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alphahydro

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Everything posted by alphahydro

  1. ignore my rec. Promesa just closed down, apparently.
  2. idk about touring la mancha, but you can get to Valladolid in 1 hour by train and visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_de_Cervantes (i've never been, might suck). but... i really like that area, Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid is worth a visit if you have any interest in statues/religious iconography (i barely do, and i still thought it was awesome), plus it's the place where spanish theologians first debated the rights of native americans (~50 years before don quixote)- has a reputation for being the birthplace of modern notions of human rights. nearby Abadía Retuerta LeDomaine is awesome. it's a 1000 year old abbey turned hotel + vineyard + spa. i know that sounds cheesy, but it's actually very well done. was built by catholics in the early part of the "reconquista" when they got to the duero. really great restaurant inside the original 12th century refectory. incredible, peaceful vibe (at least for me personally, i could see it not being someone's thing). i'm not a hotel person, and i really like this place. Also, Salamanca is nearby. salamanca cathedral is one of my favorites, because they kept upgrading it over time, but you can still visit the old parts. so you can see Mozarabic decoration, byzantine decorations from the 12th century, and baroque ceilings, all in one place. great visual overview of spanish history. aslo, university of salamanca is great. (Miguel de Cervantes' alma mater) home of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca - perhaps the origin of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness and all that. salamanca school thrived right around the time of don quixote and part of an intellectual transition in spain that informs, i htink, a lot of what de cervantes is exploring in the book. plus, the university and surrounding area has a great vibe to it. i love all of spain, and yeah this is more of a "deep cut" type trip than barcelona/madrid/sevilla/ronda, which i also love. but i think it would be great. depending on your trip, you could train to valladolid, rent a car, stay at abadia, drive to and from salamanca, then train back to madrid. if you had more time, it would pair really well with seville/cordoba/granada, i would think. and maybe a quick trip to morocco if you are feeling nuts. have fun.
  3. dunno if it's too late, but Toledo is one of those places that can get really busy from daytours, esp on weekends and during high season. i'm no expert, so I can't tell you what it will be like in February, but i was there in summer and we spent 2 nights in Toledo to be able to avoid the tourist bus crush (arrive late, full day in Toledo, leave early next morning), and I am glad we did. toledo is pretty cool to wander in the morning/evening without the tourists. but it's not life changingly amazing, imo. I am a huge fan of el greco... even then, we basically had an evening and a full day plus next morning in Toledo and that was plenty for me. having said all that, if it's not busy in february, you should be fine with a day trip. sorry if this isn't too helpful. lol.
  4. not an expert, but was in carmel a few weeks ago. popped into Promesa, based on the google reviews. https://promesacarmel.com/menu spanish food. rustic, chill, kinda boho-bougie vibes. Hermanos Gutiérrez album playing softly in the background. food was good. esp the Valencia Paella. i remember looking ahead of time and being underwhelmed by the restaurant selection in Carmel. carmel is picturesque. imo, big sur is worth a trip. i would either drive ~15 mins south to around Soberanes point, or if you're up for it, (and it's worth it, imo) about 50 mins south to Coast Big Sur (which is a decent place to stop, grab a bite, and then turn around.)
  5. I get it. the water at my current place is really hard. idk if that's why, but filtered water out of my fridge dispenser tastes perfectly fine and I've never had issues with my coffee. I can get my coffee tasting delicious. so water is not something I want to mess with. not saying my water is Oslo quality, but there's no hum in my speakers, so I'm not about to rewire my house (or order any shakti stones). for other people, it may make sense to look into messing with the water. I'll try the free third wave packet that's heading my way. but honestly, I hope I can't notice a difference, because my coffee routine is really simple and I'd like to keep it that way. (having said all that, the filter in my fridge makes a huge difference. I tried using tap water, and the coffee was much worse. I think it has something to do with the shit they put in water in my neck of the woods - which gets removed by most water filters) if any of you guys are just using tap water, maybe worth trying filtered water/brita and see how that goes.
  6. randomly came through on reddit
  7. same. the espresso i had there was fine. the aeropress they made was not great. i thought i might get a bag while i was there but walked out empty handed. i'm not gonna say it was the water, but....heh
  8. there were audiophiles who would like redo the powerlines from their house to the box out front to make the power as clean as possible. TBH, for a while I had a spectron "digital" amp and when i lived at one house in particular where the power wasn't clean i would definitely get an annoying buzz through the speakers with that amp. having said that, never occurred to me to rewire the house. maybe that's the equivalent of the coffee guys who strip their water then remineralize it before brewing coffee. anyone here have thoughts on brewing water? I htink it's kinda like the power deal - if you live in a house with decent tap water, there's less need to mess with the water. also, once you go nuts and start spending a bunch of money on grinders, you are willing to go the extra step and "fix" your water. idk, but i bet none of the guys who rewired their house had cheap speaker cables. the norway guy i followed said the water in oslo is like impeccable, and he claimed that even at Tim Wendelboe, they make their coffee with tap water. i made coffee a couple times with water from the tap and it was nasty, but i'm fine with whatever filter is in my fridge. *shrug* i think when they ship my espresso machine i get a free packet of third wave water, and i'll try it. kinda hope i can't tell a difference. not something i wanna mess with.
  9. lol. if you haven't read that article someone posted above, it will give you a good idea of how crazy audiophiles are: https://www.suncoastaudio.com/products/audioquest-dragon-zero-speaker-cables-pair?variant=36353923612836&currency=USD&utm_medium=product_sync you could be right tho. people used to sell (maybe they still do sell) little stands that would lift your cables off the ground. apparently the claim was the cables worked more efficiently if they didn't touch the ground. i never bought any but i definitely rolled up some index cards and made my own. lol i was like, no way i'm paying for that, but i'm gonna make my own just in case. (not surprisingly, i couldn't hear a difference, so I got rid of the index card stands). those shakti guys were bold tho. i definitely walked into a room they rented at CES where they had music playing and those stones set up all over the room. I didn't ask them to take away the stones, so I could A/B. but i should have. lol.
  10. i think that's about right. only thing i would add is i personally would pick this technique over french press or pour over, but it could be a matter of preference. the equipment you need is only $30 (plus filter paper, which isn't expensive). https://www.amazon.com/Dripper-servings-coffee-extract-dripper/dp/B07NS2SV3W?th=1 as i think about it, maybe better to start with french press, and then this would be something else to try next. *shrug*
  11. tried to find one where it looked like someone was close to jumping off the ship.
  12. if we get Michigan's best DT(s) to transfer and then we roll into Ann Arbor and beat the wolverines, we need to start renaming buildings on campus, imo. Darrell K Royal–Texas ONE FUND Memorial Stadium we can change little field fountain to close to jumping fountain. seriously, thanks to everyone helping behind the scenes with the nil efforts.
  13. back on topic, if anyone wants to mess around with espresso - like, mad scientisty, and try out some of the newfangled espresso recipes the coffee nerds are experimenting with, i got one of these when deciding whether i wanted to shell out for one of the newer, more customizable espresso machines. https://www.uniterra-nomad.com/product-page/nomad-espresso-machine-silk-white it's not built to last, but it works really well. kinda dorky, but easy to control the water pressure over the course of the shot. espresso is a pain to get right, but like i said, if you reduce pressure on the back half of the shot, it's easy to pull espresso that is really sweet and tasty, imo. and if you're on the fence about whether to buy an espresso machine, idk, something to consider.
  14. lol. You made me pop this open this morning. It’s really good. And if you haven’t tried it, I rec you do (maybe at a fancy coffee shop or whatever if you see it as an option one day - not necessarily worth hunting down a bag). If you don’t like it, nbd. But it’s just remarkably different, imo, from what most of us are used to as coffee.
  15. that's wild. thanks for sharing. i know people like that - though not in audio. more in business. i will say i have heard amazing audio systems from time to time, and i can see why people would want them. but the really amazing ones i've heard are always insanely expensive.
  16. 100000% - i found this dude online (i don't know him, i just searched for his posts) in Norway, who had all these expensive grinders and burrs and he'd try them and offer his opinion - no financial incentive, just a hobbyist. he'd invite his friends over with their fancy grinders and they'd do double blind tests and shit. there was one grinder burr combo he liked, the way he described it matched what i was looking for, so i ordered it. literally a few weeks after i got it, he was like, nah, i think i like this other burr better. LOL. FML. turns out he is an audio engineer by trade and audio guy. i used to be into audio (i think there is a large crossover audio/wine and coffee snob) and i was at CES one year and this guy was selling stones that you put on your speakers to make them sound better. i think this is them. https://www.shakti-innovations.com/usesofshakti1.htm and i was like, fuck that, lol. im out. my point on this thread, i guess, is to prove to people that i'm insane and fell down the rabbit hole and for the most part with coffee stay away from the guys shilling fancy grinders and faster filter paper. just get beans you like and a good recipe. get good music and some decent speakers that fit the music you want to listen to. don't waste thousands on shakti stones and cables. i really do recommend that youtube recipe i posted above. the thing you need to make it is like $30 on amazon.
  17. i htink the interesting thing about coffee and why i went down the rabbit hole, is, (this is the way i think about it) during covid a bunch of coffee nerds sat around with nothing better to do than make tons of coffee and run a bunch of experiments and blog about it and chat about it on discord or whatever. so there is this weird fledgling coffee science, and really bright people starting to mess around with different/ better ways to make coffee. some of these guys are literally astrophysicists, at the same time, there is a lot of bs out there, and a lot of opportunists who hype grinders on youtube.
  18. what if i told you i used the word visualize? still don't get your pet peeve, but whatever. cheers
  19. i don't get your pet peeve. if the grinds are not uniform, there are some that are smaller and some that are larger. it's common to use rocks as an analogy when describing this phenomenon, because we are all more familiar with rocks than with coffee particles. it's just an easy way to get someone who has never given much thought to coffee grinding to visualize what "more uniform grinds" mean people try to make insane, unfounded claims about the impact of the particle distribution (and i owuld understand if htat was your pet peeve), and it's not right to say that every conical burr set has one type of distribution and every flat burr has another, but most of the conical burr electric grinders people on here are considering are cheaper, aren't designed or constructed to high tolerances, and are designed to work for espresso and filter particle sizes. all of that that leads to a certain type of particle distribution which is not uniform, but my point is - IMO you shouldn't worry about it if you are asking on a sports forum. just get the cheap conical grinder, imo. focus on finding good beans, grinding them at the right time, and a good recipe. if you discover later that you are insane (or your coffee is laced with cocaine), then you can spend more $$ on a fancy grinder later. there is a lot of hype and pressure to get a better grinder, like it's gonna make your coffee better but imo most people just need to focus on good beans and good recipe.
  20. i never gave a shit about coffee until i was in colombia visiting family. did a coffee farm tour and the guy made some coffee for me that blew my mind and then i fell down the rabbit hole.
  21. i think for most people a grinder that takes conical burrs is more than fine. if you prefer a chocolate-y coffee, you should imo def get conical burrs and save yourself money and heartache but if you get insane and you start importing nordic roast washed geisha beans and you want your coffee to have the body of tea, with gentle acidity, you really want flat burrs, imo. in my mind, imagine your grinder smashed up rocks to a certain size. and then you put those rocks in a sieve and ran water over it. a conical burr tends to create more "coffee" dust and sand, which fill up the gaps between the larger rocks/coffee bits. if you have enough dust and sand, you get the same basic water flow when you run water over teh rocks, regardless of your "grinder" setting. If the rocks are golf ball size or baseball size, the water flow is about the same if you have enough sand in there. conical burrs tend to create more "sand," and flat burr grinders tend to produce less "sand." with less sand, the size of the "rocks" has a larger impact on the water flow, and you can get (a) more control over the water flow and (b) the ability to create faster water flows. But both of these also make the whole thing more frustrating, because it is easier to mess up. it feels like you get more consistent results with a conical burr grinder, because you get the same basic slow flow no matter what you do. and for a lot of coffee, this is what you want anyway. slow flow tends to bring out the chocolatey/toffee/carmel sweetness that is created by the maillard reaction that occurs during roasting. and for most beans, you want that sweetness to cover up the fact that the beans aren't that good otehrwise. it's like dousing cheap sushi in soy sauce, or oaking cheap wine grapes for a long time. but if you have great beans, roasted really well, you want a faster flow and more control over teh flow, so you can extract the coffee in a way that doesn't mask the acidic notes with the toffee-sweetness. i recently brewed some washed geisha from leaves roaster in tokyo, and i know this sounds nuts, but the beans smelled like a fukcing field of flowers and the coffee didn't taste like coffee. it was like a honey-lemon tea with almost zero notes of what we think of as "coffee" flavor. hard to brew something like that with conical burrs, because they create so many fines, it slows the brew and masks the acidity with that carmel/toffee sweetness. anyway, yeah, for most people, just get a conical burr grinder. what i like about that technique in the youtube is it takes some pressure of having the perfect grind setting.
  22. FWIW, before discovering that TETSU recipe, I used to stress over pour ratios and grind size. I don't adjust grind size anymore. I start with the Ode at my standard grind setting, the hario switch (like $30 on amazon) and Tetsu's recipe. If I want to tweak the recipe to get more or less acidity, I just adjust the starting temp up or down. that's it. And it's better than what I can get by wasting a bunch of coffee dialing in a pour over. I brew a wide variety of coffee, from super light nordic roasts I get shipped to medium roasted stuff I buy locally. for medium roasts, I find the ode and the hario switch are best. For super light roasts, I also have a next level pulsar, which is a slightly different version of the hario switch Tetsu used in the video above https://nextlevelbrewer.com/shop/nextlevel-pulsar-brewer/ and it brews a little differently. but honestly, it's only better, imo, for extreme coffees. I'm insane, and I also have a meticulous espresso machine on order, and I'll prolly mess around with some of the pourover 2.0 type recipes, but I think if you get a decent grinder and use Tetsu's recipe, you will be set for anything other than the most extreme roasts.
  23. there are different levels of insanity when it comes to grinders, imo. I think it's more important to get the right type of grinder than the right brand of grinder. you can figure out what type of grinder you need with two questions, imo. First question is: do you want to grind fine enough to make espresso - if yes, you'll need a more expensive grinder with more power. If no, you can spend less. Second question is: do you want to grind fancy, lightly roasted beans - if yes, you'll want a grinder that will take a flat burr (imo). If not, you can save $$ on a grinder that uses a conical burr. (If you want to make light roasted espresso, you'll need a powerful grinder that takes flat burrs, and that's where it can get expensive.) bottom line: if you get the right type of grinder for you, I wouldn't stress about the grinder make and model too much. IMO, the most important aspects of a good cup of coffee are: get beans you like - this is largely a matter of personal preference. might be stuff at the grocery store. might be shipped from a specialty roaster overseas. use the beans when they are ready - you can get the best beans in the world, but your coffee will taste like ass if you grind too soon or too late after the roast. it's like wine or fruit; you gotta consume at the right time. rule of thumb, imo -the beans should smell really good to you right before you drop them in the grinder. imo, # 3 is actually brew method and recipe. I strongly recommend to everyone that they try the new TETSU RECIPE BELOW. It's the best of pourover + the best of French press. Since trying it, I don't use my pour over or French press gear anymore. If you don't have these 3 lined up, it doesn't matter what kind of grinder you have or how perfect your pour over technique is, imo. I know 1 &2 sound obvious, but a lot of people neglect 1 and 2. IMO, if you nail 1, 2, and 3, you'll realize the grinder isn't as important as YouTubers who hype up grinders say they are--as long as the type of grinder you have is right for you. FWIW, I have an Ode grinder (with SSP brew burrs) and a Lagom p100 grinder. The Lagom costs 10x as much as the Ode. And yes, I can tell a difference with pour over, but it's just a difference, not better or worse. In fact, most of the time, I prefer the Ode for pour over, because of the way those burrs work + my personal preferences. (the lagom is mainly for espresso) A big part of that is the recipe below -which is a must try if you use a French press / v60/ chemex. I think it's just better than the "older" technologies out there. THIS IS MY BS PERSONAL THEORY - people discovered recently with espresso that the second half of the pull needs to be extracted more carefully than the first half. once you have extracted the first half, the second half of the brew is where the shitty/off/bitter flavor compounds come out if you don't get it just right. different grinders and burrs create different distributions of particle size at different target grind sizes, so different grinders/ burrs will result in different water flows over the same amount of ground coffee. The different flow of water is especially relevant in the second half of the brew, where you need to get the extraction just right or else you get off flavors. With newer espresso machines, you can reduce the water pressure during the second half of the shot, extracting more gently in the "dangerous" part of the pull where you can get bad results. This guy above realized you can do something similar with pour over by integrating some percolation (pour over) and some immersion (French press) + reducing the water temp in the second half of the brew. My random bs theory is that extracting the second half of the brew more gently (by reducing water flow / temp) takes pressure of the grinder - because the particle distribution isn't as important when you are more gentle in the second half of the brew - you don't need to control the water flow as carefully at lower temps. that has definitely been my experience. with standard pour over recipes, I noticed a huge difference between my grinders and grind sizes. with tetsu's new recipe: a) coffee is better b) grind size and grinder/burr matter less
  24. laguna is more picturesque and walkable. it's a beach town that started as an artist colony and has more art galleries and more one-off restaurants. you can park at surf and sand and not really drive all weekend. and still get good food/interesting bars/ beautiful beach. a lot of the beaches in laguna have coves, whereas in newport the beach is a long flat stretch of sand. they're both cool. you def need a car in newport, imo. i stayed at balboa bay club years ago and the only place you could walk to was a ferrari dealership and a taco bell. but within a short drive from balboa bay club, you can standup paddle or kayak around balboa; you can stroll balboa island; there is some decent food nearby. newport and laguna used to be pretty different, but the difference isn't as radical as it used to be. kinda like upper east side and west village. still, way more laguna residents are wannabe artists and way more newport ppl wanna own a yacht. idk if laguna has changed or i'm just getting older, but i don't like it as much as i used to. still, if i were vacationing somwhere, its a little prettier and a little more unique than newport, imo. if you go to the instagram pages, you can see the vibe each hotel is going for and teh clientele they are looking to attract. https://www.instagram.com/balboabayclub/ https://www.instagram.com/surfandsandlaguna/ catalina has a totally different vibe, as do huntington, dana point, and san clemente. i would just check out the one that seems like the best fit for you and your wife. again, keep in mind the weather might not be fantastic. to get from balboa bay club to surf and sand is a 15 min drive, so you could stay in one place and get dinner one night in the other. but i wouldn't try to do catalina + newport or laguna. and i wouldn't switch hotels between cities. just my $.02
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