I am the new member of Coffee Channel. I have been invited to contribute with some of the posts on the blog. Hopefully I can fulfill the expectations.
I have recently graduated as Ambulance assistant. Unfortunately, there are not any jobs currently. Therefore my future is a little uncertain. But, worst case, I will have a lot of time posting on this blog.
I am 25 years old, living with my girlfriend and our common son at 16 months.
I have always been very fond of coffee. At first it was a need, in the early hours when I was a sheet metal worker. But in time I discovered the joy of fresh, grounded coffee of different kinds in my frenchpress.
One day at a gas station, I bought a cappuccino in a plastic mug. At that time, in my point of view, that was by far the best cup of coffee I had ever consumed. Already at that point, my enthusiasm and passion for espresso had begun. I just didn’t know it yet.
With some help from Google, I learned that cappuccino contains 1/3 espresso, 1/3 hot(steamed) milk and 1/3 milk foam (not the way I do it now) Again with the help of Google I found out, the espresso were made under pressure. But my god, those machines were expensive.
With that in mind I bought a mokkapot. The seller promised at the website, that it could make very good espresso. It couldn’t. Strong coffee (mokka) yes, but that’s it. To froth my milk, I bought an automatic heater andfrother from bodum. As you can properly guess at this point, the outcomes were bad. I then bought a very cheap espresso machine, very bad investment. After hours of reading on numerous coffee forums, I came to the conclusion, as many others properly, that there are no loopholes. When you want to make espresso, you have to spend some money.
I bought a 2nd hand Rancilio Silvia, and ignored all advises on buying a good grinder first. A few weeks later I had to come up with some money to buy a grinder, because grinded coffee from the coffeehouse just wasn’t good enough. I have the understanding, that many people coming in to the world of coffee, has the same experience as me. I will contribute to this blog, from the ground and up, all the basics, hoping to make the hard beginning foreseeable for the novice. I have only done espresso for about two years, and still have a lot to learn.
At this point I have the Silvia, and the Ascaso i-1 alu. I do believe I can produce very fair espresso and cappuccinos, which is still my favorite, with these two machines. But I am still at a low budget. Therefore I always try to get the most, of least. Not saying that I compromise with quality, but I search for the cheap stuff, that will do as close to thehigh-end expensive stuff as possible.
I have made several improvements and mods for my Silvia (and more to come), which I will post on the blog. Silvia is a very popular machine, and I hope that many readers will find my how to´s useful.
I could go on and on about my love and passion for coffee. Hopefully this will be reflected in my posts to the blog.
Best regards And a Merry Chistmas
Caspar
Questions or comments at the commentfield or:
Xiburst@gmail.com
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