JerryMungo
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2008
- Messages
- 37,666
- Reaction score
- 6,354
.
Last edited:
South Africa’s biggest forum. Discuss, discover, and connect with thousands of members.
Here you go:So I thought I'd start a thread, now that I've got a semi-decent espresso machine, on decent Coffee.
I've had it just over a day and only used it for today and basically went through 250gm bag of coffee to dial the grinder and tamper process in and came to the conclusion that it doesn't matter how well your technique or the grind if the coffee isn't seriously fresh. It's incredible just how quickly coffee can go stale and how shop bought coffee is almost always going to be iffy at best.
So the question is, where do you get your coffee and does your fav brand have a roasting date on it?
I tried Woollies today not expecting fireworks, so I wasn't disappointed when the results were suboptimum... thin crema and it was nearly impossible to get the pressure to a reasonable point for extraction, even with a fine grind and hard tamper. I'm convinced it's down to shop bought beans. I'm going to try a local roastery next and see if I can get roasting dates on their stuff to confirm freshness...
Alternatively I'm looking at roasting myself.
Thoughts?

Probably a bag of Woollies beans that wrecked my machine as well. I like the Checkers foreign ground range more.I'd take chrisc's stories with a pinch of salt. If something happened, it happened to chrisc
#chisc fake news.
sies
Yeah sure...none of these so called coffee afficionados will be able to taste the difference ...sies![]()
Pretty much and expect to pay-up; same for a decent espresso machine. Of course a good grinder isn't something like thisTo get a good grind you need a good grinder. I've bought a cheap grinder and then a slightly less cheap one and both are useless but I don't really want to spend the kind of money for a good one so now I just go to the local coffee shop (Peacock) and get 250g of my choice and they grind it for me and get the perfect grind each time.

Oh wait...here we go....Pretty much and expect to pay-up; same for a decent espresso machine. Of course a good grinder isn't something like this
View attachment 643894
You don't want blades or pestle and mortar but a stepless conical burr grinder.
If you go for this please only ethically sourced. Some are force fed
/post reportedRicoffey on sale at Makro. R69 for a 750g tin.