vongain Senior Member Joined: 23 Aug 2007 Posts: 1 Location: Flossmoor Expertise: Professional
Posted Wed Apr 16, 2008, 10:24am Subject: Re: New to CoffeeGeek? Welcome, introduce yourself!
Hi,
I am new to coffeegeek and to the various parts of the coffee world. I have enjoyed coffee since my early twenties and I am just starting to apperciate espresso.
LAVO Senior Member Joined: 19 Apr 2008 Posts: 1 Location: Las Vegas Expertise: I like coffee
Posted Sat Apr 19, 2008, 2:28pm Subject: Re: New to coffeegeek? Welcome, introduce yourself!
Hello I am writing from Las Vegas and am in search of resturants or coffee bars in Los Angeles or Sanfrancisco that do unique coffee presentations. If anyone can help let me know
Eleni Senior Member Joined: 29 Apr 2008 Posts: 4 Location: Boston Expertise: Just starting
Posted Tue Apr 29, 2008, 11:33am Subject: Re: New to CoffeeGeek? Welcome, introduce yourself!
Hi! I'm a new member in the CoffeeGeek forum, although I've been reading a lot. I'm not sure this is the forum I want, but I can at least introduce myself. My husband and I are hoping to open up an espresso-based coffee shop north of Boston, MA, and I'm gathering all the information I can, since this is a new venture for me. I do think it is a good idea to have a separate forum to introduce yourself. I have questions about the coffee shop business and am wondering which forum addresses these issues. Anyway, nice to be part of this group. Lots of great information and support!
Ariel333 Senior Member Joined: 27 Jul 2007 Posts: 54 Location: Minnesota. Expertise: I like coffee
Posted Fri May 2, 2008, 12:05pm Subject: Re: New to CoffeeGeek? Welcome, introduce yourself!
Hi Everyone...thought I would introduce myself. I was pretty active here last summer..and thought I had kind of given up the espresso thing. But have been visiting Starbucks more and more lately and it's garage sale season here so I decided it's just a matter of time before I happen upon an espresso machine. Well it happened today. Apparently these people ran some kind of restaurant because there was this HUGE La Cimbali (I think...not sure I have that right)...the professional kind. Well I almost fainted when I saw it and then came to my senses...it was absolutely HUGE and there was no price (but I guarantee I couldn't have bought that one without taking out a second mortgage). Also, my kitchen real estate wouldn't have allowed it. A little more shopping though and there was a little krups pump driven machine and so I brought it home. They even let me see if it would heat up and it did and it spit out steam and so I bought it. :) Anyway, every part that would come off (it was really dirty) is soaking in my kitchen sink right now and I will be putting it together soon and running some citric acid through to clean the boiler out and yay!! :) There's some pics in the espresso machines topic if you're interested.
Anyway, hi again!! I'm back. :)
P.S. - I LOVE coffee. We tent camp, but usually end up at campgrounds with electricity and I go so far as to bring my Senseo along...people think I'm crazy...but I'm addicted to the caffeine and I feel miserable if I don't get it so who wants to be miserable from caffeine withdrawl when camping? :)
javanjazz Senior Member Joined: 13 Oct 2003 Posts: 134 Location: Edmonton (Alberta,Canada) Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: Moka Pot-close enuff for me! Grinder: Solis Maestro Classic Drip: manual pour over Roaster: Fresh Roast +8
Posted Sun May 4, 2008, 11:47pm Subject: Re: New to CoffeeGeek? Welcome, introduce yourself!
Hey welcome to the forums Eleni! I think you'll find it worth your while to stay around.
And good of you to introduce yourself Ariel(333)...yeah, I recall seeing that screenneme around a fair bit last summer. Good luck with that Krups, sounds like it's getting a good cleaning. You'll most likely want move up to a better machine eventually(but you've gotta start somewhere).
sarahpiccolo Senior Member Joined: 14 May 2008 Posts: 1 Location: sebastopol, CA Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: rancilio miss silvia Grinder: la pavoni zip base
Posted Wed May 14, 2008, 2:16pm Subject: Re: New to CoffeeGeek? Welcome, introduce yourself!
Hi there, I just joined today and hope to master my latest purchase : a rancilio silvia. I was given a brand spankin new grinder worth more than my machine and am a bit intimidated by it, I am not sure how to use it and hope to get advice. It is a la pavoni zip base model, I hope it is compatible with the machine that is to arrive in the mail Friday. I am a chef/mama in Northern CA. I lived in Italy a while back and miss the joe from there but have found lots of good local roasted beans and am psyched about creating great drinks at home. I would love any advice I can get re: this grinder. I attached the plastic cone/bean holder on top and I am not sure from 0-10 what is the best grind I need. I tried twice and the ground is a bit rough. thanks,sarah
Photocaffinator Senior Member Joined: 29 Feb 2008 Posts: 1 Location: Seattle, WA Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: Expobar Office Pulsar Grinder: Rancilio
Posted Fri May 16, 2008, 1:24pm Subject: Re: New to CoffeeGeek? Welcome, introduce yourself!
Hello everyone -
I guess I'm just another Seattle coffee fanatic. I have an ~5 year old Expobar Pulsar espresso machine with a Ranchillio Rocky grinder. I buy most of my bean's from a custom, one pound at a time, roaster in western Washington, and enjoy most anything having to do with coffee.
I am mostly happy with my Expobar machine, though it does take a little "learning" to get the best espresso from. It did have one feature, however, that I never appreciated and have almost from the beginning wanted to fix. It has a 1/2 gallon water reservoir with only a little over a quart of useful storage volume if you take the machines intake and line ports positions into account. I've always felt this was too small, limiting me to about 4 lattes before a reservoir refill is necessary. If I am preparing coffee for a group of people, it is too easy to forget the water and run the pump dry - possibly damaging it in the process. So, I began to look for a way to install an automatic water fill device.
Recently, I believe I was successful in my quest. I came up with a small float valve designed for ice machines manufactured by the Roberts Manufacturing Company in Rancho Cucamonga, CA (800-877-8237; info@robertmfg.com). Their unit (# RM292-9A-1) fits perfectly inside the Pulsar's water reservoir when mounted though the cap, and fills it to a point a safe distance below the intake line port in the back upper left side of the reservoir. I have a purified water supply that I already use for my refrigerator's ice machine/water dispenser, so I simply T'd into its feed line and brought the resulting branch over to my espresso machine. I installed a water cutoff valve in the water line in back of my machine (to reduce the chance of a flood if the float valve failed) and used John Guest connectors to attach the float valve. For tools, I needed a small adjustable wrench and a 9/16" wood boring bit to produce the necessary hole in the reservoir's cap.
The installation has been working perfectly now for about a month, and I need only to remember to turn on the water valve when I startup my machine, and shut it off again when I'm done (only for safety's sake, as I've no indication that the float valve isn't working perfectly).
Please contact for photos of the installation, if interested.
jfd Senior Member Joined: 16 May 2008 Posts: 1 Location: NorCal Expertise: I live coffee
Grinder: Solis Drip: Capresso MT500 Roaster: FR8 and a PopperII
Posted Fri May 16, 2008, 1:55pm Subject: Re: New to CoffeeGeek? Welcome, introduce yourself!
Hello everyone. New to CoffeeGeek but not coffee. Got into home roasting about 4 yrs ago and have been hooked since. Met some people through a cigar board that had helped me get stated. I do most roasting with a FR8 but still make the PopperyII part of my lineup. I really enjoy Nicaraguan and Bolivian beans, but can't say that this is anything that I dont like. Found out that the only way to make coffee is to use a French Press so my Capresso Mt500 sits with dust collecting.
I am a firefighter, father of 3 and husband of 1(you never know these days). I have a small vineyard that produces a couple hundred gals a yr of Zin and Syrah. I mentioned the cigars and I have to say that that is the one thing that I wish I could give up. But they are just so tasty.
I hope to pick up a few tips here on the forum. I have been in the process of revamping the fire departments coffee situation so a question my be popping up soon on how to make great coffee for 4 bucks a lb. Stupid budgets.
Bear_B Senior Member Joined: 14 May 2008 Posts: 46 Location: Columbus, OH Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: Francis Francis! X1 Grinder: Breville Vac Pot: Cona (I wish!!) Drip: no, French press Roaster: iRoast 2
Posted Sat May 17, 2008, 12:24am Subject: Re: New to CoffeeGeek? Welcome, introduce yourself!
Whoops! I guess I was supposed to post here before spouting off elsewhere! But I just discovered this thread.
Ah, well. I'm an academic, and therefore a chronic coffee addict of long standing. I stumbled across the idea of roasting my own beans last winter and picked up an iRoast 2 in January after researching all of the possibilities and deciding that the ability to program the roast profile, the ability to cool down quickly, and the price made a good combination. My first few experiments ranged from acceptable to wretched (I think I was drinking charcoal at one point), but I finally realized that the chaff collector needed to be adjusted. After that, it was off to the races.
I am for the most part a Pacific islands and African coffee kind of guy, though I'm sometimes drawn to coffees outside of those regions. My wife started the local Slow Food convivium in Columbus (hence the snail in my avatar, and my www link), and one of Slow Food's missions is taste education, so I'm trying to think through what a coffee taste education event or series of events might look like, once we've become established enough to draw a more substantial crowd. I'm also the only home roaster I know in the area, so I'm offering a low-cost home roasting workshop through SFC, and if it proves to be popular I'll repeat it once in a while.
My current fixation is trying to figure out how roast profiles work. I've posted an item on that subject in the home roasting forum, and I'm experimenting with the lowest, slowest profiles I can get out of the iRoast without stalling the roast. (Confession: Everyone uses that term, but I'm not at all sure I know what it means, or that I would know the taste of "baked" coffee if I tasted it. But so far I haven't run into anything nasty or funky tasting -- well, nothing that I couldn't attribute to my own flubs!)
I'd also like at some point to figure out how to make good espresso in my wife's espresso maker, a Francis Francis X1; but there, in contrast to my regular coffee activities, where I can more or less hold my own, I seem amazingly and perhaps irredeemably incompetent.
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