Real lattes, cappuccinos, etc.

[JamesKTusa]

I too stopped buying cafe cafes and use a "9-cup" cafetera italiana (AKA moka pot), daily grinding "5 Hispanos" brand whole 100% arabica beans which cost 90 pesos/kg, (Coto's price this week!). Takes me 7 minutes or so, grinding the coffee beans while the water heats, and this cafetera makes ~2.5 big American-style cups and costs 1.2 pesos/cup (1 pot a day, ~1kg beans per month, and ignoring the cost of the milk, sugar and my oh-so-valuable time-jajaa!).

While stateside I bought green beans from around the world and roasted them myself--it's amazing how coffee beans from different regions have distinctive taste/aroma! Anyway, that's too hard to do here in BA so I resort to the moka. Can't argue with the flavor & consistency of Starbucks, but the prices and frequent cheto ambience put me off.

Chau ciao,
Jim

 

[mini]

How do you grind the coffee beans while the water is heating up? In a moka you need to have everything sealed up tight before you put it on the heat or did I miss something?

 

[DontMindMe]

Note to the moderators: we need another section in the forums for people who have travelled thousands of miles round the globe to be in Buenos Aires but want everything to be the same as it was back home. Something like 'the guidebook' in Anne Tyler's Accidental Tourist should do.

You know who else traveled thousands of miles around the globe to get here? The Spanish and Italian immigrants who make a great deal of the population here. You know who makes really good coffee? Spanish and Italian people.

So it's not really expecting things to be like home. It's learning, once you get here, that something got lost along the journey and although pizza, pasta, coffee, etc. are part of the food/cafe culture here, very little is of any great quality. It's a variation made by immigrants that has changed over time, and those changes seem to be due to lack of quality ingredients.

It's like understanding the difference between tex-mex and real Mexican food. No one who runs a tex-mex restaurant will tell you it's anything different, but here so many people claim everything is just like the homeland--whether they've visited the homeland to know the difference or not. Therein lies the disappointment. Eventually you stop being disappointed, and DIY or just stop eating/drinking it.

 

[sesamosinsal]

Good coffee can be found in many places; not just my home, the United States. There is amazing coffee in Ecuador, both nationally-produced and imported from Colombia. Even just a three hour flight to Porto Alegre, Brazil opens the door to better coffee. There you could buy a 500 gram pouch of Pilão Coffee, a very delicious, generic coffee in Brazil.

What confuses me so much is how good coffee can be found literally all over the continent, but it somehow manages to evade Argentina.

 

[JamesKTusa]

How do you grind the coffee beans while the water is heating up? In a moka you need to have everything sealed up tight before you put it on the heat or did I miss something?

Hi Mini,
I grind the beans while heating water in the (unassembled) bottom part of the moka, then 3/4 fill with ground coffee the little funnel/sieve thingee and plop it in, then quickly screw-on the top part, all with flame-on. I use a hotpad to hold the bottom-half in order to do the final screw-tightening, the upper-half is cool to the touch. Easy-peazy, it's much easier than it sounds. Trick1: if flames are licking around the bottom-half, reduce the flames or remove the whole assembly briefly for the final tightening. Trick2: do it all before the water boils, otherwise the hot-assembly gets tricky. Confession: it sometimes takes me 8-9 minutes rather than 7.
- Jim

 

[mini]

Hi Mini,
I grind the beans while heating water in the (unassembled) bottom part of the moka, then 3/4 fill with ground coffee the little funnel/sieve thingee and plop it in, then quickly screw-on the top part, all with flame-on. I use a hotpad to hold the bottom-half in order to do the final screw-tightening, the upper-half is cool to the touch. Easy-peazy, it's much easier than it sounds. Trick1: if flames are licking around the bottom-half, reduce the flames or remove the whole assembly briefly for the final tightening. Trick2: do it all before the water boils, otherwise the hot-assembly gets tricky. Confession: it sometimes takes me 8-9 minutes rather than 7.
- Jim

It sounds very complicated! lWhy not just grind then assemble then put it on the stove? I've never seen anyone do it the way you describe. What's the benefit?


ETA: My husband thinks your method is completely logical. He was explaining why but I stopped listening.

 

[JamesKTusa]

It sounds very complicated! lWhy not just grind then assemble then put it on the stove? I've never seen anyone do it the way you describe. What's the benefit?

ETA: My husband thinks your method is completely logical. He was explaining why but I stopped listening.

Hi Mini,
1. I get my coffee sooner
2. I hate waiting/watching for water to boil
3. ...and then there's the morning thrill of avoiding burning the hotpad

¿Maybe it's a Guy thing?
Like I said, it's a lot easier than it sounds. Try it!
- Jim

P/D Last post on this silly tema, I promise...

 

[Napoleon]

What confuses me so much is how good coffee can be found literally all over the continent, but it somehow manages to evade Argentina.

This! Pero this, pero this, pero a FULL!!!!

My favorite coffee in the States comes from BRAZIL!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's right %^*%^%&^ next door!!!!!!

And if you go to the General Coffee place they sell unroasted beans for the same price as roasted beans...



W T FFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!?!?!??!?!?!?!??!?!?!???!

I'm not asking for everything to be like the 1st World here, I'm just asking for something from the 2nd World neighbor RIGHT NEXT DOOR that we supposedly have a somewhat free trade agreement with.

My god!

It's really getting to me these days.

 

[PhilipDT]

Beautiful pot of french pressed Starbucks Kenya just plunged Mmmmmm

 

[2GuysInPM]

Buy it at Starbucks...drink it home. They have a good selection of imported beans and they'll grind them for you. I don't understand why anyone would buy the sugar-mixed coffee here when there are alternatives and the price difference is not much. :/