Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no good coffee here in dc. Period.

Perhaps you mean there's no good coffee in the DC suburbs? There's plenty of excellent espresso in the city.

Chinatown Coffee Co
Peregrine Espresso

Also good -
Bourbon
Tryst
Baked and Wired

Sigh. Are you all from here or something? These places are better than others but nowhere near "good coffee." Sorry.

Coffee snobbery. It cracks me up. No thanks, I think I will keep my money.

+1. Get a life, coffee nerds!

Stump town from cork market is great. But you are probably over thinking this OP. Krups makes a terrific little coffee grinder with auto settings for grind size and amount. I do freshly roasted freshly ground coffee for company in the French press. For me I just do Cafe Bustelo in the Moka pot, iced.

coffee beans from Eastern Market not bad -- is Java Hut still roasting their own on site?

Johnson Brothers in Wisconsin for mail order

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no good coffee here in dc. Period.

Perhaps you mean there's no good coffee in the DC suburbs? There's plenty of excellent espresso in the city.

Chinatown Coffee Co
Peregrine Espresso

Also good -
Bourbon
Tryst
Baked and Wired

Sigh. Are you all from here or something? These places are better than others but nowhere near "good coffee." Sorry.

Has anyone tried Vigilante Coffee. It's a pop up/shared space in Mt Vernon Sq. Just read about it and he roasts his own beans and sources them:
http://www.wtop.com/628/3404443/Vigilante-Coffee-Building-a-business-from-bean-to-cup

Beanetics in Annandale/Falls Church has pretty darn good coffee. Lately I've been drinking their cold-brew in the morning- delicious!

Anonymous wrote:I'm really happy with Swing's beans. You can mail order, or buy locally at their shop or at some grocery stores (Whole Foods, CC Supermarket).

We were big Swing's fans for a long time, but ~6 months ago we noticed that it tasted off. We've tried it a few times since and it still doesn't taste good. So we're just using Allegro for now until we can find something we love more.

OP again. Thanks for the home roasting info. everyone! I have been itching to try my hand at it and this thread has given me some great resources/inspiration.

Another home roaster here. We use a Hearthware iRoast2 roaster - not sure if that model is still made, we bought ours 7ish years ago. We buy green coffee from Sweet Marias. There are cheaper options, but we trust SM's quality. Debating upgrading to a bigger drum roaster.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks all! We grind in our Vitamix daily using the "grain" base and it seems to work okay. However, I think it may slightly heat the beans which is probably a bad thing. Maybe a burr grinder is a good idea.

For the person who roasts at home, where do you source your green beans?

If you are grinding in a Vitamix, just switchinh to a burr grinder will do wonders for you in terms of consistent grind size. Always grind imediately before making coffee and keep your beans in a vacuum canister from the minute you bring them home.

If the plastic of the Aeropress bothers you, think about learning to hand pour. FWIW, my husband works in toxin exposure research, specifically on chemicals like BPA - and he only uses an Aeropress - so I think the other poster's "poison" comment is a little over the top.

Your husband sounds like those doctors who smoke. He needs to apply his expert knowledge to his own life!

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks all! We grind in our Vitamix daily using the "grain" base and it seems to work okay. However, I think it may slightly heat the beans which is probably a bad thing. Maybe a burr grinder is a good idea.

For the person who roasts at home, where do you source your green beans?

If you are grinding in a Vitamix, just switchinh to a burr grinder will do wonders for you in terms of consistent grind size. Always grind imediately before making coffee and keep your beans in a vacuum canister from the minute you bring them home.

If the plastic of the Aeropress bothers you, think about learning to hand pour. FWIW, my husband works in toxin exposure research, specifically on chemicals like BPA - and he only uses an Aeropress - so I think the other poster's "poison" comment is a little over the top.

Home-roaster here. Beans from Sweet Marias. Nothing like it - tastes better than anything else I have tried. Investment / time is minimal. I do it on the back porch while I cook dinner or use the gas grill. Also less $$ to get fair trade/organic/shade grown, etc. Can get green beans in this category for $5/lb on sale.

There are a bunch of good roasters online, who will ship freshly roasted beans.

For the coffee nerd in you, check out: http://www.coffeereviews.com

In particular, we really like Counter Culture Coffee and Lexington Coffee. Both are east coast based (pretty quick shipping), and are not super dark roasters (such as Peets) from the West.

FWIW, Counter Culture supplies a high percentage of the high end restaurants in DC with their coffee.
Lexington is somewhat cheaper -- but they both do an outstanding job.

OP again. 15:02 do you home roast in one of these?

http://www.amazon.com/FreshRoast-SR500-Automatic-Coffee-Roaster/dp/B0034D9ONO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375211221&sr=8-1&keywords=coffee+roaster

Or something lower tech?

And where do you get your green beans? Thanks!

I will give you that you don't need to homeroast (although I will say that homeroasting requires about 15 minutes in our setup, during most of which we are doing other things in the kitchen, hardly a time suck), but I can't agree on the blade grinder. I have tried many and have yet to see one that does not yield a mix of boulders and dust.
I'm pretty low-tech on the brewing side and I share your leeriness of plastic brewing devices (I use either a stainless steel French press or do pour-overs with paper filters and a ceramic filter holder), but the grinder really does matter.

Aeropress is plastic, so you are essentially dosing yourself with plastic residues (maybe not BPA, but certainly other harmful chemicals) every time you brew using it. I don't care how good the coffee tastes, it's not worth poisoning myself for.

Stick to a french press. Bialetti Moka Express and other stove-top "espresso" makers are cute but the coffee they make isn't all that great compared to the simplicity and quality of a french press. The Moka Express has a rubber gasket that can impart an off flavor to the coffee.

Frankly, for most home-brewers, the idea that you need a burr grinder or to home roast is sort of comical. The $$ and time investment to do that is not worth the return unless you're DINKs with lots of free time to fuss over your coffee. An inexpensive blade grinder with good recently-roasted beans (Whole Foods carries some from local roasters) in a french press is good enough for most coffee aficionados. I think you cross over from aficionado to snob if you think a home preparer can only have good coffee if the beans are home-roasted and burr-ground then brewed under pressure.