Coffee: we drink it or we get angry.

I agree that 11 settings are restrictive. I am looking for a grinder where the settings are easily repeatable. With the Hario, you need to count clicks, and the Lido is a bit on the expensive side.
Another interesting grinder is the Handground, but it is still in development, so no real feedback yet.

 

If you can spare the budget, I highly recommend the Baratza Encore at its price point. You also get the convenience of electric, and it grinds better than any hand grinder I've tried below its price.

 

If I decide to go electric, i will buy the new Sette. I love the no nonsense aesthetic and functional design.

 

The Sette does look great, yeah. The nonstandard burr design is really cool and it's impressive how fast it grinds as a result. It's a bit loud, though, from what I've seen and heard.

 

It is an effective method for making good coffee. That is certain. Some coffee nerds prefer this method because you do almost everything yourself. You literally make the coffee your coffee.

 

I'm definitely a coffee nerd but I don't prefer press. I get much cleaner flavors with filter-based methods.

 

Even the humble dripper with paper filter and fine grind (a basic machine can be picked up for 20 Dollars) can make amazing coffees. The lungos can be exceptional.

 

i've been using a baratza grinder for french press and pour over, but i'll probably try this out as well. i generally don't use my espresso grinder for coarse grinds because it involves lots of adjusting and then you have to deal with retention, but the monolith grinders have basically 0 retention so maybe it'd work out well for both... though if i were going to use it that way, i'd probably go for the flat instead of conical burrs. like the folks that use EK grinders with large flat burrs for espresso and pour over.

 

another Lido user checking in. Lido 2 for my aeropress and clever coffee dripper. pourover too much effort

 

Pourover may take slightly longer but I find it No more effort than Aeropress and fewer pieces to clean up as well.

 

You can make more at a time with pourover also. I'm off for the day very early, and I can make enough for a small cup and my large thermal in one pouring session...

 

At a weird predicament, my coffee seems to just not be tasting as good as it used to. This was after a break of a month or so of not brewing any coffee, (or consuming any caffeine) and I don't know what's up. I forgot the method of brewing I had stored in my head, but I think I remembered it fairly well. Anyways, I have an aeropress and a 3-cup chemex, so if you guys have any recipes that'd be great! Right now the best I can make my coffee is using 25g coffee to 240g H2O in the Chemex, but that ratio seems a bit high. Thanks!

 

Maybe your grinder adjustment drifted!

 

@pandather for some good heuristics and general recipes for different brew methods, Verve makes some pretty sweet videos and posts them to their website.

 

maybe not a recipe, but after being an advocate for aeropress/chemex and using those two almost daily for years, i just bought the metal kalita wave and am loving it. i find it makes a much more consistent cup with a lot less fuss to the brew process. for ~25 bucks on amazon, seriously consider it. at the very least add it to your christmas list! i think it's the halfway point between the chemex and aeropress, a little more body than chemex, not as much as aero, more FLAVOR than both.

 

I prefer my Hario V60 to aeropress or chemex. Kalita is great too. I chose Hario for practical reasons - Kalita filters are a lot more expensive.

 

Maybe, I need to set it again, I haven't set it since I bought it! (Bunn G1)

I looked on there when I first got it, and looking at it now I only see a chemex recipe for the bigger brother, and the methods don't seem to be just ratios between the two.

I'll definitely look into it! More flavor is what I love, and the body sounds pretty good too.

I'll have to look into the V60 as well then, I've also heard good stuff about this.

 

now if handground would ever send the thing to me... 1.5 years later...

 

A 9.6:1 brew ratio is definitely too high to get a good extraction.

When experimenting with brew ratios and going to lower ratios like that, you'll get more quantity of flavor, since you're drinking more concentrated coffee. However, I personally prefer going for quality of flavor, which for me means dialing it back to standard brew ratios and shooting for a classic extraction and concentration. When drinking concentrated pour over coffee, one problem is that you're going to have pretty one-dimensional flavor and nuance will be lost. This could be solved by diluting after the brew, which is often what people do for Aeropress. However, the more serious issue with pour over coffee is underextraction. If you're pouring less water over the same amount of coffee, you're going to be pulling less from the coffee. Unless you're making your coffee a lot finer, it's going to be pretty much impossible to extract it enough. This leaves you with an off-flavored brew, which might be masked by its concentration, but is readily apparent if you dilute to standard concentration.

That was all rather long, but the short version is, I believe it's better to shoot for standard brew ratios, which will let you better taste what's going on in your brew and where it needs to improve, rather than mask it with a more concentrated drink.

Personally, I shoot for a brew ratio of 16:1-17:1. Then, I taste and adjust from there. Here are two links I've found very helpful in dialing in a brew:
https://baristahustle.com/coffee-extraction-and-how-to-taste-it/
https://baristahustle.com/8020-method/

 

Yikes. I bought an OE Lido E-T for travel and it's awesome. Maybe even a more consistent grind than my Vario with the Ditting stainless burr upgrade. Also much faster than a typical handginder.