Highway to Madness (24 posts)
Preamble
I enter the apartment of my long time friend. It’s a warm welcome despite the late hour. As I enter his kitchen, something catches my eye: A gorgeous Rocket Giotto Fast espresso machine.
“Do you want one?”, asks my friend with a bright grin. I agree without hesitation. He hands me the cup, and as I take the first sip there’s an explosion of taste in my mouth. Sweet, chocolate, a light acidic pop in the beginning, hugged by a barley noticeable, noble bitter finish. My mind is blown. That was the day I decided to upgrade my coffee setup.
Day 1 - The journey begins
Finally. After weeks of research and painful days of waiting all pieces of my new coffee setup arrived by mail. I treated myself with a red Gaggia Classic Pro (E24 Version with brass boiler) and a DF64 grinder. I have a cheap coffee scale to weight the beans and the resulting cup of coffee. I’m using the stock filter basket and tamper that come with the Gaggia Classic.
The idea behind the setup is maximum quality espresso and ristretto for the lowest price. The quality aspect is more important than the price for me.
Day 2 - Breakthroughs
I’m starting the day with a horrible cup of coffee from my machine. It’s so bad that I don’t even bother to finish it. I stare into the yucky cup during my meal and it stares back. I’ve never been more motivated. It’s on.
First breakthrough
I’m pulling shot after shot, with varying parameters and success. One or two shots seem to go in the right direction. The twenty or so other ones are undrinkable. I start to spit all coffee to avoid permanent damage to my cardio-vascular systems.
Day 3 - Revelations
I start my day eager to finally arrive at my perfect cup of coffee. I’m feeling optimistic, even though my first cup is so gnarly that spitting it out is the best part of the experience. Little do I know that destiny has other plans with me today.
I’m picking up where I left off the day before. I hit the same wall. Three shots in, in a moment of clarity, I remember the definition of insanity:
Day 4 - Skill issues
I start the day with the new coffee. I’m using the recipe of my friend. The second try is already good enough to be enjoyed with my breakfast. Endorphins flood the rests of my brain not already dissolved by caffeine. It’s going to be a good day.
I immediately get to a point where only fine-tuning is needed. I see the light at the end of the tunnel. The coffee is a bit bitter and a bit acidic, but the taste is overall pretty decent. I’m applying my knowledge, turning the nobs and BOOM: Nothing happens. I hit a new wall.
Day 5 - Tools
Today is the day!! I’ve been waiting 3 days for my Amazon order to be shipped and finally the day of delivery has come. I’m physically at work, but my mind is with the Amazon delivery guy. He’ll bring me the trifecta of good puck preparation.
WDT tools
1. WDT
WTF is an acronym I know but WDT? “Weiss Distribution Tool” is a fancy name for a piece of metal with some very thin needles attached to it. Even a monkey could build one from trash found in the streets and yet I payed 10 euros.
Day 6 - Magic
I’m still frustrated with the overall taste of my creations. I’ve made a lungo coffee just to see what it gives and my girlfriend liked it more than the espressos. In fact so much, that she asked me for another one in the afternoon. A declaration of war if you ask me.
Fortunately nobody asks me, so we can still pretend to live in peace. I profit from the calm before the storm to ask her a favor: I need a little water spray bottle of which she has plenty. I’ve heard that spraying your beans before grinding them can improve your coffee. I’m desperate and got nothing to lose.
Day 7 - Italian Salami
I’ve ordered the very coffee that sent me on this endless quest. I need this coffee to fulfill the mission and I need it now. For those who don’t know, “now” in French can be translated loosely by “whenever the fuck it arranges me”, at least the website where I ordered interprets it this way. So here I am, out of substance to feed to my ever-hungry machine.
Speciality Coffee
I walk into the speciality coffee shop like a kid into a toy store. A gigantic coffee roasting machine dominates the room. It’s beautiful. A wonderful scent of chocolate and coffee is in the air. Jackpot.
Day 8 - Reflections
I feel like I’m hitting a glass ceiling. The coffee is good but not great. I’m trying to fine-tune. But the whole system is unstable. The flow rate is rather solid, but the taste changes with each shot. Time to take a step back and think.
Upgrades
I’ve already made several upgrades to my setup / process. Each upgrade improves the final result and/or its consistency. Upgrades also cost money and I hate to admit that my budget is not unlimited. Let’s be smart and perform the upgrades that give me the most bang for the buck.
Day 9 - It's the coffee, stupid!
Do you remember when I said I won’t do any experiments until after I’ve modded my machine? Yeah me neither. So here we go again. I’ve a good one today. Regular readers know my hero origin story. It all started with a cup of coffee in Vienna. I found the exact same bean. I ordered it. And it arrived today!
I pull a shot. Yes it flows too fast. Of course it does, I didn’t change the grind setting yet. Yes it’s been roasted 4 and a half months ago. According to the pros this coffee has already gone bad. But we’ll talk about them in a minute. So what can I expect? Nothing!
Day 10 - Gaggiuino
It’s Christmas day !! The children (me) are waiting for Santa (the DHL guy) who brings the presents (the mod kit I ordered). It’s already late friday afternoon when he finally arrives. I rush to the door and suppress the sudden urge to hug him. I wipe away one tear of joy as I sign the reception sheet.
Overview
The Gaggiuino mod comes in several flavors. Number one is the type of electronic control device inside the machine. You can either opt for a full custom build (LEGO-build) or order a ready-made PCB board that has the same components soldered onto it (SMD). I opted for number 2, seemed simpler.
Day 11 - Flow control
I start the day with mediocre coffee. Yes it’s now 9 bar blabla; I still don’t love it. I’m thinking. I’ve created the profile I’m using to recreate what the unmodded machine was doing, at a different pressure level. It comes as no surprise that the result doesn’t change much.
There is a collection of community profiles for the Gaggiuino mod. I read through the descriptions and pick the LMD 9-8 v1.5 profile, mostly because it’s the only one that mentions “darker roasts”.
Day 12 - I'm a monkey
It’s been only a day since I’ve tasted the forbidden fruit and already there’s trouble in paradise. The screen of my newly modded Gaggia Classic is acting up. It only turns on sporadically. No big issue for me, an expert in electrical engineering.
I’m on a call with my grandma, talking about life. I can easily do two things at once, can’t I? While talking on the phone, I open the machine and try again. Already, it seems to work better. Maybe there’s a wiring issue?
Day 13 - Despair
A morning without coffee is like using a waterslide without water. Unpleasant. I look at my dead machine. The metal is cold as I touch it, whimpering pathetically. I have no means of making coffee in my home except for a water boiler.
But mama didn’t raise no quitter. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The god of coffee gives and takes. And today he’s testing me.
Sock coffee
Day 14 - I'm back baby
Delivery scheduled today. The DHL guy knows the drill. He uses one hand to fend me off as I try to kiss him while giving me the package with the other one. I hope they pay him extra to deliver to crazy people like me.
The new PCB is quickly wired up. I know the connections by heart. But I also know what happens to people flying too close to the sun so I triple check them anyways. The big moment and BOOM. It works. No fireworks this time.
Day 15 - Recipes
I’ve invited some friends over to show off. They thought it was for “one coffee”. How naive. Our session turned into a 2h coffee atelier. It was great fun though. The resulting espressi were less great however.
They were one the one hand a bit uneven in extraction. This manifests in shots that are too sour and too bitter at the same time. I’ve heard people describe such a taste as “muddy” too. I need to work on my tamping technique I guess.
Day 16 - Simplifications
I don’t know about you but I’m dumb. So whenever possible I try to simplify my view of the world. Because the world is complicated and thinking about complicated things hurts my head. I don’t want to deal with that.
I kinda realized that all of this pressure profiling voodoo is getting over my head. There is so much choice. The possibilities are endless. I hate it. I need to simplify.
Day 17 - Chi รจ il tuo papi?
This post is not about sexual adventures I had in Italy. Not that there’s nothing to talk about. But not today, sorry creeps. And could there be anything more interesting than my coffee journey?
Not for me that’s clear and since you’re still reading this 8000 words in I suspect for you neither. Today we’ll visit Venice, Italy together.
I arrive in the city by boat. My girlfriend marvels at the beautiful little canals. As she tries to take a picture I drag her along. I’m blind for Venice’s beauty. Or tourists that cut into my way. I plow through them without mercy. I have places to be.
Day 18 - Fluid dynamics
The world contains some pretty nasty stuff. Venomous spiders. The black plague. The neoliberal ideology. And then there is nastier stuff. Like every animal roaming the continent of Australia. Quantum mechanics. The colonial past of France. But the worst of them all is fluid dynamics.
It comes to no surprise that this word appears often on suicide notes of engineers. Because we’ll eventually understand how gravity relates to the other fundamental forces and other stupid little puzzles the universe keeps offering us. But how water behaves in a pressurized system? Forget it! You can either accept it or go mad. You’ll neither be the first nor the last one, that’s for sure.
Day 19 - Perfection
After my mental breakdown caused by nasty physics I decided to take a step back and think. Very interesting, you should try it too once in a while! I’m chasing perfection. No compromises. Many before me have failed. But does it make sense to accept nothing less? To go all in, no matter what it takes?
Absolutely! I’ll let the others choke on their compromises while I’ll consume only the most elite, tasty coffee of them all. So while my whiny little paragraph from before might have suggested otherwise, I’m more dedicated than ever to find IT (the holy grail of coffee, not the monster in the sewer).
Day 20 - Back in the game
And already losing. Life has been too good lately. So I decided to tackle a new project: Hardware scales. For the normie crowd: I want to integrate scales directly into the drip tray of my machine. This way it can sense when and how much coffee drips into the cup. It can use this information to transition from one shot phase to another or to stop the shot once the target output is reached.
Day 21 - Life is funny
I get up and take a first look in my bathroom mirror. It’s not pretty. I didn’t sleep much lately. The little dreams I had were filled with giant soldering irons haunting me, with scary voices uttering gibberish measurements in the background. Yuck. I can’t go on like this. Something has to change. I need to get my stuff together.
Like every normal person when something doesn’t work the way they want I thought about giving up. Do I really need hardware scales? I could just stop my coffee by hand. Or get a 100 euro bluetooth scale. Call it a day and move on. Be happy.
Day 22 - Don Oscar
It’s been quiet around the blog. Too quiet. Buckle up friends, I’ve been cooking. While you couch potatoes enjoy the cozy safety of your homes I’ve crossed an ocean to find some new content. I’m in Honduras now. Driving a car so small that it can pass under the huge pick-up trucks that share the road with us. Road is of course an euphemism. There are so many potholes. Some are so deep that the whole car could be parked inside, no exaggerations.
Day 23 - Living happily ever after
Following previous posts the astound reader might assume that I had my fairy tale ending to my coffee quest. I found a setup that works for me. The coffee is nice, to the point where it leaves nothing to be desired. The sky is blue and the birds are singing.
Of course not. To be honest I’d be sad if there were nothing left to be improved or at least explored. The journey is the destination if you so will. Or less philosophical: I’m a perfectionist who’s never fully happy with his results so I continue. And while I pretend to suffer we both know that I enjoy it.