Middle Aged Men in Their Pajamas - Page 2

[Randii]

Hi Randii, have you ever asked Ken for his opinion on pro baristas?

I honestly have no idea what Ken thinks, but I have had the privilege of being taken under the wing of many very kind and gracious pro baristas, and even a family of coffee growers and roasters - which taught me all about coffee cupping. I consider myself very fortunate, as most of the newbies on this forum may not get the opportunity to get hands on experience from coffee industry professionals. Some things you just can't learn from reading, and the passion these people have for their work is infectious. These profesionals have been wonderful to me, and I have learned so much from them. They have vastly expanded my appreciation of coffee. They are also really wonderful human beings.

[Ken Fox]

OK, in response to the hundreds of emails I get every week from desperate newbies, here's my Full Disclosure:

My postings are normally made in street clothes (business casual during the week, jeans on weekends). However, about 5% of the time I wear only jockey shorts when I post. :shock:

Ken, I don't wear pajamas, so you don't have to worry about me posting in them.

I hope this clears up any lingering doubts people may have had about my online participation.

Obviously it was a good decision to leave the auto-forward settings on my email account, to go directly from the HB server to Andy's tofu factory.

As an aside, Andy, you're not middle-aged, yet, are you?

ken

[Ken Fox]

Hi Randii, have you ever asked Ken for his opinion on pro baristas?

That's a low blow, Andy. I have nothing but praise for pro baristas, even though the term is an oxymoron, like "airplane food."

My gripe is with the notion that home espresso enthusiasts should be taking their lead from what is being done in cafes, to which I would give a resounding, NO

The participation of people such as James, on this forum, is a huge plus, something we should encourage and welcome.

ken

[Randii]

My gripe is with the notion that home espresso enthusiasts should be taking their lead from what is being done in cafes, to which I would give a resounding, NO

I was taught home barista techniques, on my own equipment. The training I received was not geared towards cafe work. The professionals who are training me know that the cafe techniques don't always transfer to the home. I will say that knowing the difference between cafe and home techniques simply enhances my training. I appreciate what the pros do even more, because I do know the difference.

[AndyS]

As an aside, Andy, you're not middle-aged, yet, are you?

Thanks for asking, Ken.

The twilight is setting on my middle age; I look forward to a productive senescence filled with senility, dementia, and Depends undergarments.

[mogogear]

So has most everyone else who has been in this little hobby for a while.

Clarity - Ken - pure Clarity--I will be happy to order a piece of "Humble pie" - To go please!

[CoffeeOwl]

I wanted to respond to this post since it appeared but somehow still don't know how to put it... so maybe I will work it out backwords.

1. This is the single best espresso devoted site that exists.
2. I have about 10 years of experiments with coffee, and I never liked the results enough to stop searching.
3. I have 20+ months of experience with espresso coffee, 18 with a Saeco and 2 months with LaSpaziale. When I had my first Americano in my life I found the coffee I wanted.
4. When I first started, I was completely disappointed with what I got from Saeco. I turned on my computer and learned I need a tamper (something opposite to what was in the Saeco manual). I learned it on this site. Then I found Schomer's site and bought his book and his tamper.
5. Using his distribution technique and packing very hard (which I only found after my upgrade) I managed to have a repeatable drinkable results. When I was getting a sinkshot from the machine I was getting furious. Finally this was what made me decide to change the equipment. (I think this whole number 5. should make its way to the top of the Hall of Shame)
6. I based my decision on information on this site. I did some search in some other places, too, and of course I did not find all the information I wanted (like: preinfusion and group design of La Spaziale S1 Vivaldi, differences between different basket sizes - 53mm vs 58mm, what water to use, as far as I remember that were the main points) yet using my own, limited for sure, reasoning, I was able to conclude what I need and how it eventually differs from what I want and decide to what to buy, where/how to get it and to finally appear it on my countertop in my kitchen.
7. The person that brought me the machine and installed it did some kind of so called training for me.
He took the single basket, loaded a huuuuuuuuuuge pile of coffee into it, did the stockfleths move, then pressed the pf against the group (without drying the screens) to lock it in, pulled a shot which was going almost horizontally instead of hanging down and had candy striping. Then he said it was excellent because it had a mouse tail and tiger stripes. It tasted like a mess of harsh, sour and bitter, yet had a good (smokey) aftertaste.
I did not say a word to him about what he was doing. You just please notice, that I knew all the things he did wrong just from this site (the Home-Barista, that is).
The guy did some milk frothing which was ok.
8. After he left, it took me some 10 shots to figure out the grind and dose to have first good shots (yes, singles) - without scales nor naked pf.
8 1/2. I mastered my technique.
9. With a help of someone whom I met on this site I got myself some brushes, some glassware, a naked pf, knockbox and a couple of books and other accessories (ouch! again I knew what to buy thanks to this site).
Since I got naked pf it took me two more shots to coffee nirvana. The first one to find out that blonding happens a little later then I thought and the second one to arrive to the gold zone of grind setting.

OK, I think 8 is auspicious number and 9 is even more auspicious so that's a place to stop.
My point is (besides what I wrote under 1 ) that there's really no bull in the posts on this site. That doesn't mean that all postings are right. Surely not. Even I, a newbie as I still am, can tell it.
Still, the level of discussion here is outstanding, not to mention the resources and reviews which are incomparable.

Without Home-Barista, I would have no knowledge & no skill and would probably take some bull or even worse advice many times over and over again (there is plenty of that, sold expensively and often exclusively among Europe and specially in my own country).

So, my big thank you's to everyone, and for Ken (and not only for posting this ) and well - for all the guys posting things I don't agree with too - I think I miss some prostrating emoticon -
best regards to all the H-B members
and best wishes from me -

Pawel

[zin1953]

There is an old adage that applies in a wide variety of situations, but it boils down to the "10-80-10 Rule." 10 percent in any given situation are at the very top; 80 percent are in the middle; and 10 percent are at the very bottom.

In the case at hand, this applies to one's knowledge about coffee, espresso, machines, home roasting, and so on.

10 percent of the people posting are extremely capable and knowledgeable;
80 percent are somewhere in the middle, in terms of their level of ability and knowledge; and
10 percent of the people posting know very little.

I have no doubt that I fall in the top 10 percent . . . when it comes to my posting on various WINE boards. But when it comes to espresso, I think I'm somewhere in the lower third of the middle group. Through experience of owning espresso machines over the past 30+ years, I think I know some things. But it's very little, as I've only gotten "serious" about espresso over the past couple of years. As with the majority of people here, there is so much more that I need to learn, so much more I want to learn, and so much that I don't really care about learning . . .

(For example, I want to get better at steaming milk; I don't need to know about the chemistry of milk steaming. It's a bit like driving a car -- a certain amount of knowledge about how a car works is essential in order to drive, but I have no desire to become an ASE Certified Master Automobile Technician.)

I pay attention to what everyone posts -- in those threads I read. I put more weight in the responses, suggestions, posts of some than I do of others. I pay more attention to people who own the machines they're talking about, for example. But the actual number of posts a person makes doesn't in and of itself mean all that much. It's the content of those posts that matters.

However, there is also another factor that comes to bear: the reader's experience on HB. For someone who first arrives on this wonderful site, it may seem as if everyone knows more than they do. This is probably not true, but it is the impression. Over time, however, one gets to know who knows what, who can be counted upon; who is full of solid and reliable information, and who is just full of it.

Me? I try to help when I can, but mostly I think I ask questions, comment, and ask again in an attempt to understand -- not only the specific issue at hand, but also the individual(s) in the discussion.

Cheers,
Jason

P.S. I put on a pair of faded blue jeans and a long-sleeve winery T-shirt before writing this.

[Fullsack]

Sigh... you are right. What can we do to reduce "disinformation"?

Why not start another forum, The Gas Bag Hall of Shame, and move those posts into it?

That would do it.

[Dogshot]

I don't worry about disinformation on this site. Someone usually steps in pretty quickly to offer a balanced perspective, and consensus usually swings away from the person who had it all wrong. At the very least, a discussion ensues which allows the reader to get a sense of where each viewpoint is coming from.

A while ago some people were talking about a signal:noise ratio. This concept really annoyed me at the time; I think that where espresso is concerned and taste is involved, one person's noise might be another's signal. However, I recently decided to update my digital camera, and thought that since HB was so helpful with espresso, a forum like DPreview would be helpful to identify what factors to look for in my purchase, and what to avoid. Wow, what a rude awakening. I understand S:N ratios from that site! So many ugly, rude, ignorant comments that have absolutely no benefit or value predominate practically every discussion, that it is not really worth it to sift through it all to find the few meaningful and helpful comments made by those still trying to preserve some value in the forum. alt.coffee has for the most part gone this route IMO as well.

I attributed the DPreview issues to the relative anonymity one has in a forum with such large participation. HB is still relatively small compared to something like DPreview, and the sense of community is still here. I feel like I know many of the long-term participants here at least well enough to have a sense of where they are coming from with their posts, and I think that really cuts down on the potential to misunderstand/misinterpret what is being said.

I hope HB continues to grow, but I also hope that the community atmosphere that a large base of long-term participants helps to engender will remain. I also think Dan does an excellent job of trying to ensure that we are all aware of each other as real people (for example, his requests that we post our real names in our messages, and that we post photos of ourselves to help identify each other at Coffeefests, etc.).

Mark

[HB]

This is good feedback, though most has focused on detecting and/or avoiding disinformation. My thinking is that the next step is "promoting" quality information from the forum into a more formal peer-reviewed medium. How-to articles are an obvious means, but they are exceedingly time-consuming to author, copyedit, and peer review. We've used private wikis to facilitate authorship and peer reviews in the past; a wiki may be a good way of formalizing important forum-based discussions. The drawback of wikis is the oversight they require, especially if anonymous edits are allowed.

To see what I mean, check out the history page of wikipedia's "Espresso" entry. It's littered with mini wiki-wars and spam/rollbacks. HB's reference has weathered countless edits of this page's External Links, but evidently "Davandron" believes the site is questionable, as is CoffeeGeek, TooMuchCoffee and others. All were removed yesterday.

Anyway, a reasonable compromise for an HB-based wiki is restricting edits to registered members (or a "trusted" subset of the membership). Planning for an upgrade to phpBB version 3 is already in the works, I'll add this to my list of topics to investigate.

[luca]

Hehehe ... what a great topic.

Off the top of my head, a few useful things might be:

(a) Encouraging posters to provide information to help evaluate their posts. The basics include real name, coffee equipment owned and used length of time owned, etc. I think that it might also be useful to have a description on their profile page of the sort of characteristics that they look for in good espresso. Such a description would probably be about as useful as windscreen wipers on a submarine, but at least it goes some way towards addressing the fundamental problem that many of our discussions try to work out what the "best" equipment or procedure is without actually having a clear idea of what we're all aiming for. The clearest example of what I'm talking about would be that a disconnect occurs when people are trying to discuss something like optimum dose levels when one poster loves mud-like ristretto shots, whereas the other poster likes lower brew ratio shots with higher acidity.

(b) Post ratings/karma systems. This might be useful, but, as Greg said, it might well encourage group think. Perhaps the way to avoid that would be to ask people only to express their agreement or disagreement with a post if they have actually had hands-on experience with the subject matter.

(c) Encourage posters to mention the basis of their post. If they have hands-on experience, they should say so. If they are regurgitating something that someone else has said, they should provide a link to it, or at least mention what they base their opinion on. Ideally, one would be able to track all posts back to someone's personal opinion and make some sort of evaluation based on the original post.

(d) Encourage experimentation and reporting back to the group. As Abe said, ultimately it's pretty easy to just try out a lot of the techniques and such that are discussed, and that will probably provide the best indication of their validity, or at least enable us to identify the conditions under which the original post is correct.

(e) Encourage people to try and quantify the difference that a certain point makes. For example, it would be easy for someone to read through a thread on the importance of fitted tampers and conclude that a tamper sized to fit a basket to the nearest 0.1mm might deliver a much better shot than a generic mm sized tamper. Personally, I think that the difference is negligible, if it exists at all.

I have to say that I don't really see what a wiki gets us that a series of posts with Dan's awesome links pages doesn't. To me, posts have the advantage of being less likely to be taken as gospel. We already have some rather good and uncontroversial articles up on this site - Jim's guide being case in point. I think that if we were to have a wiki, it might start to blur the line between articles, most of which seem to say things that are widely accepted, and posts, which are probably a better vehicle for talking about random stuff.

Not sure how useful any of that is, but it's food for thought.

Cheers,

Luca

[Rainman]

Ken, you're such a scientist! Nothing will ever be perfect, especially in the anonymous world of online-forums and blogs. This was the topic in the latest issue of Roast written by it's publisher, Connie. She even acknowledges the relative accuracy of info coming from coffee sites over many others, and I think Home-Barista is perhaps one of the best. As scientific as this site has become, I've become a bit intimidated to post for fear that I'll be corrected over some minute detail that I didn't put sufficient thought into-- so I know it's well-moderated. I wouldn't worry too much about what people take away from here, because I think most people understand the value of an opinion. I'd rather get mine by reading those opinions here, than some place that may have some bias (such as a commercial site). Hey, at some point we have to finally make up our minds about some big purchase, and where better to get lots of consumer-level advice for high-end coffee stuff for the home-user than here? It's been my own experience to read all opinions that I can find before making a choice about anything (in general, the more expensive or time-consuming, the more I read).

I think if you over-moderate the forum, at some point you'll possibly curtail the number of posts... if for no other reason because people shy away from posting. I can't tell you how many times I've started to write up an answer to someone asking a question, and clicked the back button to remove it-- all because I didn't think my answer was "perfect". Either that or I had to get up and go feed the dogs

In my pajamas.

Ray

[cafeIKE]

Those unwilling to undertake the most basic experiment or search, as in Does cup temperature affect espresso taste? deserve to be misinformed. Just how difficult is it to use a double PF and two cups, one hot and one cool?

[DavidMLewis]

I've thought about that too, though "wisdom of crowds" can get tricky when someone strives to game the system.

Hi Dan,

It's important to remember that the mathematics underlying the "wisdom of crowds" depends on individual decisions being independent of one another, i.e. that one person's decision isn't influenced by the decision of anyone else looking at the same data. That assumption isn't valid when looking at karma systems, because the way we view someone's posts is likely to be influenced by their existing score. Now back to our regularly-scheduled programming.

Best,
David

[DavidMLewis]

However, about 5% of the time I wear only jockey shorts when I post.

Andy, fond as I am of you, I can't honestly thank you for putting this image in my head.

Best,
David

[Marshall]

To see what I mean, check out the history page of wikipedia's "Espresso" entry. It's littered with mini wiki-wars and spam/rollbacks. HB's reference has weathered countless edits of this page's External Links, but evidently "Davandron" believes the site is questionable, as is CoffeeGeek, TooMuchCoffee and others. All were removed yesterday.

I just restored it with a citation in the editing history to the External Link criterion that it satisfies. I also edited the description. I don't think the word "fanatics" helped its credibility with the WikiMasters!

[HB]

Thanks Marshall, it will be interesting to see how this small revision drama plays out. Already an anonymous wiki editor reverted the deletion by Davandron. Later Nposs, a three-time "Barnstar of Revision" winner, reverted back to the revision by Davandron.

"...awarded those who show great contributions to protecting
and reverting attacks of vandalism on Wikipedia"

Below is the original citation and Marshall's restored citation:

Home-Barista.com - Resource for home espresso fanatics.

Home-Barista.com - Largest website devoted to espresso making, with much input from serious amateurs and professionals and considerable original research with blind sampling

You may be right that "fanatic" drew the attention of wiki editors, but your description is sure to provoke their ire ("Largest" without citation?). I predict the revisions will be flying the next two days...

[Psyd]

As scientific as this site has become, I've become a bit intimidated to post for fear that I'll be corrected over some minute detail that I didn't put sufficient thought into--

I'm sorry, Ray, but the site hasn't become 'scientific' as much .. OK, OK, I'm just pulling your leg. I refuse to be intimidated, and go ahead and post anyways. I'm just careful to put 'IMO' or 'I think' in front of it. And, if my thinking is wrong, it's usually a good thing that someone points it out!


BTW, as far as pros go, I can pull as good a shot as most any pro in this town, as I have access to the same kit and the same beans as they do, and I can pour art on it, too! The difference is that they can do a half-dozen drinks in the time it takes me to do two. There are shortcuts and repetitious acts that pros can teach us; things about consistency and constancy, and things that HB can teach us; things about careful consideration and detailed handling 'rituals'. The ability to be able to decipher what is good for us at home and what is expediency and sacrifice in the name of efficiency and 'the line' is what makes the difference between a home barista and a superauto.
There ain't nothing wrong with the way that pros work. We've learned quite a lot from the pros here and on other sites. Use what works, leave the rest.

[ntwkgestapo]

1) I don't read OR post in pajamas (haven't OWNED a pair in, probably, 50 years! ). I HAVE READ the forums here in a robe tho!
2) I've learned more in the last year or two from this site then the previous 10-12 years of experimenting with making espresso combined! (Do wish I'd had something like this site 10 years or so ago... I'd have upgraded from the Krups steam toy to a Silvia and a Rocky grinder INSTEAD of all the intermediate Krups, Black & Decker [yes, B&D offered a pump espresso machine YEARS ago! Still have it up in the attic!], etc...).
3) I HOPE that my posts haven't been 'disinformation' ones (I expect had they been such, I WOULD have heard! )

I lurked around this site for, probably, a year before joining the forums and starting to post, VERY occasionally. Now that I've got the Factory (which I now have the shipping stuff to return the bad one and get a GOOD one! ) I've been a bit more "vocal", but, I try to make sure that people understand that a) I'm still more than a bit of a 'noob' on this stuff b) what I'm posting are MY observations and experiments and c) I'll take all the "criticism" and feedback I can get! I can assure you I'm NOT "thin skinned"!

I come from an engineering type of background and have a tendency to get into the 'nitty-gritty' details (good or bad). I'm sure I OVER analyze some stuff. The bottom line is I'm learning (a lot!) and hopefully can help others on their journey towards getting a good espresso-based drink (whatever they may be heading toward!).