penningtron wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:18 am

twelvepoint wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 7:57 am I really like the Anodyne beans from Milwaukee which I was turned on to 3 years ago (seems like 10, doesn't it?) when visiting. Ordered from them a couple times since but usually I just get the Counter Culture Big Trouble at my local bakery.

I live right down the block from an Anodyne. Except for their really expensive beans I find them to be a little too charred for my liking.. but maybe that's on me. They do have a legit pizza oven if you're ever back in the area.

I recently got an OXO burr grinder after my Bodum finally crapped out. It works a little too well, I have to keep it on a coarse setting. From there I usually grind one of the light roast varieties from local Stone Creek (or occasionally one of the ethiopian blends from Valentine) and set the timer on our Zojirushi drip machine. I'll sacrifice a little freshness to wake up to it being ready. I take mine with a little full fat Oatly or occasionally do a butter coffee with MCT oil.

Anodyne beans are some of the best I've had. Pizza is amazing, highly recommended. Happy to see Stone Creek and Valentine mentioned, as both are very good. When I can't pick any of these up while visiting, I tend to mail order from Just Coffee Cooperative out of Madison, my second favorite roaster.

+1 Burr grinder. I have a Capresso Infinity and it's very well made. Drip coffee on the daily (also a simple Capresso MT600 machine). Occasionally will use a Bialetti on the gas cooktop.

We've honestly gotten the best results from an Aeropress, weighing the coffee, temping the water, the whole nine yards. BUT ain't nobody got time for all of that bullshit. And it only makes 2 small cups of coffee.

We've resorted to just using a Classic 6-Cup Chemex, Breville Smart Grinder, and an Mueller electric tea kettle. We have the grinder set to 4 with a coarseness set to the finer side of "percolator filter". We boil approx 750mL (eyeballin' it!) of filtered water. While it's boiling we get the filter wet in the Chemex and pour out the water. Approx 30 seconds after the kettle is boiling we slowly pour the water (without temping it) in sort of a circular manner until it is empty. Wait for it to fully pour through and voila! Coffee that is 96% as good as the nitpicky way with about 10% of the effort.

Basically, as an everyday occurrence, we just don't see the value of being super nitpicky with our process for the extra 4%. But I respect those that have the patience and want to absolute best. Having said that, the coffee we are making is damn good and we drink it black.

As someone else mentioned, Metropolis La Cordillera is our normal go-to. We also really like their Redline brewed as coffee. Spice Island is a decent roast as well. We live down the street and pick it up super fresh straight from the source though...

We've got a Cuisinart coffee maker and some sort of electric grinder.

As much I like chocolate milk, I prefer my coffee black.

In my limited experience, coffee flavored/"infused" beer is almost as much of a no-go as berry flavored beer. Hard pass on that.


One thing a number of Americans might not know is that when people from other countries visit here, they often complain about the bad coffee. Yes, you can get good, even great coffee here, if you know where to look, but you can also get blindsided with stuff that tastes like a sock marinated in dirt, mixed with a lukewarm to scalding water. Foreigners beware!


A while back we tried some of the higher-end coffee recommended on the old version of the forum. It was satisfying enough, but IMHO not quite worth the cost for such conservative amounts, and the hassle to get it here.

What's *more* important to smell/taste:

- Source of the beans? Like should I bother seeking out 100% Kona coffee?

- Roast of the beans? Does the same kind of roast make different beans all taste the same?

...and any other suggestions on roasters, etc. in the Chicago area are appreciated. I'd rather start sending my money their way than Starbucks.

jfv wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 1:44 pm What's *more* important to smell/taste:

- Source of the beans? Like should I bother seeking out 100% Kona coffee?

- Roast of the beans? Does the same kind of roast make different beans all taste the same?

...and any other suggestions on roasters, etc. in the Chicago area are appreciated. I'd rather start sending my money their way than Starbucks.

With lighter roasts, you’ll taste more difference between blends and regions.

Smart money goes toward a pourover device and a good grinder. Buy a sample pack of 3 12oz bags of different whole beans from freshroastedcoffee.com and watch a couple videos on how to grind the beans and use the pourover.

This man has incredible hair, and I believe he knows a few things about coffee too.

Where do you guys find the patience for all of this? Waiting for the kettle to boil so I can pour hot water over my Kenco decaff/semi-skimmed* combo pisses me off enough.

*Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry

sparky wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:07 pm This man has incredible hair, and I believe he knows a few things about coffee too.

Thanks! Will watch this evening.

jfv wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 1:44 pm What's *more* important to smell/taste:

- Source of the beans? Like should I bother seeking out 100% Kona coffee?

- Roast of the beans? Does the same kind of roast make different beans all taste the same?

...and any other suggestions on roasters, etc. in the Chicago area are appreciated. I'd rather start sending my money their way than Starbucks.

Words like Kona and Blue Mountain are misleading. You're just paying for the name, the quality can vary drastically from harvest to harvest. They will demand a certain price even if the coffee was total shit that year just because of the name recognition. It's like Coke and Pepsi if they were grown in the ground and subject to drought and blight and such. It's awesome when a roaster partners with a specific farm, but it's a total gamble if you want the best coffee year after year. That's why most specialty coffee places, the ones that really do their homework, don't have the same stuff all the time and change their single-origin offerings every couple months. Because there's a limited amount of every crop. And what's great one year might be totally different the next. It's better to look for a region you like rather than a super specific type or farm.

This leads into roasting. I've done my fair share. Roasting coffees darker is often used to cover up faults and/or to make a reliable product so that from a customer's point of view, their go-to X coffee still tastes the way they expect today, tomorrow and next year no matter what the harvest yielded. When dark roasted coffee was in vogue, it was easy. Now that it's not and people really want to know what the coffee tastes like, there is more an more and more attention paid to sampling and choosing the best available coffee and roasting them in a way that highlights their qualities rather than covering them up and making every coffee taste sort of burnt. That burnt flavor is how places offer the same product for decades even though it's made from different beans every season.

Also, there is a misconception that dark coffee has more caffeine. That is not the case. The darker it's roasted, the more caffeine it loses, so lighter coffees actually have more kick.

Pembs wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:38 pm Where do you guys find the patience for all of this?

Doing a pour over definitely seemed fussy and time consuming initially. Like a lot of things, though: once I started doing it every day, it turned out to be not much more time or effort than most other ways of making coffee, and the result tasted better enough that it felt worthwhile.

If I was making coffee for more than just myself each day, I would probably be doing something different, though.