Quote Originally Posted by Marco View Post
Lol - I don't get any crema, daftee, as I'm using a Moka pot. I'm judging between yours and Grant's, oh and also the 1000s of espressos I've had all over Europe so far, which have always had yellowy-orange cremas

Yes, there's some brown in them too, but not muddy like yours - sorry... I'm sure it tastes great though, which is all that matters. Plus, it might also be down to the beans you're using

MArco.
I have a Bialetti stove top coffee pot but although these are good at making coffee the coffee they produce is way too strong. Ultimately a proper 9 -10bar coffee machine is better as the pressure is needed to extract the crema. A lot of coffee machines are up tp 15 bar pressure which is a bit too much for expresso. I was trained at Costa HQ and interestingly I had to calibrate the coffee grinder to get the exact grind size in order to get the flow rate correct on the coffee machine to deliver a given amount of expresso in a certain time.

Coffee grind size is very important to the flavour and quality of expresso produced on any machine as it determines flow rate and ultimately crema. Crema again is determined by machine water pressure through the coffee. Crema is also affected by the bean quality, type and roasting process. When you start factoring in all the technical aspects of coffee there is way more than the general public can imagine.

My special area of interest however as a technologist is Cocoa. This is just as infinite in variability and quality as coffee and has a very interesting process which also determines colour and flavour and is quite complex. I have a warehouse downstairs where I work which has about 50 X 25Kg sacks of different cocoas all of which are very different.

Coffee maybe even more varied and when you take into account variety, natural variation of coffee type, process, manufacture and then actual making coffee through a machine it is infinite.

Interestingly there was an assessment of coffee machines made recently. The best is a barista type machine followed by bean to cup machines and Nespresso style machines. Finally Filter coffee systems and Stove top pots came last in the quality of coffee produced.

Instant coffee was not really classed as acceptable.