DawgTalkers.net Forums Thread Like Summary - Coffee / Espresso makers?

We have been looking to get a more expensive Coffee maker looking at the Philips 4300 with latte go
Looks right for us. Anyone have opinions on others? I see Saeco coffee makers that are similar but way more expensive ... not sure why

Supposedly, this method allows you to really get the full taste from a single strain/roast/batch/whatever bunch of beans (the opposite of a blend which is like every major bag of beans you can buy). I'm not sure I have a palette that's refined enough to confirm that, but I can definitely taste the difference when I was dialing grind size on my grinder. Not only does the intensity of the coffee change, but there's this weird sour -> bitter scale with a sweet spot in the middle that you need to experiment with to dial in the grind size.

The first time I tried it, it was intense... but really it's not. You're just watching the readout on a scale and a readout on a timer. I can't taste a ton of difference when I play with the timing, but I do when I play with the water/coffee ratio and grind size. Regardless though, I always get a very smooth cup of coffee with the manual method. My wife usually drowns her coffee with super-sweet creamer, and even she can almost drink the pour-over black.

I highly recommend that anyone even remotely interested in playing with the taste of their coffee try it. Getting set up doesn't have to be expensive (burr grinders can be expensive, but manual crank ones are cheap).

I actually didn't even know pour over also included drip, so that's my bad.

In my house we have a regular ol' Mr. Coffee. That cranks out a standard pot of coffee (water drips onto the grounds and through the filter).

I also have a manual setup with the glass container with a cone on top to hold the filter (this is what I was referring to when I initially mentioned pour over). I weigh the right amount of coffee, grind it, boil the water and pour the water through. There's a method to the pouring though (initial pour is just to wet the grounds so they "bloom", wait, then second pour sinks those grounds back down, wait, then third and fourth pours goes through the "prepped" coffee and where most of the finished coffee comes from). All of this is done on a kitchen scale so you get the right water/coffee ratio. I could control the water/coffee ratio on the auto-pot, but not the pouring method. I'm still a super-noob with this method, but I can still put out a cup that blows my Mr. Coffee out of the water every time. Tastes completely different (MUCH smoother (I don't put anything in my coffee, just black), and the taste is just... more).