Review of the Porlex JP-30 hand grinder

Holy smokes my last post was all the way back in September! I've moved into a new position at work and I have been so busy adjusting that I have barely had time to roast coffee, much less write about it. Here's hoping that my Java updates can be as consistent as I want my coffee to be. 

I was very excited when I settled on and ordered this grinder. As part of this new position I've been working long hours, and recently I've starting with going to the gym early in the morning. I don't like drinking coffee before I go to the gym because of it's bowel moving properties, and if I brewed coffee before I went and drank after the gym it wouldn't be fresh, but now work coffee is a go!

It costs $46 on Amazon and presumably ships from Japan. The packaging is all in Japanese which was useless to me. I still have questions about it, like if it can be rinsed with soap and water, but using it was fairly straightforward.

 

Fully disassembled there are only 6 pieces. The burrs are ceramic, which I've read are more durable than steel. Not pictured inside one of the cylinders is a spring that presses the smaller burr towards the larger one. One qualm I have is that when its assembled and you're grinding the coffee, I felt like it was going to come apart where the two cylinders fit together. Even holding it at the seam, I thought I felt some movement, but other than that the build quality seems solid. The handle is long enough to give you plenty of leverage, and the ergonomics are overall pretty good.

I was able to pack about 33 grams into the top portion of the grinder, which I will refer to as a hopper for lack of a better term. Using a standard coffee to water ratio of 1:16, you should be able to get 528g, or a little over 18oz of brewed coffee from one full hopper. The knob at the bottom adjusts how far apart the burrs are from each other, which affects your grind size. The further away, the larger the grind, the closer the smaller the grind. With the knob all the way clockwise the burrs felt like they were touching each other, leading me to believe that trying to use it like that would be damaging to the burrs, so I started testing grind size at 2 clicks counterclockwise. I ground a few beans at a time for this little experiment, which belied how difficult it would be to grind to it's full capacity. I mean, I'm not Captain America, but I didn't consider myself to be a weakling either. Grinding to it's full capacity took me a little while and I had to adjust how I was holding it a few times from fatigue.

           


 2 clicks counterclockwise gave me a great espresso grind. I don't brew espresso (yet), but spent enough time around it to know what the grind is like. I'm anxious to get a machine down the road and try it out. From what I've read, and (any experienced barista's reading this, please correct me if I'm wrong) espresso grind is supposed clump together. This was the case at the setting, and there were no stray small grounds (fines) or rouge large chunks.
I arbitrairily decided to increase the grind size by 4 clicks each time, which ended up giving me a good representation of the grind spectrum. 

Normal filter drip grind seemed to come into focus about 10 clicks in and went until 14 clicks. These grinds are what I would use for any of the filter pour over methods, however visualizing the grinds with 4 clicks of difference in between kind of helps you see between the lines. Filter drip may be able to go as fine as 8 clicks and French press grind could start somewhere around 16 clicks. At 18 you are definitely in French Press territory and it seemed to cap out at around 22 clicks. Based on the fundamentals of brewing, any of these can be adjusted to your taste. Brewing coffee is all about extraction. The more surface area of the original bean you expose to water, the more extraction you will get. If the coffee tasted underdeveloped or flat (underextracted), you would decrease your grind size. If it turned out bitter (overextracted), you would increase your grind size, that is to say if all your other variables remained constant e.g. water temperature, brew time etc. 

                               

Overall I think that the Porlex offers a grind that is incredibly consistent, and has a solid build quality for the money. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to step up their brew game, yet not ready to drop the dough on an electric grinder OR anyone like me who needs a travel set up. 

Edit: Blogger is absolutely atrocious at it's ability to place pictures within text, and the lighting on the pictures themselves are not that great. Sorry. 

National Coffee Day

Yessssss. A day dedicated to one of my, nay, the world's most coveted beverages. It's National Coffee Day! And while the big chains like Starbucks and Dunkin' are dishing out free (small) brews, I implore you to go visit a local, independent coffee shop and sample something you've never tried before. Abandon your sugary, milk laden go-to drink, and watch a skilled barista carefully craft your coffee. Savor the aroma while you sip. Leave your computer at home, your phone in your pocket, and talk to people behind the counter about coffee. Or whatever. Talk to the person sitting next to you. Coffee shops are unique places to interact, with a similar vibe to a bar, but with distinct differences. If you're drinking a brew from a mysterious faraway place, make a note and look up some stuff about it later. If you're even more curious, I've taken the liberty of compiling a list of some history* behind the bean.

A piece from NPR's "The Salt" on how coffee impacted history.

History of coffee according to the National Coffee Association

PBS Food

*Note that some of the info will be similar on each link, hence why I only listed three. The "Legend of Kaldi the goat herder has many variations.

And here's some sweet infographic goodness.

The case for better coffee.

The title seems funny, right? I mean, if something is better, what more of a case should you need? Because often better means more time consuming and labor intensive, but let me be the first incredibly lazy guy to tell you...better coffee through a few extra steps is totally worth it.

Once I become passionate about something, it doesn't take long for me to feel the need to transfer that passion to others. In todays edition, I will lay out for you the pro's and con's of making your coffee "from scratch" in the morning. This will allow you to appreciate future posts.

Let me begin by saying that by and large, automation is a wonderful thing. We no longer stick a hunk of metal on the stove, wait for it to heat up, and then iron our garments. We use an electric, automagic-heating device, with many different settings, that can simultaneously steam and press wrinkled clothes. We no longer stoke coals or logs in order to cook our food. It's 2013! We plug things in, and flick switches. In no setting is this more appreciated than in our zombie-like stupor most of us wake up in. If you're extra motivated, you've programmed and filled your auto drip machine the night before and wake up to a hot carafe of brewed coffee. If not then you're fumbling around in the dark, opening your refrigerator for some reason looking for mugs, spoons, etc. At that moment you're looking to make the vehicle for your caffeine delivery, and you're unconcerned with anything else.

Here is where we will have a divergence.

Coffee is so much a part of our daily routines, whether you're the stay at home mom with her Keurig, or the cubicle jockey with a worn and battered Mr. Coffee. If you just need the caffeine, which coffee is the cheapest way to get, then fine. If you don't particularly care about taste, or think that you have the ability to discern any differences. Fine. If you feel as though you might care about the quality of the coffee, but are unsure of how much more you would be willing to do in the morning to improve it; hear me out.

First, and foremost, taste is obviously subjective. What tastes good to one person, may taste bad to another. Chances are though, that some of you reading this have rarely tasted coffee as it should be. Crucial to making a personal determination of whether or not something tastes good or bad, is to have it prepared correctly. I think it's safe to say that almost everything which is not shelf-stable for long periods of time, tastes better fresh. Fruits, vegetables, bread all taste better in their ripe or freshly made state. Coffee is shelf-stable in that it will not spoil or mold after roasting, but will stale quickly which affects taste dramatically. Many people associate the freshness of coffee with time that it was first brewed, when in fact, it has far more to do with when the coffee was roasted and ground. Roasting and brewing coffee involves a lot of thermodynamics and chemistry. I'm far from an expert on either, but what I do know is that the changes that beans undergo during roasting makes them particularly vulnerable to oxygen. Oils trapped within the beans matrix of tiny pockets and, depending on degree of roast, present on the surface of the bean are sensitive to evaporation. A rapidly dissipating carbon dioxide "envelope" and the presence of those oils contribute to roasted coffee's ephemeral nature. It's for this reason that coffee should be enjoyed approximately 2-7 days after roasting, and only ground immediately before brewing.

You would be hard pressed (pun intended) to find a corporate or independent coffee shop that at the very least, doesn't follow those two principles. So if you can't tell the difference between pre-ground grocery store coffee and your local coffee shop, then maybe the case for better coffee isn't applicable to you. It's worth noting however, that the differences in coffee taste are usually subtle, and may be acquired over time. Another must for properly brewing coffee is proper temperature. Ground coffee is a soluble and water is the solvent. In order to extract the necessary components to make the coffee solution, the temperature of the water needs to fall between 195-205℉. One of the main problems with auto-drip machines is that the heating element used in them is not powerful enough to get the water in this temp range. This is usually caused by insufficient wattage, or due to the fact that it's heating element is shared with the hot plate. The dreadful, coffee souring hot plate. The high temperature of this plate continues to create changes in (read: cook) the coffee, lending a bitter taste after a short time. Some manufacturers have wised up and made double walled, thermal carafes but are disproportionate in availability to the glass style, and more expensive. If all of this wasn't enough to sway you, the final blow to the auto-drip maker is the water dispenser. Some call it a "sprayer" but that's a misnomer because all of them sort of passively drip water over the bed of coffee grounds. There is a wide variation in the shape and size of these nozzles, but most do not saturate the grounds evenly and end up reaching only a small portion of the coffee bed. If you don't believe me, open the lid to your coffee maker next time while it's running (if the sprayer isn't permanently affixed to it) and watch the water drip.

So what's the alternative? The keys to making good coffee are getting the coffee from roasted to liquid form as quickly as possible, and having control of the variables in between. It requires purchase of a few items initially, but you can definitely make better coffee on the cheap. Coffee is so massively traded that it's considered a commodity on the market, however over the last decade or so there has been a renaissance, referred to as "specialty" or "third-wave" coffee. Freshly roasted coffee is more widely available. Home grinders and brewing equipment has become more widely available, especially with the help of the interwebs.

Trust me, if I can start to figure this stuff out, anyone can. I won't go further into the different equipment and methods in this post so that I may expound upon them later, but I hope I've made you slightly more curious as to how you can upgrade your morning joe.

The best part of waking up is Folgers freshly roasted and ground, evenly brewed coffee in your cup.

Genesis

Whenever I start to geek out and talk to people about coffee, one of the first things they ask me is "how did you get into all of this?". Because I've been asked this so many times, I've had to do some thinking and get my story straight. Not so much the how but the why has a lot to do with my personality. I'm an all-in kind of dude. Whatever emotion is being elicited by my thoughts or the world around me, it's cranked up to 11. Whenever I'm interested in something, I immediately want to know everything about it. The second thing about me is that I hate regret. Suffice it to say most people don't really enjoy the feeling of regret, but in my case it sometimes causes me some paralysis when it comes to making decisions. This will come into play later. 

I first remember having coffee at the leasing office of an apartment complex my mother managed. She would open up the building, which basically looked like a living room, with a couple of offices tucked away where prospective tenants would apply, and a kitchenette. I had full run of the place while she conducted business, but not before she had made a full pot of coffee. I didn't think much of it at the time, I was in grade school and attributed the drink to other "adult stuff". Over time after being cooped up in the tiny leasing office and seeing my mom and her associates go for cup after cup of the mysterious black liquid, I became curious. My mom took hers with a liberal amount of cream and sugar, almost eclipsing the taste of coffee altogether. Unsupervised, I took her lead and dumped insane amounts of both until the coffee was practically a syrup. And that was my first experience with coffee. 

From that time until I joined the military service is kind of a blur. I would frequent Starbucks occasionally throughout high school, but didn't brew or drink coffee at home that much. Once I joined the service, I drank coffee more frequently, as I needed the caffeine boost for early reveille. My time in the service brought me to Ft. Lewis, WA where I encountered the coffee culture of the Pacific NorthWest. It was there, in the birthplace of Starbucks that I truly began to experience coffee. One study says that people in Seattle and the surrounding area consume more coffee than any other city. There are approximately 35 coffee shops per 100,0000 residents, and people spend an average of $36/mo on coffee, which in hindsight seems on the low side. The shops range from Starbucks style joints, to lounges, drive through kiosks, and even delivery services. The climate there is most likely a major contributing factor, where the winter is long, it's overcast, with a light drizzle most of the year. Perfect coffee weather. My wife and I found our favorite haunts, but would enjoy sampling some of the drive through places. 

Towards the end of my time in Washington our automatic drip coffee maker broke. For whatever reason we didn't think to get a new coffee maker until we arrived and settled in greater Washington D.C. Enter decision paralysis: I was faced with deciding what coffee maker to buy. I took to the internet to research them, a process that lasted two months. I ended up discovering that the most discerning of coffee drinkers manually poured water over grounds to make their coffee. People extolled the virtues of making your own coffee using an intense, somewhat laborious process. Being an "all-in" man, I was intrigued. I quickly found out that coffee was akin to wine. I had a vague idea of how complex vino could get, but I had no idea that the same applied to coffee. I learned of coffee's storied history, it's complex chemistry, and how it's the second most traded commodity in the world next to petroleum. 

The rest, as they say, is (recent) history.

I look forward to sharing with you my newfound passion. I now roast my own coffee at home, obsess over getting the perfect extraction into every cup, and visit every independent coffee shop/roastery I can find. I've all but abandoned my auto drip maker (I did end up buying one) and diligently hand pour steaming water over fresh grounds, daily. My coffee bar and all the gear on it is my muse. I am always looking for a curious ear to share my adventures with.