKERIt requires a lot of expertise.
32:22SPEAKERIf you over or undershoot,
32:24SPEAKERyou will blow an entire batch of beans,
32:26SPEAKERwhich depending on the size of your roaster can be a pound
32:28SPEAKERor 250 pound bags, right?
32:30SPEAKERIt's high stakes.
32:32SPEAKER- Yeah, I know we should point out real quiet.
32:34SPEAKERI am sure you noticed the trends.
32:36SPEAKEREverybody took up new hobbies once the pandemic started.
32:39SPEAKERIt seemed like people doing home coffee roasting
32:41SPEAKERbecame like a legit thing.
32:43SPEAKER- Yeah, well, so we did a coffee roasting video
32:45SPEAKERat Tested years ago.
32:47SPEAKERYou can do it in a popcorn popper.
32:49SPEAKERLike you can do it on a burner out in your backyard.
32:51SPEAKERYou don't wanna do it inside the house
32:52SPEAKER'cause it makes a lot of smoke,
32:54SPEAKERbut you can do it on like a grill burner
32:56SPEAKERwith a whirly popcorn popper.
32:58SPEAKERI've done that a couple of times
32:59SPEAKERand it works reasonably well.
33:02SPEAKER- Did you get what you would consider
33:03SPEAKERdrinkable coffee out of it?
33:05SPEAKER- I drank the coffee.
33:06SPEAKERIt was not like, so I did.
33:09SPEAKERI bought, I think five pounds worth of beans
33:11SPEAKERfrom Sweet Maria's, which is the place that is good
33:15SPEAKERto start buying green beans
33:17SPEAKERif you wanna learn how to roast your own coffee.
33:19SPEAKERThey're based in Oakland.
33:20SPEAKERAnd the results were fine,
33:25SPEAKERbetter than grocery store coffee,
33:26SPEAKERworse than anything I could buy from a good place.
33:29SPEAKER- That's fair.
33:30SPEAKERYou know, that's actually for a first attempt.
33:32SPEAKERThat's pretty abnormal.
33:35SPEAKER- First attempt and using like not a coffee roaster.
33:38SPEAKERIf you're using a real coffee roaster
33:39SPEAKERand you like anything else,
33:41SPEAKERit's gonna require a lot of time and experimentation
33:43SPEAKERand you're gonna make a bunch of bad stuff
33:45SPEAKERbefore you make anything good.
33:46SPEAKERBut then once you, it's the kind of hobby
33:50SPEAKERthat requires a notebook with your settings and your times.
33:53SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
33:55SPEAKER- Real quick, when you described the first crack
33:58SPEAKERin the roasting process,
33:59SPEAKERit jogged a memory somewhere in my head.
34:01SPEAKERDo people sell first crack batches
34:05SPEAKERor is there some like consumer facing application
34:09SPEAKERof that term?
34:10SPEAKER'Cause I feel like I've heard first crack
34:12SPEAKERin fancy upscale coffee somewhere.
34:15SPEAKER- So cracks indicate are in,
34:18SPEAKERlike you're not looking at the roasted coffee
34:20SPEAKERwhile it's going for the most part.
34:21SPEAKERGenerally there's a sampling spoon
34:22SPEAKERwhere you can pull out a little bit
34:23SPEAKERand see what it looks like at any given moment.
34:25SPEAKERBut you don't see the whole thing,
34:27SPEAKERtypically because they're closed
34:28SPEAKERand they're hooked up to ventilation systems
34:30SPEAKERthat blast the smoke out of wherever you're standing.
34:32SPEAKERSo you don't have to smell a bunch of smoke all the time.
34:35SPEAKERThe first crack is the indicator
34:38SPEAKERthat you're at a light roast stage.
34:40SPEAKER- I see.
34:41SPEAKER- And you go, you wanna keep,
34:43SPEAKERdepending on whether you're looking for a light, medium
34:45SPEAKERor dark or super dark, you're gonna go,
34:50SPEAKERa lighter medium is probably before the second crack.
34:52SPEAKERThe second crack is when the oils start
34:54SPEAKERto escape the inside of the bean.
34:58SPEAKER'Cause coffee beans have a fair amount of fat in them.
35:01SPEAKERAnd those oils will be trapped inside the beans
35:06SPEAKERbetween the first crack and the second crack.
35:08SPEAKERAnd after the second crack,
35:08SPEAKERthey start to have ways to seep out.
35:10SPEAKER- So if anybody's out there selling a first crack blend
35:14SPEAKERor whatever, it's just a fancier-
35:15SPEAKER- They're just using terminology to market,
35:18SPEAKERjust saying it's a light roast.
35:19SPEAKER- Fancier way to say, hey, it's a light roast.
35:21SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a lot of, hey man, here,
35:24SPEAKERwe're gonna use some cool words to sell some coffee.
35:27SPEAKER- I get it.
35:28SPEAKER- In the biz.
35:30SPEAKERThe development stage can go for a long time.
35:32SPEAKERAnd this is, all of these things,
35:35SPEAKERthe drying is something you wanna happen
35:36SPEAKERkind of gradually and slowly.
35:38SPEAKERAnd then once the coffee reaches a water content
35:41SPEAKERinside the bean that you want,
35:43SPEAKERyou wanna get it through that browning phase quickly
35:45SPEAKERso that you can get to the development phase.
35:48SPEAKER'Cause the development phase is where the flavors happen.
35:51SPEAKERThere's the early light roast, typically are more acidic.
35:56SPEAKERThey have fruitier flavors because the compounds
35:57SPEAKERthat create those fruit, like the citrusy and fruit flavors
36:02SPEAKERbreak down under the higher heat of the later stages.
36:06SPEAKERAnd light roast beans are typically dry looking.
36:09SPEAKERFlavors can be anything like citrus, vanilla, blueberries.
36:12SPEAKERIt's typically not chocolatey stuff.
36:13SPEAKERThat's usually a darker roast flavor.
36:16SPEAKERAlthough I have had light roasts that taste chocolatey.
36:18SPEAKERThose people are wizards.
36:19SPEAKERI don't know how that works.
36:22SPEAKERThe, it's hard to get great results with light roast coffee
36:30SPEAKERif you haven't practiced a bunch
36:31SPEAKERand aren't spending a little bit of time dialing
36:33SPEAKERin the brews when you get a new bag of coffee,
36:36SPEAKERif you're changing the type of coffee
36:39SPEAKERthat you brew every day.
36:42SPEAKERMedium roast, kind of the default American roast.
36:44SPEAKERIf you go to a diner and ask for a cup of coffee,
36:46SPEAKERit's gonna be a medium roast coffee.
36:48SPEAKERIt's gonna be a medium brown color, a non-oily surface.
36:53SPEAKERAnd it tastes like what you probably think of as coffee.
36:58SPEAKERDark roasts are oilier and more bitter,
36:59SPEAKERsometimes even bittersweet.
37:01SPEAKERLike if you have something that you're like,
37:02SPEAKERman, I should put some cream in this.
37:04SPEAKERThat's often a dark roast.
37:06SPEAKERLess acid in the dark coffees 'cause the acid tends
37:09SPEAKERto react with the rest of the bean
37:12SPEAKERduring the higher heat stages and be neutralized
37:16SPEAKERduring the higher heat stages of the roast.
37:20SPEAKERAnd generally speaking, the longer you roast the coffee,
37:23SPEAKERthe more the unique aspects of the coffee's flavor go away.
37:28SPEAKERSo like every time the heat goes up,
37:30SPEAKERyou're vaporizing more compounds and reducing them
37:34SPEAKERto something that's more standard.
37:38SPEAKERSo if you have like a poorly produced Vietnamese,
37:41SPEAKERI apologize for continuing to pick on Vietnam,
37:43SPEAKERbut it's the classic example of, hey, we're industrially
37:46SPEAKERproducing kind of shitty coffee and then doing what we can
37:48SPEAKERto make it taste good.
37:50SPEAKEROften you buy Vietnamese coffee and then you dark roast it
37:53SPEAKERand it tastes like any other dark roasted coffee.
37:55SPEAKERIf you buy like a really nice Colombian
37:58SPEAKERor like an Ethiopian Arabica and then dark roast it,
38:02SPEAKERyou're just flushing money down the toilet.
38:04SPEAKERSo 'cause you're buying expensive coffee
38:07SPEAKERand then you're making it taste like cheap coffee.
38:09SPEAKER- Yes. - Right?
38:10SPEAKER- Yes, that's a Scotch analogy again.
38:12SPEAKERAlthough I need to defend myself really quick.
38:14SPEAKERI don't know who actually drinks Scotch and Coke.
38:16SPEAKERIs that even a thing?
38:17SPEAKERThat's just the first mixer that came to my mind.
38:19SPEAKERI don't think people do that.
38:21SPEAKER- I assure you that somebody drinks Scotch and Coke.
38:25SPEAKERAnyway, that's it for the roast.
38:30SPEAKERLike at that point you put them in a bag
38:32SPEAKERand you sell them to people or you grind them
38:33SPEAKERand sell them to people.
38:36SPEAKEREspresso is basically like, generally espresso
38:40SPEAKERis a more violent process for brewing
38:43SPEAKER'cause you're pushing steam through the ground up beans
38:47SPEAKERat nine atmospheres of pressure.
38:49SPEAKER- Whoa.
38:50SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what an espresso machine does.
38:52SPEAKERAn espresso machine boils water,
38:54SPEAKERmakes high pressure steam in a boiler
38:56SPEAKERand then forces that steam through the beans
38:59SPEAKERto extract the oils and all the compounds.
39:04SPEAKER- It never occurred to me that it's a pressurized process.
39:07SPEAKERAlthough now that I think about it being in a coffee shop
39:09SPEAKERand hearing that hiss, that makes more sense.
39:12SPEAKER- Well, and that's why it's a much more complicated process.
39:16SPEAKERIt's a lot more fiddly, having to deal with boilers
39:19SPEAKERand stuff, we'll talk about espresso machines in a minute.
39:21SPEAKERBut anyway.
39:23SPEAKER- So I had written down espresso bean here
39:25SPEAKER'cause I was kind of doing some online coffee shopping
39:27SPEAKERearlier and it made me wonder,
39:29SPEAKERis there anything special about espresso beans?
39:32SPEAKER- It's how they're roasted.
39:33SPEAKER- Okay.
39:34SPEAKER- You roast them differently
39:34SPEAKERbecause they are gonna have a more,
39:37SPEAKERlike there is a more aggressive extraction
39:40SPEAKERof the stuff that makes coffee taste like coffee
39:42SPEAKERin an espresso roast.
39:44SPEAKER- I see.
39:45SPEAKER- Is there anything in espresso when you make espresso?
39:47SPEAKERSo you roast them accordingly
39:49SPEAKER'cause you know you're gonna get all of that flavor out.
39:51SPEAKER- Is there any reason you can't just make coffee ass coffee
39:54SPEAKERwith espresso beans?
39:55SPEAKER- Oh, you absolutely can.
39:56SPEAKERSome people really like that.
39:59SPEAKERSo again, this is like,
40:00SPEAKERif you're buying single origin espresso,
40:02SPEAKERwhich is typically pretty expensive
40:05SPEAKERand a specialty item from a specialty shop,
40:08SPEAKERI wouldn't just because you're not gonna get
40:11SPEAKERwhat you want out of it 'cause it's not roasted.
40:13SPEAKERLike you're gonna get half of what the roaster
40:15SPEAKERis intending for you to get out of it
40:17SPEAKERif you're just pouring water over it, right?
40:19SPEAKERHot water over it.
40:20SPEAKERIf you're doing cold brew or something like that
40:22SPEAKERwhere it's more immersed and there's more full extraction,
40:24SPEAKERyou might get what you're looking for.
40:26SPEAKERI don't know, it never hurts to try.
40:28SPEAKERLike I've occasionally bought sweet tooth espresso
40:30SPEAKERfrom Ritual and brewed that.
40:31SPEAKERAnd it's like, it's a mixed bag.
40:33SPEAKERIt's not, I've had good cups and bad cups.
40:36SPEAKERI find it's better to buy coffee design roasted
40:39SPEAKERfor brewing, for brewing.
40:40SPEAKER- Sure.
40:41SPEAKERMy other question real quick, sorry,
40:43SPEAKERat the end of the beans section here,
40:44SPEAKERbut I think you've already,
40:45SPEAKERI think the answer is just don't.
40:48SPEAKERIt's long-term storage.
40:51SPEAKERLike let's say you're buying five pounds at a time.
40:53SPEAKERI like put it in the fridge or the freezer or no,
40:56SPEAKERlike vacuum seal it.
40:57SPEAKERBut I think your answer is don't buy in bulk.
40:59SPEAKER- Well, so the answer to storage is yeah,
41:01SPEAKERI get a vacuum, get a container that is airtight.
41:06SPEAKERYou, like you can get a fancy one from the coffee,
41:10SPEAKERlike Fellow makes a fancy one with a squishy and lid
41:12SPEAKERthat you can push the lid all the way down
41:15SPEAKERand release the air.
41:16SPEAKERAnd it's very pretty and well-designed.
41:19SPEAKERYou can also just buy, I was going to say
41:21SPEAKERat Bed Bath & Beyond, but you can buy
41:22SPEAKERlike a stainless steel canister
41:25SPEAKERwith a silicone gasket around the lid that clamps down.
41:27SPEAKERAnd that works just as well.
41:29SPEAKERLike you just want an airtight container.
41:31SPEAKERYou don't want to put it in the freezer or the fridge
41:33SPEAKERbecause condensation is bad for the beans.
41:35SPEAKERSo when you take them in and out,
41:37SPEAKERwater forms on the outside of the beans
41:39SPEAKERand that is not what you want.
41:41SPEAKERJim, that's the recommendation I've always gotten.
41:43SPEAKERI know people are gonna have feelings about this.
41:45SPEAKERI'm sorry if I offended you.
41:50SPEAKER- Don't worry, we'll bring up microwaving coffee later
41:52SPEAKERand they'll forget all about it.
41:54SPEAKER- Look, I've been known to occasionally chuck a cup of coffee
41:57SPEAKERin the microwave to warm it up.
41:58SPEAKER- Is it a big deal?
41:59SPEAKERIs it actually a thing?
42:01SPEAKER- It's, I mean, again, it's one of those things like,
42:06SPEAKERwould I rather waste the coffee and not drink it?
42:08SPEAKERI feel bad about wasting.
42:10SPEAKERLike the interesting thing about this whole process
42:12SPEAKERof learning this stuff is that as I met cultivars,
42:16SPEAKERpeople who are farmers at the conventions and stuff,
42:21SPEAKERit gave me a real appreciation for the amount of work
42:23SPEAKERthat goes into every single cup of coffee
42:24SPEAKERand I tend to not waste anything if I can.
42:26SPEAKERLike I don't, I clean out the grinder.
42:29SPEAKERSo I get lots, all the beans through and the whole thing.
42:33SPEAKERSo yeah, I'll microwave it rather than waste
42:35SPEAKERa half a cup of coffee if I didn't drink it
42:37SPEAKERbefore it got cold.
42:38SPEAKER- Sure.
42:39SPEAKER- Is it the best thing to do?
42:40SPEAKERNo.
42:40SPEAKERIs it better than wasting it?
42:41SPEAKERI think so.
42:42SPEAKERIt's a personal choice.
42:46SPEAKEROkay, so we've grown, we've processed,
42:50SPEAKERwe've grown, we've harvested, we've processed,
42:52SPEAKERwe've shipped, we've roasted, it's time to grind.
42:57SPEAKERIf you're buying Folgers, if you're buying,
43:00SPEAKERlike you can buy fancy coffee that's pre-ground.
43:02SPEAKERDon't buy fancy coffee that's pre-ground.
43:04SPEAKERIf you're gonna do that, just get your upscale Folgers
43:07SPEAKERand call it a day.
43:09SPEAKERThe grinder is the single best way
43:11SPEAKERto make your coffee better.
43:13SPEAKERHaving a decent burr grinder versus buying pre-ground
43:16SPEAKERor using one of those blade grinders
43:19SPEAKERwill give you a better experience,
43:21SPEAKERmore than buying any amount of gear,
43:24SPEAKERmore than, like if you put a nicely ground coffee
43:26SPEAKERinto a Mr. Coffee drip maker,
43:28SPEAKERyou're gonna have a better experience.
43:30SPEAKER- Have you done like straight up side-by-sides
43:32SPEAKERor do I assume you at least have enough experience
43:35SPEAKERto characterize the difference?
43:36SPEAKERIs it just a flavor thing?
43:38SPEAKER- Yeah, it's just a flavor thing.
43:39SPEAKERYou get more consistent.
43:40SPEAKERThe burr grind, the blade grinders don't,
43:45SPEAKERso the burr grinder smash the cellulose structures
43:48SPEAKERand get a pretty even mush of the pieces.
43:52SPEAKERThe blade grinders are uneven so you can have big pieces
43:54SPEAKERthat are still whole basically,
43:57SPEAKERthat there's no way for the oil and stuff
43:59SPEAKERinside the cellulose to escape.
44:01SPEAKERAnd you want that stuff to come out
44:02SPEAKER'cause that's what makes the coffee taste good, right?
44:04SPEAKER- That makes sense.
44:05SPEAKERThat's actually like a very straightforward
44:06SPEAKERand evident explanation of why there's a difference.
44:10SPEAKER- Yeah, and just to be clear, you can use a blade grinder
44:13SPEAKERand if you pick it up and shake it
44:14SPEAKERwhile it's blade grinding,
44:16SPEAKERyou can do a pretty good job with it.
44:17SPEAKERI've been at people's houses and that's all they have.
44:20SPEAKERI hold it closed and hit the button and pulse it
44:22SPEAKERand shake it so it's constantly being agitated in there.
44:25SPEAKER'Cause the thing you don't want is to have
44:27SPEAKERa lot of dust on one end of the scale
44:29SPEAKERand a lot of big chunks on the other.
44:31SPEAKERAnd the benefit of the burr grinder is
44:32SPEAKERin order for the coffee to get from the top to the bottom,
44:34SPEAKERit has to be a certain size to pass through the burrs.
44:36SPEAKERAnd so you get an even distribution of particulate sizes.
44:47SPEAKERIf you grind the coffee in the morning
44:49SPEAKERor even the night before, put it in the automatic maker,
44:51SPEAKERyou'll have a better experience.
44:53SPEAKEREven for, and just to be clear,
44:57SPEAKERyou don't need to buy a $500 burr grinder
45:00SPEAKERif you're not making espresso at home or Turkish coffee
45:02SPEAKERor something that requires a very fine grind.
45:05SPEAKERCoffee Geek years ago did a fantastic thing
45:08SPEAKERwhere they took $500, $600 grinders
45:13SPEAKERdesigned for espresso machines.
45:15SPEAKERThey took cheap burr grinders
45:18SPEAKERand they took just blade grinders
45:22SPEAKERand they made espresso
45:23SPEAKERwith a $50 Mr. Coffee espresso machine,
45:25SPEAKERwhich is basically unbelievably cheap,
45:31SPEAKERnot high enough pressure.
45:33SPEAKERI think it didn't even have a real boiler,
45:34SPEAKERbut I can't remember, like fake espresso machine.
45:38SPEAKERAnd Mark over at Coffee Geek
45:41SPEAKERpulled some pretty remarkable shots
45:42SPEAKERwith the $500 grinder and the $50 espresso machine.
45:46SPEAKERRight? - Okay, all right.
45:49SPEAKER- But like I said, if you're just brewing,
45:50SPEAKERyou can get a $50 Cuisinart burr grinder
45:53SPEAKERand you'll get really good results.
45:54SPEAKERThey don't last forever.
45:55SPEAKERI've had three of them over the years,
45:57SPEAKERbut they're fine for brewed coffee.
45:59SPEAKER- The Cuisinart, you mean, doesn't last forever?
46:01SPEAKER- Not, the Cuisinart will conk out after.
46:04SPEAKERMy parents have gone through three of them
46:06SPEAKERin the last 15 years.
46:07SPEAKER- I see.
46:07SPEAKERWe have an OXO that has lasted quite a bit.
46:10SPEAKER- Yeah. - It was about 100 bucks,
46:12SPEAKERbut we've had it for five or six years
46:13SPEAKERand it's still going strong.
46:15SPEAKER- A hundred dollar OXO, a hundred dollar,
46:16SPEAKERyou can get a Baratza Encore for a hundred bucks.
46:19SPEAKERThose are both really good,
46:22SPEAKERvery competent brewers, grinders for brewed coffee.
46:26SPEAKERWhether you're talking about a pour over or a drip maker
46:29SPEAKERor a Chemex or French press or whatever.
46:32SPEAKERAnd then the other thing you want to get
46:34SPEAKERis like a $20 scale that gives you half a gram-ish precision
46:39SPEAKERthat will help you measure your beans and your water.
46:41SPEAKERSo you can actually get,
46:43SPEAKER'cause there's a bunch of different things
46:45SPEAKERto go into how your coffee tastes.
46:47SPEAKERThe amount of time the water spends in the grounds,
46:49SPEAKERthe fineness of the grind,
46:52SPEAKERthe amount of water, the ratio of grounds to water,
46:55SPEAKERall of that, having a scale is the place to start
46:57SPEAKER'cause it lets you know how many beans you have
46:59SPEAKERand how much water you have and get that ratio right.
47:01SPEAKERThat's where stuff begins.
47:03SPEAKER- Sure, all right, real quick before we move on,
47:06SPEAKERI'm going to submit myself for your approval.
47:09SPEAKER- Okay, what you got?
47:11SPEAKER- Let's say you have like a pretty decent burr grinder,
47:13SPEAKERbut your practice is to,
47:17SPEAKERlet's say grind the coffee the night before.
47:20SPEAKER- That's okay.
47:20SPEAKER- And load up the machine and let it sit out.
47:22SPEAKERReally, I thought you were-
47:23SPEAKER- It would be better to do it in the morning,
47:24SPEAKERbut if like, there's a lot of good reasons
47:26SPEAKERto not run the grinder in the morning.
47:28SPEAKERYou may have a small house,
47:29SPEAKERyou have people who might be sleeping,
47:30SPEAKERyou want to have coffee before they're awake.
47:33SPEAKER- It's fine.
47:34SPEAKER- A partner who gets up very early to go to work.
47:36SPEAKER- Yeah.
47:37SPEAKER- And would like to just get up and press a button.
47:38SPEAKER- Yeah, that's totally acceptable.
47:40SPEAKER- I don't have any beef with that.
47:41SPEAKER- I expected it here.
47:43SPEAKERIt's like, I might as well just buy pre-ground.
47:45SPEAKER- No, no, no.
47:47SPEAKERLook, you're talking about pre-ground coffee
47:49SPEAKERcan sometimes be weeks and months old, right?
47:52SPEAKERAnd you're talking about volatile flavors
47:54SPEAKERthat disappear in days, hours in some cases.
47:58SPEAKER12 hours, like get the extra sleep, man.
48:01SPEAKERDon't worry about it.
48:01SPEAKER- Okay, okay, cool.
48:05SPEAKER- I said this at the top of the show.
48:07SPEAKERThere's not really a wrong way to make coffee.
48:09SPEAKEREverybody, when the SEA people did a survey
48:12SPEAKERon this years ago about what people like
48:14SPEAKERand what they grew up with, like the overlap,
48:17SPEAKERthere's usually a direct connection
48:19SPEAKERbetween what you grew up with.
48:21SPEAKERIf you grew up with a Mr. Coffee in folders,
48:24SPEAKERyou're gonna like light roasts
48:26SPEAKERthat are pour overs these days, right?
48:28SPEAKERIf you grew up with a percolator,
48:30SPEAKERif you grew up with a French press in a French press house,
48:33SPEAKERyou're gonna like a French press.
48:35SPEAKERYou're gonna like an immersion method
48:37SPEAKERthat lets the ground sit in the water for a little bit.
48:41SPEAKERThe only exception is percolators,
48:43SPEAKERwhich make horrible coffee for bad people
48:44SPEAKERand no one should ever, ever use.
48:47SPEAKER- Can you define a percolator?
48:49SPEAKER- A percolator was a thing that they invented in the 50s
48:51SPEAKERso you could make more coffee with less beans.
48:54SPEAKERAnd basically it boils water in the bottom
48:56SPEAKERand it pushes it up a straw.
48:58SPEAKERThe boiled water goes up a straw
49:00SPEAKERand then comes out in the basket.
49:01SPEAKERAnd it just keeps getting stronger and stronger and stronger
49:04SPEAKERthe more it runs.
49:05SPEAKERSo it makes, and the coffee is uniformly overextracted,
49:10SPEAKERso it's really, really bitter and awful.
49:12SPEAKERYou have to put a whole shitload of sugar and cream in it
49:14SPEAKERto make it even anything approaching drinkable.
49:17SPEAKERAnd like you literally might as well just drink,
49:21SPEAKERjust drink a Coke or something, man, it's not worth it.
49:25SPEAKER- There it is, I knew it was coming.
49:27SPEAKERI knew there had to be one technique or a roast
49:29SPEAKERor some aspect of something in here
49:32SPEAKERthat would be unacceptable and there it is.
49:34SPEAKER- My dad's parents used percolators
49:37SPEAKERand every time I went to visit them, it was living hell.
49:42SPEAKERThis was before I even really liked coffee.
49:44SPEAKERI just knew that I shouldn't drink that shit
49:46SPEAKER'cause it would be a one-way ticket to the bathroom.
49:49SPEAKERAnyway, the only thing I do say
49:52SPEAKERis if you're gonna spend money on expensive beans
49:54SPEAKERfrom a good roaster, learn to brew the coffee
49:58SPEAKERin a way that lets you taste what the beans are.
50:00SPEAKERIf you're buying a pound bag of Starbucks dark brew go nuts,
50:05SPEAKERput in whatever you want, it doesn't matter.
50:06SPEAKERIf you're buying light roast from a fancy roaster,
50:12SPEAKERthen get a decent pour-over setup or something
50:14SPEAKERso you can kind of see what's going on.
50:18SPEAKERAnd also, I'm gonna talk about a handful
50:20SPEAKERof different ways to brew coffee here.
50:22SPEAKERThere are literally as many ways to brew coffee
50:24SPEAKERas there are cultures in the world.
50:25SPEAKEREverybody has their own thing.
50:26SPEAKEREverybody does stuff a little bit differently
50:29SPEAKERfrom the range of techniques between Turkish coffee,
50:33SPEAKERwhich is just that you grind it so fine
50:34SPEAKERand the sediment, the entire bean stays in your cup.
50:37SPEAKERYou just drink it 'cause it's kind of an emulsion
50:40SPEAKERof water and bean.
50:42SPEAKERHave you ever had Turkish coffee?
50:43SPEAKER- No, that sounds wild.
50:44SPEAKER- It's really good, but it's intense.
50:49SPEAKERWith Turkish, they often do it on a sand bed,
50:51SPEAKERon a hot sand bed.
50:52SPEAKERSo it's like in a copper brewing thing,
50:56SPEAKERthe coffee is ground into a fine, fine, fine, fine powder,
50:59SPEAKERand then you boil it down until it's thick,
51:01SPEAKERlike it's almost syrupy when it's done right.
51:05SPEAKERThere's a place on the Sunset that does it pretty well.
51:07SPEAKERI'll find out the name and tell you offline.
51:09SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds really good.
51:13SPEAKER- Espresso, as we said before,
51:15SPEAKERbecame popular 20, 30 years ago.
51:17SPEAKERYou can go anywhere in the country
51:18SPEAKERand get an espresso now that's pretty good, which is nice,
51:21SPEAKERthanks to Starbucks mostly for that.
51:24SPEAKER- I generally, even if you really, really like
51:27SPEAKERespresso beverages, unless you're fairly wealthy
51:30SPEAKERand/or have a very large kitchen,
51:32SPEAKERI generally recommend buying espresso out
51:34SPEAKERand brewing coffee at home because it's really,
51:39SPEAKERlike making a world-class brewed coffee at home
51:42SPEAKERis attainable if you practice and learn and take good notes.
51:46SPEAKERMaking a world-class espresso at home is a $10,000 endeavor
51:50SPEAKERthat requires a maintenance every two months.
51:52SPEAKER- Yikes. - Espresso machines
51:57SPEAKERare at best finicky and a pain in the ass
51:59SPEAKERand at worst, like a maintenance hassle.
52:03SPEAKERYou have to have people come and work on them
52:04SPEAKERand it's a whole thing.
52:05SPEAKER- Is there any danger there
52:06SPEAKERfor something highly pressurized?
52:08SPEAKER- Well, I mean, yeah, anytime you have a nine bar
52:11SPEAKERpressure cylinder in your kitchen, it's a ticking time bomb.
52:14SPEAKER- Fair. - But also you have to,
52:17SPEAKERso you either have to descale the water,
52:19SPEAKERlike filter the water to remove stuff that makes scaling,
52:25SPEAKERlike lime scaling inside the boiler before you do it.
52:29SPEAKERThey cost a lot of money to keep running
52:31SPEAKERso you can have an espresso anytime
52:32SPEAKERduring the day that you want.
52:34SPEAKERIt's a lot, like there's a warmup period
52:36SPEAKERfor most good espresso machines.
52:38SPEAKERIt's 30 minutes or an hour long.
52:40SPEAKERSo you have to think, oh, I'm gonna have,
52:41SPEAKERI want an espresso with lunch,
52:42SPEAKERso I gotta go turn this on at 10 o'clock in the morning
52:44SPEAKERso it's warmed up and ready to go.
52:46SPEAKERWhat I will say is that cheaper espresso machines
52:48SPEAKERare better now than they have been in the past.
52:51SPEAKERBreville especially is an Australian company.
52:53SPEAKERI think Australia, for whatever reason,
52:55SPEAKERpeople don't drink brewed coffee in Australia,
52:57SPEAKERit's all espresso.
53:00SPEAKERThey sell $500 to $1000 espresso machines
53:05SPEAKERthat are pretty good now.
53:06SPEAKERThey still require you to descale them regularly
53:09SPEAKERand stuff like that, but they don't require plumbing in
53:13SPEAKERand they aren't as bad to maintain as they used to be.
53:17SPEAKER- Could you characterize the drink?
53:18SPEAKERI don't know that I've ever had an espresso.
53:20SPEAKERLike what sets it apart?
53:23SPEAKER- So the espresso is steam.
53:26SPEAKERYou're pushing steam at high pressure
53:27SPEAKERthrough this finely ground coffee.
53:30SPEAKERThere's a brew head and that forces it through.
53:34SPEAKERBasically you shape the grounds into like a little puck
53:37SPEAKERthat's like, I don't know, two inches across maybe,
53:40SPEAKERa diameter and then an inch or so thick,
53:42SPEAKERa half inch thick maybe.
53:45SPEAKERIt's somewhere between Turkish coffee and brewed coffee.
53:47SPEAKERSo it has a high body.
53:49SPEAKERIt has a lot of texture when you're drinking it.
53:54SPEAKERAnd generally it's a fairly acidic tasting.
53:57SPEAKERLike it's very bright.
53:59SPEAKERThere's a bright flavor.
54:02SPEAKERAnd then like if you've had a latte,
54:04SPEAKERyou've had an espresso drink.
54:05SPEAKER'Cause a latte is a shot or two of espresso,
54:10SPEAKERmaybe three, depending on how big it is
54:11SPEAKERand steamed milk that's poured in on top of it.
54:13SPEAKERThe cappuccino is a shot of espresso with foamed milk.
54:18SPEAKERMacchiato is a little tiny espresso shot
54:20SPEAKERwith just a dab of milk on top.
54:21SPEAKERThat's my favorite.
54:23SPEAKERBut there's a lot of like,
54:25SPEAKERif you go to Starbucks and get a fancy drink
54:27SPEAKERthat's not brewed, that'll be an espresso drink.
54:30SPEAKER- I'll just, I'm just gonna say right now,
54:31SPEAKERlike 99.9% of the coffee I've had in my life was black.
54:36SPEAKER- Black like your soul.
54:37SPEAKER- Yes, exactly.
54:37SPEAKERI just had next to no experience with anything
54:41SPEAKERother than-
54:43SPEAKER- Brad, I'm gonna take you to get coffee sometime.
54:44SPEAKERWe're gonna open a door for your mind.
54:48SPEAKER- Honestly, the rationale really is just,
54:50SPEAKERI don't need the extra calories.
54:51SPEAKERIt's just, you know, milk and sugar are cool.
54:54SPEAKERI love them.
54:55SPEAKERThey're great, but-
54:57SPEAKER- Fair, fair.
54:58SPEAKER- I don't need it.
55:00SPEAKER- So if you heard all this
55:03SPEAKERand you still wanna buy an espresso machine,
55:04SPEAKERthe Breville ones are pretty,
55:05SPEAKERare the entry point, I think, for real machines.
55:08SPEAKERYou can get cheaper stuff, but it's usually not very good.
55:12SPEAKERIf you want milk drinks like lattes or cappuccinos
55:14SPEAKERor macchiatos or whatever,
55:17SPEAKERthen you do want the ability to produce steam
55:19SPEAKERand pull shots at the same time,
55:21SPEAKERwhich in the old days meant a double boiler machine.
55:23SPEAKERThese days, people put a hot plate that makes steam
55:27SPEAKERinstantly inside the machines, in the cheaper machines,
55:30SPEAKERand that's entirely acceptable for doing a steamed milk.
55:36SPEAKERFor brewed coffee, there are so many ways to brew coffee.
55:42SPEAKERAnd I think we should start by talking about
55:44SPEAKERflavor clarity and body, 'cause those are-
55:46SPEAKER- Yes.
55:47SPEAKER- Yeah, they're kind of the opposite ends of the spectrum.
55:50SPEAKER- You just mentioned body in relation to espresso.
55:54SPEAKER- Yeah, so body is the texture-
55:56SPEAKER- We should define those.
55:57SPEAKER- The kind of texture or thickness of coffee.
56:00SPEAKERIf you have a cup of coffee that feels like,
56:02SPEAKERyou can feel it inside your mouth.
56:04SPEAKERIt doesn't just feel like liquid.
56:05SPEAKERIt feels like there's more there.
56:06SPEAKER- If you have to chew it.
56:08SPEAKER- Yeah, well, it's not that thick.
56:09SPEAKERIt's more like, I'm trying to think of another example.
56:15SPEAKEROften, it's just in whole milk and skim milk, right?
56:21SPEAKERSkim milk tastes watery, there's no texture to it.
56:24SPEAKERWhole milk, you feel the fat on your tongue,
56:26SPEAKERlike it's a sensation that you get.
56:28SPEAKERAnd a high body has a lot of that kind of fatty sensation.
56:33SPEAKERYou know that it feels like it's more substantial, almost.
56:37SPEAKERAnd some people really prefer that.
56:39SPEAKER- Maybe like a good, rich hot chocolate is another example
56:44SPEAKERof something that feels like it's just thick.
56:46SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like the difference
56:47SPEAKERbetween hot chocolate and Swiss Miss, right?
56:49SPEAKEROne is an instant that you pour water in
56:51SPEAKERand it's chocolatey water.
56:53SPEAKERAnd the other one makes your mouth feel like
56:55SPEAKERit's been bombarded by chocolate.
56:59SPEAKERFlavor clarity is typically the ability to pay.
57:01SPEAKERIt's not about how much particulate is in the coffee.
57:03SPEAKERIt's about your ability to discern flavors in the coffee.
57:06SPEAKERSo typically high clarity coffee is gonna be a lighter roast
57:10SPEAKERthat's produced with some sort of method
57:14SPEAKERthat results in filtering out a lot of the fat
57:18SPEAKERand maybe the soluble components,
57:21SPEAKERis it leaves just the molecular stuff
57:24SPEAKERthat goes through the filter and has clear flavor.
57:27SPEAKERWhereas the high body preparation methods
57:30SPEAKERwill involve metal filters or something
57:33SPEAKERthat doesn't actually filter out the fats
57:35SPEAKERand the particulate as much.
57:38SPEAKER- We may have talked about this with Adam
57:42SPEAKERin regard to alcohol,
57:43SPEAKERbut what is your kind of tasting prowess?
57:46SPEAKERDo you feel like you can pick out
57:48SPEAKERa lot of individual flavors?
57:50SPEAKER- It depends, it varies widely based on what I'm drinking.
57:53SPEAKERLike I am hopeless when it comes to wine.
57:56SPEAKERI have a pretty good mouth for beer and coffee.
58:00SPEAKERI love chocolate, I can go nuts on.
58:03SPEAKERLike if you have chocolates that are complicated,
58:05SPEAKERI can pull out a bunch of stuff.
58:09SPEAKERAnd from talking to people who do that science for,
58:15SPEAKERI have an acquaintance who used to work
58:17SPEAKERfor a big candy manufacturer.
58:19SPEAKERAnd we talked about this and she said
58:21SPEAKERthere's an enormous spectrum
58:22SPEAKERin what people are able to discern.
58:25SPEAKERAnd some people are better at picking out certain things
58:27SPEAKERthan others just because of the way their nose,
58:31SPEAKERlike it could be something as simple
58:33SPEAKERas how your nose is shaped or like whether you smoke
58:37SPEAKERor any number of other things.
58:39SPEAKER- Sure.
58:40SPEAKER- You, Brad?
58:41SPEAKER- No, I am not, like I'm,
58:46SPEAKERthis is gonna sound ridiculous.
58:47SPEAKERI'm good at knowing how something tastes.
58:48SPEAKERI mean, like I can like,
58:50SPEAKERyou know, I mentally can catalog things
58:53SPEAKERas tasting certain ways,
58:54SPEAKERbut I could not in any capacity,
58:57SPEAKERlike compartmentalize the different aspects of the flavor
59:00SPEAKERand say, oh, it's like a doughy with hints of cinnamon
59:04SPEAKERand whatever.
59:06SPEAKER- Well, so the interesting thing about this whole concept
59:09SPEAKERis that when they took a bunch of people off the street
59:11SPEAKERat Davis as part of the alcohol lab there,
59:16SPEAKERthey have a wine and alcohol production facility there
59:20SPEAKERwhere they do science to support the agriculture
59:24SPEAKERin California.
59:26SPEAKEROne of the scientists there actually trained people
59:29SPEAKERto detect certain flavors by isolating the flavors,
59:32SPEAKERbuilding a shared ontology between the tasters.
59:35SPEAKERSo they would say, okay,
59:36SPEAKERthis specific flavor that we're tasting right now,
59:38SPEAKERthis is dark, this is black cherry.
59:40SPEAKERThis one is vanilla.
59:41SPEAKERThis one is tannin.
59:42SPEAKERThis is blah, blah, blah.
59:44SPEAKERAnd like they were able to in like double blind studies
59:48SPEAKERwhere there was no, like they were able
59:50SPEAKERto identify flavors inside wine,
59:54SPEAKERlike production wines, not special wines
59:57SPEAKERwith just people off the street that was rivaling
1:00:00SPEAKERthe accuracy of people who were like classically trained
1:00:03SPEAKERsommeliers and stuff like that.
1:00:04SPEAKERSo presumably everyone has this capability inside them.
1:00:08SPEAKERIt's just something like anything else you have to practice.
1:00:11SPEAKER- Interesting.
1:00:12SPEAKERReal quick, slight digression.
1:00:15SPEAKERThere's a whiskey blog that I read on occasion.
1:00:18SPEAKERI like this guy's reviews, but I'm just going to quote
1:00:20SPEAKERfrom like literally the most recent review.
1:00:23SPEAKERI just pulled it up.
1:00:24SPEAKER"Nose, raisiny with an edge of dry wine, tobacco, dry oak,
1:00:29SPEAKERand a little more nose tickle than you find at 43% ABV.
1:00:32SPEAKERDeeper in the glass, there are some tutti fruity aromas,
1:00:34SPEAKERorange peel, and sandalwood."
1:00:37SPEAKERLike that's just the nose.
1:00:38SPEAKER- Tutti fruity is really specific.
1:00:40SPEAKERMan, I don't know what tutti fruity means.
1:00:41SPEAKER- Like "palate, medium bodied, dry throughout
1:00:44SPEAKERwith a moderate tongue burn, coconut butter,
1:00:46SPEAKERonly a hint of raisin, dry wood,
1:00:48SPEAKERand a thin veneer of red grape skins."
1:00:50SPEAKERNot red grapes, but red grape skins.
1:00:54SPEAKER- I do not have that kind of a mouth.
1:00:55SPEAKER- Right, yes.
1:00:56SPEAKER"Finish turns nutty with almonds and hazelnuts,
1:00:59SPEAKERdry still and evolves in tobacco leaf
1:01:01SPEAKERand significant bitter barrel tannins."
1:01:03SPEAKERAll of the reviews are like this.
1:01:05SPEAKER- So I get, I can, like I pick vanilla and chocolates
1:01:10SPEAKERand fruits and like honestly,
1:01:14SPEAKERone of the most remarkable cups I've ever had
1:01:16SPEAKERwas at a coffee convention where a shop brewer maker
1:01:23SPEAKERhad someone from a shop in central Oregon near Bend
1:01:27SPEAKERthat was brewing coffee.
1:01:28SPEAKERAnd it was like, she had dialed it into the point
1:01:31SPEAKERthat like, it was just like, it like literally tasted
1:01:33SPEAKERlike you'd put blueberries in the coffee,
1:01:35SPEAKERblueberry juice in the coffee.
1:01:37SPEAKERAnd it sounds revolting, but it was absolutely delicious.
1:01:40SPEAKERAnd it's, I still think about it.
1:01:44SPEAKERAnyway, so yeah, so like this range of body to clarity
1:01:48SPEAKERis generally the more body you have, the less clarity
1:01:51SPEAKERyou have, the more clarity you have, the less body you have.
1:01:54SPEAKERAnd most of the interesting brew methods,
1:01:57SPEAKERat least the ones that I like as a person who grew up
1:01:59SPEAKERdrinking fresh ground coffee out of a Mr. Coffee
1:02:03SPEAKERbasket drip filter are in the middle of that range,
1:02:07SPEAKERmiddle on the kind of clarity edge,
1:02:09SPEAKERthe clarity end of that range.
1:02:12SPEAKERAnd drip machines, just to be clear,
1:02:14SPEAKERentirely, entirely the legit way to make coffee.
1:02:17SPEAKERLike, especially like you can get,
1:02:20SPEAKERokay, I probably wouldn't recommend the Mr. Coffee
1:02:22SPEAKERat this point, but you can get for 100 or 150, 200 bucks,
1:02:26SPEAKERa really nice drip brewer that will make coffee
1:02:31SPEAKERthat rivals what you can make with a,
1:02:33SPEAKERit'll definitely be better than somebody who's bad
1:02:34SPEAKERat doing a manual pour and that will rival
1:02:37SPEAKERa pretty good manual pour these days.
1:02:40SPEAKER- Yeah, it seems like a lot of the major brands
1:02:42SPEAKERhave had kind of a glow up in recent years
1:02:44SPEAKERwith their drip coffee makers.
1:02:46SPEAKERLike there is a whole kind of new, I guess, mid range,
1:02:49SPEAKERI would say, 'cause you can buy like a 500, five, $600
1:02:53SPEAKERdrip maker if you want, but like everybody,
1:02:56SPEAKERlike the Mr. Coffee's, the Oxo's, the whoever's have got
1:02:59SPEAKERnicer ones than they used to.
1:03:01SPEAKER- Well, so the thing that matters on a drip machine
1:03:03SPEAKERis that the temperature is predictable
1:03:05SPEAKERand is in the right range.
1:03:06SPEAKERThe thing you lose with the drip machine
1:03:08SPEAKERis the ability to dial in that temperature generally.
1:03:10SPEAKERThere's some higher end machines that can,
1:03:12SPEAKERpart of the problem with the coffee space is that often
1:03:15SPEAKERwhen you get above a certain point,
1:03:17SPEAKERyou're paying for industrial design rather than actual
1:03:20SPEAKERbetter tasting coffee.
1:03:22SPEAKERSo like a Technivore MochaMaster or Bona Vida
1:03:25SPEAKERhas a high end competitor to that.
1:03:27SPEAKERThose are kind of the gold standards in the coffee scene.
1:03:31SPEAKERI think Wirecutter has different recommendations these days,
1:03:33SPEAKERbut I'm less enamored with Wirecutter's coffee people
1:03:38SPEAKERthese days than I once was.
1:03:40SPEAKER- Does the, sorry, does the kind of pattern of the,
1:03:45SPEAKERis the shower the right term?
1:03:47SPEAKERThe water distribution pattern, does that matter too?
1:03:49SPEAKERLike we've got a Bona Vida, but it was like a lower end,
1:03:52SPEAKERlike 150 to $200 one.
1:03:54SPEAKER- That's the one that used to be
1:03:56SPEAKERthe Wirecutter recommendation, as I recall.
1:03:57SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's probably why we got it.
1:03:59SPEAKERBut I think they kind of touted that it uses
1:04:01SPEAKERsome kind of shower head pattern.
1:04:04SPEAKER- Yeah, so there's a bunch of different ways.
1:04:07SPEAKERSome people make brewers that mimic a pour over,
1:04:10SPEAKERlike that have a swirling drip,
1:04:11SPEAKERlike a swirling head that just runs a stream
1:04:13SPEAKERover the center of the bed.
1:04:16SPEAKERThe shower, the thing you want is even distribution
1:04:19SPEAKERand you want the temperature to hit the beans
1:04:21SPEAKERat the right temperature, which for brewed coffee
1:04:23SPEAKERis usually around 205 degrees, right?
1:04:26SPEAKERDepending on your method, it'll be higher or lower
1:04:29SPEAKERbased on the grind size.
1:04:31SPEAKERBut if you have it too hot, it'll over-extract.
1:04:33SPEAKERIf you have it too cold, it'll under-extract.
1:04:35SPEAKERAnd that results in really bitter
1:04:36SPEAKERor really sour coffee respectively, I think.
1:04:39SPEAKERI often get that wrong.
1:04:44SPEAKERBut so, I'm looking at Wirecutter's
1:04:50SPEAKERcoffee maker round up right now, the most recent one.
1:04:55SPEAKERI think that they, the last time I looked,
1:04:57SPEAKERthey were on an OXO, yeah.
1:04:59SPEAKERSo they recommend the OXO nine cup coffee maker.
1:05:01SPEAKERI don't have any experience with that one,
1:05:02SPEAKERbut it's 230 bucks.
1:05:03SPEAKERAnd at that price, I would buy,
1:05:07SPEAKERI would probably just buy a Techniform
1:05:12SPEAKER'cause they're 250 and it's an incredible machine
1:05:16SPEAKERfor 250 bucks.
1:05:18SPEAKERThe manual, the more manual methods of making coffee,
1:05:23SPEAKERthese are generally for single serves,
1:05:25SPEAKERalthough there are some for multiple servings down here.
1:05:29SPEAKERYou control all the aspects.
1:05:30SPEAKERSo with the drip coffee maker,
1:05:31SPEAKERyou control the amount of water,
1:05:32SPEAKERyou control the coarseness of the grind,
1:05:34SPEAKERyou control the filter you use,
1:05:35SPEAKERwhich does make a difference,
1:05:37SPEAKERbut you don't usually have control
1:05:38SPEAKERover the water temperature or the amount of the linger time
1:05:40SPEAKERin the basket and stuff like that.
1:05:41SPEAKERSome of the higher end machines, you can dial that in,
1:05:43SPEAKERbut generally I find it better to just do a manual
1:05:46SPEAKERrather than to pay for the really expensive machine
1:05:49SPEAKERand then have a bunch of fiddly settings
1:05:52SPEAKERyou have to fool with every single time.
1:05:53SPEAKERJust do it yourself.
1:05:55SPEAKERFor the manual pour, you want at the scale,
1:05:56SPEAKERwhich we've already talked about, you want a good grinder.
1:05:59SPEAKERYou'd need a mechanism to hold a filter,
1:06:01SPEAKERwhich is like a Hario V60, if you like a conical filter,
1:06:05SPEAKERa Kalia Wave is the basket version of that.
1:06:11SPEAKERThese are both Japanese brands where hand pour overs
1:06:15SPEAKERwere, I think, invented or at least popularized.
1:06:18SPEAKERSorry, Kalia Waves, not Kalia Waves, my autocorrect.
1:06:21SPEAKERMess me up there.
1:06:22SPEAKERI use the Kalia at home for mine.
1:06:25SPEAKERI grew up, like I said, drinking Mr. Coffee.
1:06:27SPEAKERI like the basket filter.
1:06:28SPEAKERI find that with the conical filters,
1:06:30SPEAKERyou end up with a little bit of over extracted coffee
1:06:32SPEAKER'cause all the water runs through the tip
1:06:34SPEAKERand it's not my favorite.
1:06:39SPEAKERBut when you're doing the manual pour,
1:06:40SPEAKERyou have a pour over kettle,
1:06:42SPEAKERwhich is like a long gooseneck kettle,
1:06:43SPEAKERwhich gives you fine control over the amount of water
1:06:45SPEAKERthat goes in at any given moment.
1:06:48SPEAKERAnd you can get those that are either manually put
1:06:51SPEAKERon the stove to heat the water up,
1:06:52SPEAKERthat usually have a thermometer stuck in the lid,
1:06:55SPEAKERor you can just get one that has a thermostat on the base
1:06:58SPEAKERand you put it down and you hit the button
1:07:00SPEAKERand it heats the water up to that temperature
1:07:01SPEAKERand holds it there until you make your coffee.
1:07:04SPEAKERAnd like I said, a good one,
1:07:05SPEAKERlike I use a Fellow Stag these days,
1:07:08SPEAKERwhich is, I had a Bonavita for years.
1:07:12SPEAKERWe reviewed it on Tested back in the day.
1:07:14SPEAKEREventually, eight years in,
1:07:16SPEAKERit started getting a little rusty around the lid
1:07:17SPEAKERand it was clearly time to replace.
1:07:20SPEAKERBut the Stag I've had for three or four years now,
1:07:23SPEAKERI think it's been fabulous.
1:07:26SPEAKERThe thing that you get there is control over temperature
1:07:30SPEAKERand the pour rate.
1:07:31SPEAKERAnd by virtue of the coarseness of the grind,
1:07:34SPEAKERyou get the linger time of the water in the basket, right?
1:07:39SPEAKERThat's the key thing.
1:07:41SPEAKERSo you want to grind your coffee
1:07:45SPEAKERso that the brew time is about four minutes and a half,
1:07:47SPEAKERfive minutes for a single cup.
1:07:49SPEAKERAnd that is one big pour of like 75 or 100 grams of water
1:07:55SPEAKERto bloom the coffee, which is where you kind of,
1:07:57SPEAKERall the gas, all the carbon dioxide
1:07:59SPEAKERand all the gases that are trapped inside the grounds
1:08:02SPEAKERkind of bubble up and you get a nice bubbling.
1:08:04SPEAKERYou get a kind of foam on top of the coffee bed.
1:08:08SPEAKER- Interesting.
1:08:09SPEAKERI didn't realize what was going on in that process.
1:08:10SPEAKERThe Bonavita drip that we have,
1:08:13SPEAKERI guess it's probably documented in the manual.
1:08:15SPEAKERI don't know where I got it,
1:08:15SPEAKERbut it has kind of a secret mode
1:08:17SPEAKERbecause all it has is a power switch.
1:08:19SPEAKERLike there's no timer, there's no nothing.
1:08:21SPEAKERIt's literally just a switch.
1:08:22SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:08:23SPEAKER- If you hold the switch down for like five seconds,
1:08:26SPEAKERit'll like flash three times.
1:08:28SPEAKERAnd then you've put it into the like pre-wet mode.
1:08:31SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:08:32SPEAKER- Where it kind of does sort of what you're talking about,
1:08:33SPEAKERwhere it'll like,
1:08:35SPEAKERand you can see the light blinking while it's doing it.
1:08:36SPEAKERLike it'll sort of pre-wet the grounds
1:08:38SPEAKERand let them sit for a minute or two,
1:08:40SPEAKERlike you're talking about before it kind of goes,
1:08:42SPEAKERit was like full hog.
1:08:44SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's the difference.
1:08:46SPEAKERThat's one of the difference between
1:08:47SPEAKERthese cheap drip machines and an expensive drip machine
1:08:49SPEAKERis you want to give it a minute to out gas that stuff
1:08:51SPEAKERand to settle back down.
1:08:53SPEAKEROtherwise you'll end up with channels through the bed
1:08:56SPEAKERthat result in under extracted coffee basically.
1:08:58SPEAKER- Interesting, okay.
1:08:59SPEAKERI've seen that in the basket or whatever,
1:09:01SPEAKERwhen you pull it out of like a cheaper drip thing
1:09:03SPEAKERwhere the coffee looks like a bomb,
1:09:05SPEAKERlike there's a bomb crater in it or something,
1:09:06SPEAKERyou know, like it's a weird pattern.
1:09:08SPEAKER- Yeah, and the bomb crater,
1:09:10SPEAKERthe hole in the middle is not always a bad thing.
1:09:12SPEAKERLike on a lot of pour over techniques, you want to do that.
1:09:14SPEAKERIf you want to get into pour over,
1:09:17SPEAKERJames Hoffman's channel on YouTube is really good.
1:09:18SPEAKERThere's a bunch of good,
1:09:20SPEAKERI think almost every coffee shop in the country
1:09:23SPEAKERhas done a guide on how to do a pour over
1:09:25SPEAKERif they sell pour over
1:09:26SPEAKER'cause everybody sells pour over drippers in their shops.
1:09:29SPEAKERThe nice thing about the pour over
1:09:31SPEAKERis that once you buy a grinder and a kettle,
1:09:34SPEAKERyou can experiment with a lot of different
1:09:36SPEAKERpour over techniques relatively inexpensively
1:09:37SPEAKER'cause the drippers are usually like 20 bucks,
1:09:40SPEAKER30 bucks at the outside.
1:09:43SPEAKERSo, you know, they're expensive for experimentation
1:09:47SPEAKERuntil you think about how much money you spent on Starbucks
1:09:49SPEAKERbefore you started making your coffee at home.
1:09:55SPEAKERYou typically use the scale to monitor pours
1:09:57SPEAKERand the amount of coffee that goes in.
1:09:59SPEAKERSo you weigh your coffee before you put it in the grinder,
1:10:02SPEAKERyou grind just the amount that you need,
1:10:04SPEAKERand then you can put the whole brewing mechanism
1:10:06SPEAKERon top of the scale, tear it,
1:10:07SPEAKERand you can measure how much water
1:10:09SPEAKERyou're putting in that way.
1:10:10SPEAKERSo one gram of water is one milliliter of water.
1:10:12SPEAKEROne gram is equal to one milliliter for water
1:10:15SPEAKERand it gives you a nice way to know
1:10:16SPEAKERthat you've hit your 500 milliliter target
1:10:19SPEAKERor whatever for your brew.
1:10:25SPEAKERWhen the water is in the bed,
1:10:27SPEAKERnot just when it's hit your container,
1:10:30SPEAKERwhatever container it's going into.
1:10:34SPEAKERAnd you can get different kinds of filters.
1:10:35SPEAKERThere's brown, there's bleached, unbleached filters.
1:10:39SPEAKERThe reason I do the Kalita
1:10:40SPEAKERis that their basket filters are spectacular.
1:10:44SPEAKERYou also want to usually pre-wet your filter
1:10:46SPEAKERbefore you put coffee in.
1:10:48SPEAKERSo that gets kind of the papery taste out of the filter
1:10:51SPEAKERif there's any dust or whatever
1:10:53SPEAKERfrom the manufacturing process
1:10:54SPEAKERand then discard the water that runs through there.
1:10:56SPEAKER- You can also use metal filters for this, right?
1:10:59SPEAKER- You can also use metal filters as the cone.
1:11:04SPEAKER- Yes, I have a cone.
1:11:05SPEAKER- Yeah, but we have cones too.
1:11:07SPEAKERThey work better in a Chemex,
1:11:08SPEAKERwhich is a little bit different brewer,
1:11:11SPEAKERor they have their own thing as well.
1:11:13SPEAKERThe cone is trickier to use.
1:11:16SPEAKERSo the paper filter manual pour over,
1:11:18SPEAKERyou get a fairly clear,
1:11:20SPEAKERlike it's middle of the road on the clear side,
1:11:23SPEAKERpretty far on the clear side.
1:11:25SPEAKERIf you use a metal filter in the same brewer,
1:11:28SPEAKERyou're going to get a much bigger body coffee
1:11:30SPEAKERand a little bit less clarity
1:11:31SPEAKER'cause more fat and more particulate comes through.
1:11:36SPEAKERWhereas with the pour over,
1:11:37SPEAKERyou're doing kind of a pattern around the brew
1:11:40SPEAKERto distribute the water evenly.
1:11:42SPEAKERWith the cone, you want to pour it
1:11:43SPEAKERpretty much straight down the middle
1:11:44SPEAKERand that will create a big crater
1:11:45SPEAKERin the middle of your brew head.
1:11:50SPEAKEROkay, next up, French press.
1:11:53SPEAKERThis is a really easy one.
1:11:54SPEAKERYou grind your coffee real coarse.
1:11:56SPEAKERYou dump it in.
1:11:58SPEAKERYou soak it for about four minutes in hot water
1:12:02SPEAKERand then you filter the grounds out
1:12:04SPEAKERwith a metal mesh filter and some springs
1:12:07SPEAKERand you pour that in.
1:12:08SPEAKERThere's going to be a bunch of crud in the bottom.
1:12:10SPEAKERDon't drink the whole cup.
1:12:11SPEAKERLeave the stuff in the bottom
1:12:12SPEAKER'cause it'll mess you up.
1:12:15SPEAKERBut it's the highest body you can do
1:12:18SPEAKERshort of Turkish really easily.
1:12:21SPEAKER- I started to ask in what way it would mess you up,
1:12:23SPEAKERbut perhaps better left to right.
1:12:24SPEAKER- Most people will have to go to the bathroom.
1:12:26SPEAKERSome people are unaffected.
1:12:28SPEAKER- I see.
1:12:29SPEAKER- It's a number two situation, Brad.
1:12:30SPEAKER- Well, we'll get there,
1:12:31SPEAKERbut French press is what I've been using
1:12:33SPEAKERto attempt cold brew.
1:12:34SPEAKERAnd even with both filtration steps,
1:12:38SPEAKERthere's definitely still some crud.
1:12:40SPEAKER- Yeah, the cold brew you're storing in a bigger container.
1:12:43SPEAKERWell, we'll talk about cold brew, Matt.
1:12:45SPEAKERIt's basically when you pour a French press,
1:12:48SPEAKERwhen you're pouring the coffee from the press
1:12:50SPEAKERinto your coffee cup, you want to pour carefully.
1:12:52SPEAKERYou want to pour slow and steady and keep,
1:12:55SPEAKERand it's like playing chicken with your intestines.
1:12:58SPEAKERYou gotta decide when to stop,
1:13:01SPEAKERwhen you've had enough getting as much coffee as you want
1:13:04SPEAKERwithout any of the stuff that's gonna cause you problems.
1:13:07SPEAKER- I'm not making that title of this episode, I swear.
1:13:09SPEAKER- That's absolutely not the title of this episode.
1:13:13SPEAKERThere's a bunch of hybrids that kind of shoot the gap
1:13:15SPEAKERbetween pour overs and French presses.
1:13:19SPEAKERThe AeroPress inverted method uses a paper filter
1:13:22SPEAKERand an immersion combined with a paper filter.
1:13:24SPEAKERSo you get a really, really, really nice mix
1:13:28SPEAKERof clarity and body that's right down the middle.
1:13:31SPEAKERThere's a reason for years,
1:13:34SPEAKERso the AeroPress is a tube with a plunger on one end
1:13:36SPEAKERand a filter on the other end.
1:13:38SPEAKERAnd the way that they tell you to make coffee in it
1:13:40SPEAKERis to put the filter on the bottom
1:13:42SPEAKERand then put coffee in the bottom
1:13:43SPEAKERand then pour water in there and push it through,
1:13:45SPEAKERand they call it espresso, which it is not.
1:13:47SPEAKERBut if you turn it upside down and set it on the plunger
1:13:51SPEAKERand fill the coffee in there,
1:13:53SPEAKERlet it sit for four minutes,
1:13:53SPEAKERand then force it out through the paper filter,
1:13:56SPEAKERyou kind of get the best of both worlds.
1:13:58SPEAKERNow, the problem is,
1:13:59SPEAKERbecause you have to be able to push it through the filter,
1:14:01SPEAKERthe AeroPress makes a relatively
1:14:03SPEAKERsmall amount of coffee at a time.
1:14:04SPEAKERSo it's definitely a one cup, not a two cup method.
1:14:08SPEAKERBut in terms of idiot-proof, fast, and good,
1:14:15SPEAKERAeroPress is kind of gold standard as far as I'm concerned.
1:14:20SPEAKERThere's a thing called the Clever Dripper,
1:14:21SPEAKERwhich is shaped like a Hario V60 conical pour over,
1:14:26SPEAKERbut it has a stopper mechanism.
1:14:27SPEAKERIt's bigger than a Hario.
1:14:29SPEAKERIt has a stopper at the bottom,
1:14:30SPEAKERand you basically fill it with coffee,
1:14:32SPEAKERyou put the coffee in, pour the water,
1:14:34SPEAKERand let it sit in the conical filter for four minutes.
1:14:36SPEAKERAnd then you put it on top of your decanting thing,
1:14:38SPEAKERwhether it's a mug or whatever,
1:14:40SPEAKERand that triggers a release on the bottom,
1:14:41SPEAKERthen the coffee runs out.
1:14:42SPEAKERSo you get like, again, it's an immersion
1:14:44SPEAKERplus a paper filter, which is good.
1:14:46SPEAKERThere's French presses by a company called Espro
1:14:50SPEAKERthat are hyper, there's multiple layers of screen in them,
1:14:54SPEAKERincluding some really, really fine industrial
1:14:56SPEAKERscientific mesh screens on the lowest scale
1:14:59SPEAKERthat filter out almost all of the fines.
1:15:01SPEAKERSo you can do a French press that's a little bit
1:15:04SPEAKERmore filtered than a traditional one,
1:15:06SPEAKERstill has a lot of the body.
1:15:08SPEAKER- Oh, that sounds nice.
1:15:09SPEAKEROur French press is a Bodum, I believe.
1:15:11SPEAKER- That's, everybody's French press is a Bodum.
1:15:13SPEAKER- Oh, okay, okay.
1:15:16SPEAKER- They're an enormous, they have the French press market
1:15:20SPEAKERin the US, Espro people are based in Canada.
1:15:24SPEAKERI highly recommend them if you like a French press,
1:15:26SPEAKERbut don't like sediment.
1:15:27SPEAKERThey're a little bit expensive.
1:15:29SPEAKERThey're a little bit of a pain in the ass to clean,
1:15:31SPEAKERbut the coffee is really good.
1:15:32SPEAKERIt's what I, like when I have people over
1:15:34SPEAKERand I need to make a big batch of coffee,
1:15:36SPEAKERI either do that or a Chemex.
1:15:40SPEAKERDepends on whether it's for breakfast or dinner, honestly,
1:15:41SPEAKER'cause dinner people tend to put cream and sugar in
1:15:43SPEAKERand breakfast they want, a lot of people drink black.
1:15:46SPEAKERI don't know how people handle dinner, coffee.
1:15:49SPEAKERI mean, caffeine is a whole topic
1:15:50SPEAKERthat we may not even get into here.
1:15:51SPEAKERMaybe we should talk about caffeine in its own episode.
1:15:54SPEAKER- Yeah, caffeine, we should have,
1:15:55SPEAKERI would love to have Phil on to talk about caffeine,
1:15:58SPEAKERPhil Broughton at some point, talk about caffeine.
1:16:00SPEAKER- Yes, he would know.
1:16:01SPEAKER- He's a mad scientist.
1:16:05SPEAKERThere's also these new things called bypass brewers.
1:16:07SPEAKERI don't actually, I haven't actually spent
1:16:08SPEAKERa lot of time with these.
1:16:09SPEAKERI need to actually get one of the next level 10s in.
1:16:13SPEAKERThis is a two brewer, this is,
1:16:15SPEAKERit almost seems like a follow on from the AeroPress
1:16:18SPEAKERin that it's a two brewer with a filter on the bottom
1:16:22SPEAKERand a cutoff that opens, but you can do,
1:16:26SPEAKERit's a combination, another combination
1:16:29SPEAKERlike filtering slash immersion brewer method.
1:16:32SPEAKERPeople seem to really like these, Fellow makes one,
1:16:35SPEAKERNext Level makes one, I think there's a couple others
1:16:37SPEAKERthat I didn't actually write down the names of.
1:16:41SPEAKERWe talked about the Chemex, which is kind of like a pour over
1:16:43SPEAKERbut it's much heavier filter.
1:16:45SPEAKERThey use, it's almost like paper that you would use
1:16:51SPEAKERin a lab, but you fold it over
1:16:53SPEAKERand make a triangle out of squares, basically.
1:16:57SPEAKERYou put it in this big conical shaped urn, I guess.
1:17:02SPEAKERI don't know, it's a vase looking thing
1:17:05SPEAKERand you can make a really nice clear cup of coffee with it
1:17:08SPEAKER'cause the filters are not particularly porous.
1:17:11SPEAKERAnd you can also do larger batches.
1:17:12SPEAKERThey come up to like a liter size.
1:17:14SPEAKERYou can do, if you do,
1:17:15SPEAKERif you need to do six cups of coffee a day,
1:17:17SPEAKERyou can do that with a Chemex pretty easily.
1:17:19SPEAKER- Chemex has always been the weirdest name for this
1:17:21SPEAKERbecause the output of something called a Chemex
1:17:24SPEAKERseems like the last thing you would want to drink,
1:17:26SPEAKERbut anyway.
1:17:27SPEAKER- I love, I love, love, love, love my Chemex.
1:17:31SPEAKERThe, I feel like this is another one of those ones
1:17:35SPEAKERthat came out of somebody who had access
1:17:36SPEAKERto laboratory glassware, which is why it's called a Chemex,
1:17:38SPEAKERbut I don't know for sure.
1:17:40SPEAKER- Fair.
1:17:41SPEAKERThere's a bunch of other hot brew methods I'm gonna hit.
1:17:43SPEAKERSiphon is like a real high showmanship method
1:17:47SPEAKERwhere you put water, you put two giant bowls
1:17:51SPEAKERthat are made of heat safe glass
1:17:54SPEAKERand are connected with a straw
1:17:55SPEAKERand an airtight conceal between them.
1:17:58SPEAKERAnd then there's a filter between the top one
1:18:00SPEAKERand the bottom one and a straw
1:18:02SPEAKERthat goes to the bottom of the bottom container.
1:18:04SPEAKERSo when you boil water in the bottom container,
1:18:07SPEAKERthe steam pushes the water down out of the bottom container,
1:18:11SPEAKERup the straw into the top where the grounds are.
1:18:15SPEAKERYou leave the water in the bottom boiling
1:18:16SPEAKERand simmering long enough for the top to brew,
1:18:19SPEAKERit's usually like two minutes, and then you cut the heat.
1:18:22SPEAKERAnd as the, as the steam in the bottom cools off,
1:18:24SPEAKERit creates a vacuum in the bottom and sucks the coffee
1:18:27SPEAKERback down from the top through that,
1:18:29SPEAKERthrough that filter and through the grounds.
1:18:31SPEAKER- Interesting.
1:18:32SPEAKER- And it is, it is very, very cool
1:18:35SPEAKERand an enormous pain in the ass to clean up
1:18:38SPEAKERand all of the, like, it's something you do for special
1:18:41SPEAKERoccasions 'cause it involves a lot of really hot glassware
1:18:44SPEAKERand pressure and steam and glass on the stove top
1:18:47SPEAKERor a special burner and all sorts of other crazy stuff.
1:18:50SPEAKERBut, but the coffee is really, really, really,
1:18:54SPEAKERlike it is, it is a, it's, it's delicious.
1:18:59SPEAKERIt also comes out insanely hot.
1:19:01SPEAKERSo be careful of the first time you have siphon coffee,
1:19:02SPEAKERyou want to give it a moment probably.
1:19:06SPEAKERAnd then we talked about Turkish and a bunch of other stuff.
1:19:07SPEAKER- We should talk about cold brew.
1:19:09SPEAKER- Yes, that's kind of the whole reason that I wanted to do
1:19:11SPEAKERthis episode is I finally started experimenting with it.
1:19:15SPEAKER- Yeah, so cold brew, there's a huge cold brew market
1:19:17SPEAKERin the US now, I don't know if you've realized this,
1:19:19SPEAKERbut like the cold brew section in your grocery store
1:19:21SPEAKERhas exploded in the last couple of years.
1:19:23SPEAKER- Oh, you mean like you can just buy the raw concentrate
1:19:27SPEAKERat the store now? - You can buy just cold brew
1:19:29SPEAKERconcentrate, you can buy it unconcentrated as well.
1:19:32SPEAKERAnd you can buy it mixed with milk.
1:19:35SPEAKERYou can buy it mixed with sweet milk.
1:19:36SPEAKERYou could buy it, like you can buy Vietnamese cold brew,
1:19:39SPEAKERyou can buy everything.
1:19:42SPEAKERIt's really easy to make cold brew, generally speaking.
1:19:45SPEAKERWhat you need is a big container
1:19:47SPEAKERand something to strain out coffee grounds
1:19:49SPEAKERand then some coarsely ground coffee and time.
1:19:52SPEAKER- Yeah, like I'm kind of shocked.
1:19:54SPEAKERI put it off for weeks.
1:19:55SPEAKERI kept thinking I wanted to do it.
1:19:56SPEAKERAnd I was like, oh, there's probably so much to learn.
1:19:58SPEAKERI just, you know, and I finally got around to it.
1:20:00SPEAKERI was like, oh my God, like you grind the coffee,
1:20:04SPEAKERyou dump it in a thing full of water.
1:20:06SPEAKERYou let it sit.
1:20:07SPEAKER- For a day, basically like 12 hours to 24 hours.
1:20:10SPEAKER- That's probably, well,
1:20:11SPEAKERthere are a couple of hard things about it.
1:20:12SPEAKERLike getting the ratios right and figuring those out
1:20:15SPEAKERis actually the hardest part.
1:20:16SPEAKERBut the other hard part is, yes, there was a long lead time
1:20:20SPEAKERbefore you find out how you did.
1:20:21SPEAKER- So the ratios, so generally speaking,
1:20:24SPEAKERthe ratios are pretty standard across industry wide.
1:20:29SPEAKERIf you, the place, so the Hoffman's,
1:20:33SPEAKERJames Hoffman wrote a book years ago
1:20:35SPEAKERthat has all this stuff in it.
1:20:35SPEAKERIt's kind of hard to find his blog posts about it.
1:20:39SPEAKERRitual Coffee in San Francisco at ritualcoffee.com
1:20:42SPEAKERhas a really good section of brewers guides
1:20:44SPEAKERfor pretty much every type of brewer that they've ever sold.
1:20:48SPEAKERAnd you can use that as a kickoff point
1:20:50SPEAKERfor whatever you're trying to make.
1:20:51SPEAKERSo they recommend a one to 10 ratio
1:20:56SPEAKERof grounds to water for cold brew.
1:20:58SPEAKERI usually do a little bit lower than that
1:21:00SPEAKERjust because the brewer I use doesn't,
1:21:02SPEAKERlike the filter doesn't quite reach the water
1:21:05SPEAKERat the ratio that they want for the amount of coffee
1:21:07SPEAKERthat the filter will hold and have had good results.
1:21:10SPEAKERCold brew is also tricky because often you dilute it.
1:21:13SPEAKERSo you often, you're brewing a concentrate
1:21:14SPEAKERand then you're adding hot water to it
1:21:16SPEAKERto bring it up to the strength that you want.
1:21:19SPEAKERThe other problem with cold brew
1:21:20SPEAKERis because it is typically low acid
1:21:23SPEAKERand really pleasant to drink.
1:21:25SPEAKERYou can drink coffee that is way more concentrated
1:21:28SPEAKERthan you would ever drink hot.
1:21:30SPEAKERThat is the experience that I had this week.
1:21:34SPEAKERPretty much the first,
1:21:34SPEAKERI think it was literally the first batch I made.
1:21:38SPEAKERI like coffee hot or warm,
1:21:40SPEAKERlike on the almost hot side of warm,
1:21:43SPEAKERwhich like you said necessitates
1:21:44SPEAKERif you're getting it out of the fridge,
1:21:45SPEAKERyou want to add boiling water to it
1:21:47SPEAKERto try to get it up to that level.
1:21:49SPEAKERSo I've been trying to make it as concentrated as I can.
1:21:52SPEAKER- Yeah, like you should do a quarter to three quarters
1:21:54SPEAKERprobably to get the,
1:21:55SPEAKER'cause you want like 160, 170 degrees to drink.
1:21:59SPEAKERYou don't want it much hotter than that
1:22:00SPEAKER'cause it'll burn you
1:22:02SPEAKERand colder than it starts tasting bad.
1:22:03SPEAKER- So my experience was A,
1:22:05SPEAKERyou're messing around with the ratio.
1:22:07SPEAKERFirst of all, you've messed around
1:22:08SPEAKERwith the ratio of grounds to water to begin with to brew it.
1:22:11SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:22:11SPEAKER- And when you actually drink it,
1:22:12SPEAKERyou're adding more water again.
1:22:13SPEAKERSo there's yet another variable to get right or wrong there.
1:22:17SPEAKERAnd you know, I was adding more or less water
1:22:19SPEAKERfor temperature reasons and all this stuff.
1:22:20SPEAKERThe other thing is it's delicious.
1:22:23SPEAKERIt's really good.
1:22:24SPEAKERI'm shocked.
1:22:25SPEAKERLike the whole reason I'm making cold brew is 'cause,
1:22:28SPEAKERyou know, acid reflux, trying to cut down
1:22:30SPEAKERon the amount of acid I'm consuming.
1:22:32SPEAKERI drink a lot of coffee, probably too much anyway.
1:22:35SPEAKERI think I drank like five cups of coffee that day.
1:22:38SPEAKER- So, okay.
1:22:40SPEAKER- And like got up to the edge
1:22:42SPEAKERof being in a bad place caffeine wise.
1:22:44SPEAKER- So.
1:22:45SPEAKER- 'Cause it's so smooth.
1:22:46SPEAKERIt's so not acidic.
1:22:47SPEAKERIt's got, it had like, at least the way I did it,
1:22:50SPEAKERI came out with a lot of body.
1:22:51SPEAKERIt was very thick, very velvety.
1:22:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:22:54SPEAKER- Like almost a little chocolatey.
1:22:55SPEAKER- If it is chocolatey and velvety,
1:22:57SPEAKERyou need to dilute it a lot more than you are.
1:22:59SPEAKER- Man, but it was so good.
1:23:01SPEAKER- So this is the challenge.
1:23:05SPEAKERI do, like I said, 100 grams of coffee for about,
1:23:10SPEAKER110 grams of coffee for about 1.1 liters of water.
1:23:13SPEAKERAnd I usually mix that about two thirds,
1:23:18SPEAKERone third with a milk.
1:23:21SPEAKERAnd I drink it cold.
1:23:22SPEAKERI drink it as an iced coffee.
1:23:24SPEAKERAnd I drink one of those a day.
1:23:27SPEAKER- Well, fine.
1:23:28SPEAKER- That is a one and done for me, Brad.
1:23:30SPEAKERI don't need to touch caffeine
1:23:31SPEAKERfor the rest of the day, generally.
1:23:35SPEAKERYou can make a cold brew as easily
1:23:37SPEAKERas taking like a big Mason jar and some cheese cloth
1:23:40SPEAKERor straining it through a Chemex filter
1:23:42SPEAKERor whatever you want.
1:23:45SPEAKERIt's very straightforward.
1:23:46SPEAKERYou do want to leave this,
1:23:47SPEAKEReven the fancy Japanese brewer that I have,
1:23:51SPEAKERyou have a little bit of sediment in the bottom always.
1:23:54SPEAKERAnd that's with a good grinder in the whole nine yards.
1:23:57SPEAKERYou can do, like there are cafes that do ice drip cold brew,
1:24:03SPEAKERwhich is where you put a bunch of,
1:24:04SPEAKERyou put a liter of ice,
1:24:06SPEAKERa kilogram of ice in the top of the thing
1:24:09SPEAKERand let it melt over 24 hours and drip through.
1:24:13SPEAKEROur friend, Phil Broughton,
1:24:16SPEAKERAKA the proprietor of Funranium Labs,
1:24:21SPEAKERmakes cold brew using his version of a Viennese method
1:24:26SPEAKERthat makes highly, highly concentrated cold brew
1:24:31SPEAKERthat is delicious.
1:24:32SPEAKERYou should probably try some of that too.
1:24:34SPEAKER- Yes, tested, tested fans will remember
1:24:36SPEAKERthat's black blood of the earth, correct?
1:24:38SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, Phil makes black blood of the earth.
1:24:40SPEAKERSorry, I should have said that.
1:24:41SPEAKERHe makes batches using time-honored traditions
1:24:47SPEAKERthat developed while he was an undergrad
1:24:49SPEAKERand maybe he had a problem,
1:24:52SPEAKERbut also it's very low acid, very easy to drink.
1:24:54SPEAKERThe same benefits that Brad was talking about.
1:24:58SPEAKERIt's not commercially,
1:24:59SPEAKERlike he usually dropships to regions
1:25:02SPEAKERand then has a distributor there.
1:25:04SPEAKERSo he's always looking for mules in new areas,
1:25:07SPEAKERas I understand it.
1:25:08SPEAKER- Interesting.
1:25:09SPEAKERHave you ever consumed it undiluted?
1:25:13SPEAKER- When Phil sent us, was kind enough.
1:25:16SPEAKERSo I think I met Phil through Ryan,
1:25:18SPEAKERactually through Ryan Davis.
1:25:21SPEAKERAnd Phil sent us some samplers and a liter or two
1:25:26SPEAKERfor our, he brought it when he came over
1:25:30SPEAKERto be on an Octobercast one year,
1:25:32SPEAKERwhich was a 24 hour interview chat stream
1:25:34SPEAKERthat we did, that Gary, Norm and I did back in the day.
1:25:37SPEAKERAnd we saw through time, we were drinking,
1:25:42SPEAKERhe was sending like, I don't know, like a hundred mil vials
1:25:45SPEAKERand we would just drink those.
1:25:47SPEAKERAnd it was too much caffeine.
1:25:49SPEAKERAnd we go ahead and tell you, don't do that.
1:25:50SPEAKERIt's a bad idea.
1:25:51SPEAKER- But it was a podcast for 24 hours.
1:25:52SPEAKERYou got, you need something.
1:25:54SPEAKER- It's not like you're playing games for 20.
1:25:55SPEAKERYou have to have to be engaging for 24 hours.
1:25:58SPEAKERWe had to do horrible things to each other.
1:25:59SPEAKERIt was awful.
1:26:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm excited about cold brew.
1:26:03SPEAKERIt's definitely gonna take some time to dial in a process,
1:26:06SPEAKERbut.
1:26:07SPEAKER- Yeah, so what I generally recommend
1:26:09SPEAKERis if you're interested in cold brew
1:26:10SPEAKERand you're not sure if you like it yet,
1:26:13SPEAKEReither try buying something from the store.
1:26:15SPEAKERThere's a Stumptown cold brew concentrate
1:26:20SPEAKERthat they sell in like,
1:26:22SPEAKERthey look like red stripe beer bottles.
1:26:24SPEAKERThey're little squat ones with a twist on top.
1:26:28SPEAKERThose are good.
1:26:29SPEAKERI think those are concentrated
1:26:30SPEAKERand it's good for three full cups.
1:26:32SPEAKERI can't remember.
1:26:34SPEAKERIt's a good place to start if you wanna try it.
1:26:37SPEAKERThey're generally available.
1:26:39SPEAKERYou can also, like I said, start with the mason jar approach.
1:26:46SPEAKERAnd then if you like that, it's generally easier
1:26:48SPEAKERif you buy something that's designed for it
1:26:50SPEAKER'cause it's easier to clean a reusable paper filter
1:26:56SPEAKERthan it is to clean cheese cloths
1:26:57SPEAKERor whatever you're using to do the straining.
1:27:02SPEAKERAnd also, honestly, the reason I got the Hario
1:27:05SPEAKERis it's the right size to fit in my fridge door
1:27:08SPEAKERwith the milk.
1:27:09SPEAKERSo it's like there's an easy place to put it in the fridge,
1:27:12SPEAKERwhich is really nice.
1:27:14SPEAKERAnd there are a million other ways to make coffee.
1:27:16SPEAKERLike I love hearing about people's crazy ways
1:27:18SPEAKERthey make coffee.
1:27:19SPEAKERThere's people that make cowboy coffee still,
1:27:21SPEAKERwhich is where you just dump the grounds in a pot
1:27:23SPEAKERon top of fire and heat 'em for a while.
1:27:25SPEAKERThen you pour it into a cup through a metal mesh filter.
1:27:30SPEAKERAnd I assume that there's bathroom consequences
1:27:33SPEAKERto that as well.
1:27:33SPEAKER- I was gonna say, then you just chew up the grounds
1:27:35SPEAKER'cause you're a cowboy.
1:27:36SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause you're a cowboy.
1:27:39SPEAKERBut yeah, the general ratio for most pour over
1:27:44SPEAKERand immersion brewing techniques is about one to 18.
1:27:48SPEAKERSee, here I do 22 grams of coffee for 320 grams of beans.
1:27:52SPEAKERSo you can do the math on that.
1:27:53SPEAKERI don't remember what, three to 320 grams of water.
1:27:57SPEAKERBut it's fun.
1:27:58SPEAKERAnd like I said, if you practice and take notes
1:28:01SPEAKERand pay attention, you can, like literally anybody
1:28:05SPEAKERcan make a world-class cup of coffee at their house
1:28:07SPEAKERfor not a ton of money.
1:28:09SPEAKERSo coffee.
1:28:10SPEAKER- It's good.
1:28:11SPEAKER- I like coffee, it turns out.
1:28:13SPEAKER- It's quite tasty.
1:28:16SPEAKERI don't know why I run this thought experiment
1:28:17SPEAKERas much as I do.
1:28:18SPEAKERWe've talked about both coffee and alcohol on this show.
1:28:21SPEAKERAnd I think often, like that's like the ultimate,
1:28:25SPEAKERwould you rather to me?
1:28:27SPEAKER- Oh, it's no doubt it's coffee for me.
1:28:29SPEAKER- Absolutely, that's always been the answer,
1:28:31SPEAKERbut especially like I drink pretty sparingly these days.
1:28:35SPEAKERBut I can't tell you, I bet it's been over a decade
1:28:38SPEAKERsince I went a day without coffee.
1:28:41SPEAKERI can't imagine it, I just cannot imagine it.
1:28:43SPEAKER- When I had the gallbladder stuff,
1:28:45SPEAKERI kind of cut back a little bit.
1:28:47SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.
1:28:48SPEAKER- But yeah, I drink, I mean, in the summer,
1:28:52SPEAKERI tend to make more ice, in the winter,
1:28:54SPEAKERI make more cold, hot coffee.
1:28:57SPEAKERBut yeah, I'm kind of excited about trying
1:29:00SPEAKERthese bypass brewers.
1:29:01SPEAKERI've not used them and they, I literally,
1:29:04SPEAKERwhen you said, "Hey, can we do a coffee episode?"
1:29:06SPEAKERI've been doing cold brew.
1:29:07SPEAKERI had just looked at a Coffee Geek review
1:29:11SPEAKERof these bypass brewers and I was like,
1:29:12SPEAKER"Oh man, I didn't know about these, these are cool.
1:29:14SPEAKERI gotta get into this."
1:29:16SPEAKERSo maybe we'll do a follow-up on a Patreon episode
1:29:18SPEAKERor something at some point.
1:29:19SPEAKER- It's a deep rabbit hole.
1:29:20SPEAKERThere's a lot of coffee tech out there.
1:29:22SPEAKER- It is indeed a deep rabbit hole.
1:29:25SPEAKER- Also a lot of coffee mugs.
1:29:26SPEAKERWe don't really need to get into it,
1:29:27SPEAKERbut I have a weakness for coffee mugs.
1:29:29SPEAKERWe probably have over 30 coffee mugs here for two people.
1:29:33SPEAKER- That's too many mugs, Brad.
1:29:34SPEAKERI thought I had a coffee mug problem.
1:29:36SPEAKER- Yeah, some of them, some of them definitely can go.
1:29:38SPEAKERWe've just been putting off donating them, but.
1:29:42SPEAKERSo I, longtime listeners will know that I have talked
1:29:47SPEAKERabout the Zojirushi thermal mugs for years.
1:29:51SPEAKERDave Snyder originally introduced them to me years ago,
1:29:54SPEAKERbut it's a Japanese brand that makes,
1:29:56SPEAKERI think they make rubber gaskets,
1:29:58SPEAKERbut they make rice cookers in a bunch.
1:30:00SPEAKERThey started out making rubber gaskets
1:30:01SPEAKERand then bought all the other companies
1:30:03SPEAKERthat use those rubber gaskets.
1:30:05SPEAKERThe thermal mugs are great.
1:30:07SPEAKERThe knock against them is that you can't get your nose
1:30:10SPEAKERin close enough to the coffee to get a good smell out of it.
1:30:14SPEAKERSo I actually switched to a fellow thermal mug,
1:30:17SPEAKERwhich has a big open mouth.
1:30:19SPEAKERAnd for when you're in the car
1:30:21SPEAKERand don't want to have sloshing, you can jam a little,
1:30:23SPEAKERlike it's like, it's just a metal screen kind of thing
1:30:27SPEAKERin there that keeps the coffee from sloshing out.
1:30:30SPEAKERHighly, highly recommended.
1:30:31SPEAKERAnd it was really nice.
1:30:33SPEAKERAnd then everybody also always asks about Ember mugs,
1:30:36SPEAKERwhich are those mugs with the, they have a charger base
1:30:42SPEAKERand a little heating element, a small battery in them
1:30:44SPEAKERthat means you can run them away from the hot plate
1:30:47SPEAKERunlike your typical coffee hot plate.
1:30:49SPEAKERIt also is smart and doesn't overheat the coffee or whatever.
1:30:53SPEAKERI got one of those as a gift a few years ago.
1:30:55SPEAKERI use it occasionally too.
1:30:57SPEAKERI think it's neat.
1:30:58SPEAKERI don't, my official policy on that is that I don't think
1:31:01SPEAKERthe benefit of keeping your coffee warm
1:31:05SPEAKERwhen thermal mugs, insulated mugs exist
1:31:09SPEAKERoutweighs the environmental cost of having devices
1:31:11SPEAKERwith built-in batteries that are unnecessary.
1:31:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I can agree with that.
1:31:15SPEAKER- But I think they're neat.
1:31:17SPEAKERI also, I too like the Brown Princess Diner mugs
1:31:19SPEAKERthat you like.
1:31:20SPEAKERThose are my favorite traditional ceramics.
1:31:22SPEAKER- It's the weirdest situation
1:31:24SPEAKER'cause the only place you can get them from
1:31:26SPEAKERis restaurant supply.
1:31:27SPEAKERSo they're like a dollar each.
1:31:28SPEAKER- You have to buy 60 of them or something.
1:31:30SPEAKER- You have to buy like two cases.
1:31:32SPEAKERYou have to buy a case of them.
1:31:33SPEAKERThese mugs cost a dollar each, but you have to get
1:31:35SPEAKER36 minimum.
1:31:36SPEAKER- Have you gone to the restaurant,
1:31:37SPEAKERone of the restaurant supply places over?
1:31:39SPEAKER- Yes, I've, the one near me, the one, no, not that one,
1:31:43SPEAKERbut I have been to one near me and they do not have it.
1:31:46SPEAKER- Yeah, we have it in on the one over by Potrero Hill.
1:31:48SPEAKER- Interesting.
1:31:49SPEAKER- And maybe they can find you something.
1:31:51SPEAKER- That's okay, maybe I'll take you out with them
1:31:52SPEAKER'cause the other option is to sneak into your house
1:31:54SPEAKERand steal that Aperture Science mug, which-
1:31:56SPEAKER- I look, I always make sure it's there
1:31:58SPEAKERwhen you come over, Brad, when you leave.
1:31:59SPEAKER- I know, I know you do.
1:32:01SPEAKERI watched you put it in the dishwasher one time.
1:32:03SPEAKERAnd I was like, what are you doing?
1:32:04SPEAKERThe thing is irreplaceable.
1:32:05SPEAKER- Everything goes in the dishwasher.
1:32:08SPEAKER- One just went on eBay two months ago.
1:32:12SPEAKER- How much?
1:32:13SPEAKER- Very sad, like 50 bucks.
1:32:14SPEAKER- I'm sitting on a $50 mug.
1:32:16SPEAKERI let my kid drink hot chocolate out of that?
1:32:17SPEAKERHoly crap.
1:32:18SPEAKER- Yeah, it made me sad.
1:32:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I like those,
1:32:22SPEAKERI like those Brown Princess Diner mugs.
1:32:24SPEAKERI like, a friend of the show Fitz,
1:32:26SPEAKERlast time I saw him in Chicago had a, he's a potter.
1:32:31SPEAKERAnd he gave me an original Fitz mug,
1:32:34SPEAKERwhich I drink coffee out of
1:32:35SPEAKERmore than anything else these days, I think.
1:32:39SPEAKERSo, speaking of listeners and friends,
1:32:44SPEAKERwe've reached the time where we thank our patrons
1:32:46SPEAKERof the show, as always,
1:32:48SPEAKERBrad and Will Made a Tech Pod is a listener supported show.
1:32:51SPEAKERWe wouldn't be here if it weren't for you all.
1:32:52SPEAKERSo we appreciate you and thank you all, patrons.
1:32:55SPEAKERYou can find out how to support the show
1:32:56SPEAKERat patreon.com/techpod.
1:32:59SPEAKERThat's right, it's patreon.com/techpod.
1:33:03SPEAKER- This show is powered by coffee and our patrons.
1:33:06SPEAKER- Yeah, we wouldn't have coffee without the patrons,
1:33:08SPEAKERit turns out.
1:33:09SPEAKERFor five bucks a month,
1:33:10SPEAKERyou get access to the Fabulous Patron episode every month.
1:33:13SPEAKERYou also gain access to the Fabulous Tech Pod Discord,
1:33:16SPEAKERwhich is full of nerds just like you.
1:33:17SPEAKERI'm sure if you made it this far,
1:33:19SPEAKERyou're going to find your people there.
1:33:21SPEAKERWe talk about all sorts of cool stuff.
1:33:23SPEAKERAnd it's a lovely group of people.
1:33:29SPEAKERLike inclusive, kind, thoughtful, and supportive
1:33:34SPEAKERof hobbies full of information
1:33:36SPEAKERabout whatever it is you're doing.
1:33:38SPEAKERI love the time that I spend there.
1:33:41SPEAKERAnd if you, so we want to thank all of our patrons,
1:33:44SPEAKERbut especially our executive producer tier patrons,
1:33:48SPEAKERincluding Nick Johnston, Paddle Creek Games,
1:33:51SPEAKERMakers of Fractured Veil, Andrew Slosky, Jordan Lippett,
1:33:56SPEAKERBunny Fiend, Just Wedge 3.0, Joel Krauska,
1:34:00SPEAKERTwinkie and the Argonauts, David Allen, James Kamek,
1:34:03SPEAKERand Pantheon, Makers of the HS3 High Speed 3D Printer.
1:34:07SPEAKER- Whoa.
1:34:08SPEAKER- I think our low key, hey, we're not going to have ads.
1:34:11SPEAKERI think Paddle Creek Games, Makers of Fractured Veil
1:34:13SPEAKERmay have opened a door for something.
1:34:15SPEAKER- Paved away.
1:34:16SPEAKER- Thanks for listening, everybody.
1:34:17SPEAKERThanks for supporting the show.
1:34:18SPEAKERWe will see you all next week.
1:34:26SPEAKER[BLANK_AUDIO]