spressomon wrote:Kudos Sam on your fine and detailed review of the EspressoForge!

I'm getting along just fine with my v2. The only little downside, and its a share with all non-pressurized espresso pulling devices, is the inverse relationship between altitude/elevation and the boiling temp of water: The higher the static altitude/elevation the lower the water boiling temp. Fortunately its mostly a matter of matching the bean/roast level for a reasonable compensator to tasty 'spro.

Although I still love my Portaspresso too its unfortunately taken a back seat to my EspressoForge v2: No compressed air needed, less water volume required and a little easier clean up too.

Thanks Dan! You seem to travel a lot(vertically), like really A LOT!

As for the Portaspresso, they're really a lovely and impressive kit. I do miss them sometimes. Have you tried a floor pump? That can take some load off the workflow requirement (though not that travel-friendly). I'm surprised about the clean up comment, as I thought Rossa Air to be the easiest clean-up portable device I had used.

Sam,

The highest elevation I've used the EspressoForge to date was at 8,400'. It worked just fine but darker roasts keep the sour at bay...

Yes I use a couple different sources for compressing air for the Portaspresso PG: An old early '80's but trusty Silca floor pump from my road bicycling days and a belt driven 10cfm custom on-board air compressor I developed for my Land Cruiser provide all the compressed air.

The EspressoForge requires considerably less water, which is all the more precious while boon docking in the back-country, than the PG. Otherwise I do like the hands-off design of the PG once the "pulling" begins

samuellaw178 wrote:Thanks Tamas!

After using Rossas for almost 2 years, the lack of maintenance & easier workflow are indeed quite welcomed.



Shipping was a killer for me too. It was close to about US$70 for me, but it was with tracking if I recall correctly. With the rising USD, it's probably not a good news for most international purchases.

Especially with the 27% customs here in Hungary....

Anyway I figured out the I have a condition where I need to reduce acidic food altogether from my diet. If I would do it the right way, I cannot drink coffee at all. But I won't do that, so I need the get beans with lower acidic content.
Also I've heard that cold brewing or high temp espresso brewing can reduce acid content. Is this true?

Thanks.

I was about to drop some dough on one of those fancy kettles when I found a worthy preheat device already in my kitchen!

beo1329 wrote:Anyway I figured out the I have a condition where I need to reduce acidic food altogether from my diet. If I would do it the right way, I cannot drink coffee at all.

Also I've heard that cold brewing or high temp espresso brewing can reduce acid content. Is this true?

That'd be unfortunate.

Not enough experience with cold brew, but I doubt high temp espresso has less acid content. If anything, things dissolve better at high temp, under all situation (law of chemistry & physics). High temp brew has less perceptible acid because it's balanced by other components (bitter/sugar for example).

dominico wrote:I was about to drop some dough on one of those fancy kettles when I found a worthy preheat device already in my kitchen!

Thanks for sharing! I tried this morning and it worked. But don't think I'm going to do it often because I'd be confined to the kitchen. We(me at least) are still awaiting for the right kettle - ideally an electric one with narrow spout. Need to search harder, haha!

beo1329 wrote:Especially with the 27% customs here in Hungary....

Canada Customs has that same disease.

samuellaw178 wrote: Shipping was a killer for me too. It was close to about US$70 for me, but it was with tracking if I recall correctly. With the rising USD, it's probably not a good news for most international purchases.

That is what saw me out....with our AUS$ worth about 2 flat rocks now, I just couldn't justify the purchase.

samuellaw178 wrote:That'd be unfortunate.

Not enough experience with cold brew, but I doubt high temp espresso has less acid content. If anything, things dissolve better at high temp, under all situation (law of chemistry & physics). High temp brew has less perceptible acid because it's balanced by other components (bitter/sugar for example).

I agree with this. High temp should extract more, but have a look at this. They claim that around 94C some acid content is reduced.

https://www.fivesenses.com.au/blog/2015 ... n-espresso

This I think is an interesting topic. Thanks for sharing this.

From the blog/writing, there are a couple of useful points that I see:

i) Perceived acidity and actual acidity concentration are indeed two different things. The acidity that their barista were tasting is better described as 'perceived acidity', which can be influenced by the presence of other constituents (higher sweetness or bitterness). The SCAA graph cited showed that there is not much difference(<5% difference) in the acids extract from 70C-100C (see point two below).

ii) The SCAA data supports that acids are the most easily soluble compounds, at least at above 70 Celsius. From my interpretation of the SCAA graph, the acidity are extracted to about the same extent (between 70-100 Celsius). The inconsistent trend of the acids level suggests that the discrepency might be within the experimental error (they did not include the error bar or standard deviation). If we consider the SCAA data to be accurate, it's only about or less than 5% difference between the 3 extraction temperatures. One caveat about these tests is that the brewing consistency (something that most barista has trouble with) is a huge factor, coupled with coffee beans being a complex agricultural product(read inhomogenous), there will always be a wide margin of errors, and I highly doubt that thair accuracy is within +-5 mg/L to infer a solid conclusion(for the acid samples).

iii) The results showed that lower temperature will have a lower extraction efficiency (but not by much). So in practical sense, if we're brewing at lower temp, we need to pull longer time/finer grind to increase the extraction yield.

dominico wrote:I was about to drop some dough on one of those fancy kettles when I found a worthy preheat device already in my kitchen!

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Bialetti Moka or BRikka. I have one of these as well. I might get the Forge.
Still reluctant because of shipping costs....