Posts Tagged ‘espresso coffee maker’
If you’ve read this blog with any regularity, you know that Arabica beans are the gold standard of the coffee industry. But there are myriad other factors that affect the quality of the beans you put in your coffee maker, and many of them pertain to geography. The ideal is a tropical climate with rich soil at a high altitude, and even slight changes in precipitation, altitude or soil nutrients can vastly affect the final product.
Over the next few days, we will be highlighting some of the premier coffee growing locales around the globe. We’ll overview the different flavors associated with various regions and tell you what are the preferred blends. Tomorrow we’ll start off close to home with beans from North America and the Caribbean Islands.
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Morning Coffee
Spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on an espresso machine may seem extravagant to some, but coffee connoisseurs can taste the difference. The quality of the coffee and other products you use can’t be overlooked, which is why they came first in the series. But the brewing process itself is the key to coffee, and premium coffee machines get the job done better, pure and simple.
Options from top tier manufacturers, such as a Saeco espresso machine, obviously come with a surfeit of peripheral features, but it’s the high quality brewing that makes these machines worth the price. Particularly during the highly pressurized espresso brewing process, it’s important that none of the ground be forced through the system and there is a proper concentration of coffee, which a premium machine accomplishes. The automatic settings on these machines allow you to customize every aspect of your experience, eliminating the guessing game.
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Morning Coffee
Many coffees on the market today come with added flavors, which is not the way to go if your want the best tasting cup of coffee. For some reason, beans that are infused with flavors never seem to taste right and are always a bit artificial. The flavoring often serves as a means of masking the subpar quality of the beans.
If you want some extra flavor in your coffee, go the extra mile and use premium ingredients. Personally, I love the taste of fresh vanilla or real chocolate in my concoctions I brew up in my cappuccino makers. Adding real, fresh ingredients not only tastes better, it’s healthier for you too.
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Morning Coffee
Yesterday we highlighted the best beans to buy, but how you purchase them is also important. Always purchase whole beans—always. As soon as the beans are ground, they begin to lose there flavor. And who knows how long those grounds have been sitting on the store shelf?
Grinding your own coffee may seem like a hassle, but it’s really not that difficult and the results are palpable. When you grind your own coffee, you also have the opportunity to combine different varieties and roasts of beans to create a blend catered to your palate. Either you can grind all of your coffee on one day — it’s Sunday in my house— or you can keep a mini-grinder on the counter and prepare the beans right before brewing each cup in your espresso machine.
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Morning Coffee
Brewing coffee can often seem like a convoluted process, but it really is not that complicated, especially with the high-tech automatic espresso machines on the market today. Making delicious coffee is really just a matter of concentrating on a few choice variables and maximizing their quality. And, of course, it all starts with the beans.
If you care about the quality of your coffee—and you presumably do if you’re reading this blog—you’ll always want to go with , as opposed to Robustas. Robusta beans have a strong acidic flavor and are commonly used in pre-ground coffees as a filler. Arabicas boast a rich, smooth flavor and vary in taste depending on where they were harvested.
With three children between the ages of 3 and 8, it seems like I only have about 3-4 hours of free time each week. On Thursday afternoons the kids go to visit their grandparents across town, and every week I consider it a personal challenge to see how much I can get done in that time. This is usually my only opportunity to relax and unwind so instead of doing chores or running errands, I dedicate the afternoon to pampering myself.
As I mentioned, time is always of the essence. I begin my flipping on my automatic espresso machine and then drawing myself a nice bath and lighting some aromatherapy candles. Then I run back to the kitchen, fix myself a cup of coffee, locate my book and crossword puzzle and head back to the tub. After a good soak, I usually head into town to have lunch with some of my girlfriends. And, if I’m lucky, I may be able to squeeze in a quick nap before my in-laws sic my children on me again.
Some people are baffled when I tell them that I spent over a $1,000 on a coffee machine. They just don’t see the point in spending four figures on Solis espresso machines when you can get a functional drip machine at a department store for under $50. It may not seem like a premium coffee machine could possibly twenty times better than a drip machine—but it is.
My Solis espresso machine is so easy to use it practically brews the coffee itself. Plus it has an array of peripheral features to take my coffee concoctions to the next level. And when it comes down to it, you’re more likely to use your machine when it has all of the bells and whistles. Personally, my coffee machine is always out and ready for when I might need a pick me up throughout the day—and it’s great for entertaining.
Looking back on it now, the idea to combine hot milk and coffee seems apparent, but just 100 years ago this was a novel idea. The first cappuccino maker was actually an espresso machine, which was patented by Luigi Bezzera at the turn of the 20th century. Italy was the first country to serve the cappuccino, and it saw increasing popularity up until the 1940s.
In 1948, Gaggia introduced the modern, high-powered espresso machine that we know it today. This innovation made making cappuccinos easier and facilitated its proliferation around the globe. Particularly in Britain, where there had long been a tradition of drinking coffee with milk, the addition of heated milk and milk foam caught on quickly. Today cappuccinos are seen as a specialty beverage in many parts of the world, where they are usually enjoyed before noon.
Once you’ve achieve your preferred roast, your job’s not done yet. Like other foodstuffs, the beans will continue to cook once you remove them from the heat source, so it’s important to cool them down quickly. As soon as they are out of the heat, pour the beans into a colander, which will allow them to lose their heat more rapidly.
If you are roasting coffee indoors, there will probably some smoke from the beans; simply turn on the exhaust fan on the stove to dissipate it. Like all good things in life, quality roasted coffee takes time. The beans won’t reach their peak flavor until about 24 hours after the roasting process, so if you can, hold out on popping them in your Saeco espresso machines ‘til then. During this time, excess CO2 is released from the beans and the new chemical structure stabilizes
Now that we’ve covered the beans, it’s time to move on to the roasting process. If you don’t have a newfangled roasting machine to use in conjunction with your coffee makers, you can roast your beans in a simple convection oven. Simply lay the beans out on a baking sheet, preheat the oven to about 500 oF and roast for 15-20 minutes. There aren’t any steadfast rules when it comes to roasting coffee; as I said yesterday, the roast is largely a matter of personal preference. But you still need to know 
so you know when to stop. Here are some of the easiest indicators:
~Color: Once you create beans you like, burn that image into your mind and try to replicate it in subsequent roasts.
~Smell: As the beans become done, the smell will morph from green veggies to rich coffee.
~Sound: The beans will begin to snap and pop as the water is forced out as steam.
~Time: If you use the same roasting method each time, the duration of the roast will be your most reliable metric.