Counter Culture Iridescent tips?

#1: Post by **day** » November 13th, 2015, 6:51 pm

Just picked it up yesterday at whole foods, not perfect at just 2 weeks past roast, but decided at 10 dollars to just go ahead and give it a try. So far not had a lot of success on first 3 tries with espresso but the formula seems like it should be ok, seems a bit pungent at the moment, not really overly sour and certainly not bitter, but just kind of not working thus far, will switch to the double basket soon and pull some ristrettos soon and see what happens. Any tips? Experience?

#2: Post by **TomC** » November 13th, 2015, 7:56 pm

Make capps?

November 13th, 2015, 8:15 pm

I only make them for my wife. I enjoy a good Capp, don't get me wrong, but since I got the pavoni I always want my espresso like I do whiskey. Straight. To be honest I think there is a hidden potential in it, the aftertaste is long and excellent, don't want to eat or drink anything for like 40 minutes at least. I will try the Capp tomorrow though just to see how it is, your probably right, it might go really well.

#4: Post by **SonVolt** » November 13th, 2015, 8:23 pm

Hmmm, 2 weeks post roast is pushing the limit IMO. I get about 7-10 days with my Counter Culture beans before they get moved to the drip grinder.

#5: Post by **LukeFlynn** » November 13th, 2015, 8:37 pm

Try it as a drip/pourover coffee. Last year's holiday coffee (Near the middle of December last year Earth Fare was selling it for $5/box at just a week old) worked great for drip, it was kind of mellow as espresso. Not sure about iridescent though.

November 14th, 2015, 4:53 pm

Hey, will do as a vac pot tonight, but wanted to update. I played with the pressure about 1woty a much slower ramp up and only about 15 seconds at full 9bar, made a pretty solid improvement. Don't think it's going to make a great espresso

#7: Post by F1 » November 16th, 2015, 12:37 am

SonVolt wrote:Hmmm, 2 weeks post roast is pushing the limit IMO. I get about 7-10 days with my Counter Culture beans before they get moved to the drip grinder.

Yep, same here. Hologram and Big Trouble both take a major dive after 10 days. If I swirl them I can pick up most of the aromas, but the flavor is just blah.

#8: Post by **gordianknot** » November 16th, 2015, 2:20 pm

Count your blessings. I can't get CC fresher than 30 days here in my local store. To complicate things, they will push all the odler stuff first, and you have to dig or ask for Big Trouble roasted in September. Works in a pinch, but I'm a little salty about clerks telling me beans roasted on 9/4 are "just as good" as beans roasted a week ago.

November 16th, 2015, 2:36 pm

I actually got it to be pretty good this morning, a little lacking in body-probably partly due to age, but still pretty good. I'll update this with what I did once I can incase someone picks one up on a good deal and it helps any. The biggest problem is that it's very light roasted, but I was pretty happy in the end.

#10: Post by **LukeFlynn** » November 16th, 2015, 2:44 pm

gordianknot wrote:Count your blessings. I can't get CC fresher than 30 days here in my local store. To complicate things, they will push all the odler stuff first, and you have to dig or ask for Big Trouble roasted in September. Works in a pinch, but I'm a little salty about clerks telling me beans roasted on 9/4 are "just as good" as beans roasted a week ago.

I'm right there with you, the farthest Earth Fare away from me sells Hologram in bulk, and I even asked for the Grocery department manager, she insisted that coffee roasted in April was fresh in June.

My closest Earth Fare though, they always have super great sales on every Holiday coffee CC does.