Is That Really a Cappuccino?

Re:Is That Really a Cappuccino? by lisper on Thursday October 01, 2015 @01:54AM (#10309471)

I made a brief foray into coffee snobbery about three years ago. I quickly got lost in all the permutations of espresso machines, grinders, roasters, beans, etc. and so I decided I should get myself a baseline of what a "proper" espresso should taste like. Fortunately, at the place I worked at the time we had a (supposedly) top-of-the-line espresso machine and several resident coffee geeks, including one who was actually from Italy. I asked their advice and obtained a bag of what were supposedly the best beans in town, and brought them in to the office.

To make a long story short, several hours and I don't know how many batches of espresso later, none of us had managed to make even a single cup that was remotely close to being drinkable. So I got a $100 Keurig machine, and never looked back.

Still, when I'm in Italy, I can go to any coffee shop and get an espresso that is absolutely delicious. So the Italians definitely know something I don't.

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Re:Is That Really a Cappuccino? by Schwolop on Thursday October 01, 2015 @02:18AM (#10309524)

Grind, pressure, volume. Keep two of those constant and you can tune the third. It's really not as hard as coffee snobs pretend it is.

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Re:Is That Really a Cappuccino? by archinal on Thursday October 01, 2015 @02:26AM (#10309544)

I believe that water temperature is extremely important as well.

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Re:Is That Really a Cappuccino? by Schwolop on Thursday October 01, 2015 @02:57AM (#10309640)

Sure - but the OP said they had a top-of-the-line espresso machine, so I took that as a given. Similarly, fresh beans are vital, but the OP said he/she had just bought them.

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Re:Is That Really a Cappuccino? by lisper on Thursday October 01, 2015 @11:25AM (#10311783)

That's right. I went to the particular store and bought the particular ridiculously expensive beans recommended by the coffee geeks. We did the experiment the next day.

There are at least six degrees of freedom: grind, pressure, volume, water temp, beans, and roast. That's a lot of possible combinations. And my whole point was that despite making my best effort to control all six of them, the coffee still didn't come out good. Not just not good, but actually terrible. Undrinkable. No one could figure out what was going wrong.

What I do know is that I can get consistently good coffee out of my Keurig, and consistently awesomely great coffee in Italy, but nearly nowhere else in the world (and I've been to a lot of places). So it must be possible to control the process. The Italians can't just be getting lucky. But I have no idea what the magic formula is. Maybe it's the water. (Oh no! A seventh degree of freedom!)

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