Product Details
One of Vittoria's premium blends, Mountain Grown is a full-strength coffee with a full rich flavour and a delicate finish. A 100% premium Arabica blend of high altitude coffee beans gives a fine espresso taste whether served as an espresso or with milk.
Roasted, blended and packaged in Australia from imported raw coffees
Ingredients
Ground Coffee
I got stumped thinking Bunnings selling coffee lol. Is there a good brand you know for percolator coffee , I usually just buy the 1Kg pack of this Vittoria for convenience
Stovetop percolator or electric?
Have you had any particular coffees you've enjoyed recently?
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Here's the best general guide I can come up with:
Buy with your tastebuds and not your wallet. Seriously - if you genuinely enjoy Vittoria then keep enjoying it and don't let coffee snobs like me tell you any differently. I can't tell the difference between a $4 bottle of wine and a $1500 Grange.
Buy local. Go to a coffee shop that can brew you a coffee of the style you'd prepare at home. Enjoy what they serve up? Buy a bag of whatever they use and give it a go yourself. You might be lucky and discover they use beans from a roaster that sells online.
Buy fresh. My guide is 3-14 days post roast date for best drinking.
Grind on demand. Seriously. Don't skimp on a decent grinder and just what you need when you need it. Indeed, even if you love Vittoria - find the freshest Vittoria whole beans you can and buy them instead of pre-ground.
That said why is vittoria $4/kg? You see online coffee roasters dishing out their coffee snob versions of 1kg bags for $25-40 a bag….
I only ask as im thinking of getting an electronic drip machine for maccas style pot coffee haha, and perhaps an espresso blend and some fill your own pods for nespresso pods (which i hope will be cheaper than buying nespressos, and some variety).
why is vittoria $4/kg?
I think you mean $20-30/kg? They are buying standard 60kg and 70kg sacks of South American green beans BY THE CONTAINER LOAD with the benefit of futures contracts. They literally buy tonnes of beans and there is as much precision in their local blending as I put into a omelette. There can be tremendous variation between batches.
And they have materials scale, production scale, distribution scale and marketing scale that smaller roasters do not.
Remember - Vittoria does insane roasting volume and the product can sit for weeks or months in a distributor warehouse and maybe the same amount of time on a supermarket or deli shelf. That's bad for whole beans and horrible for pre-ground.
You'll see the term "specialty roaster" thrown around bit and they are, more often than not, the people charging $15/250g or $45+/kg for their product. IMHO, you pay for what you get. Speciality coffee generally has clear lineage from farmer to distributor and the focus is on a great cup of coffee where everyone along the value chain gets fair reward for their inputs and effort.
These guys might only roast 25-100kg per day and, even for individual retail customers, will roast to order demand.
electronic drip machine
I prefer a manual pour-over approach, but the Sunbeam PC7900 is great if you want/need bulk jitters ;-)
Hope that helps.
@[Deactivated]: My bad - i thought i saw discounted $4/kg down from $8 that's why my eyeballs nearly dropped out of my head.
Recently as i've been searchign for machine filter drips i've been inundated with coffee ad targeting so i've had the likes of gesha, fox coffee, five senses, darkstar coffee etc all send me ads. They look good but not sure how much value these specialty roasters give for paying the price. I presume given cafes and coffee carts use independent beans and not vittoria there is obviously a quality reason haha.
That said a bag of nespresso pods are about 82c a pod from podco, and is roasted in melb, so that's an alternative to buying 1kg , grinding (or having it preground) and filling my own nespresso pods.
I did look up coffee methods the other week which ranges from manual pour overs, to the stovetop (moka?) and other fancy methods (aeropress etc.) - but i figured how likely would i regularly brew these more fancy methods? I reckon most days when rushing for work (and working from home now i have more time at home, but once back to the office it's the mad rush to get to the train station) i would chuck coffee into a mcahine, fill the water up and be on my way.
The alternative was an espresso achine but for one or two person households with the odd coffee or so a day or two, it seems abit fancy/up there…
@SaberX: I decided to give Fox Coffee a go recently, so i'm currently drinking it (Crafted Blend atm) and its quite nice! Five Senses is also one of my favorites. Definitely far more pricey than supermarket coffee, but worth it imo. The cafe down the road from me also uses Five Senses beans and sells the special blend that they have roasted for them, so that's nice. I'll still drink the Aldi coffee every now and then though because its cheap/good value and tastes alright.
Haven't tried the others you've mentioned (though have seen the ads).
@Newtz4: Great to hear your thoguhts on fox coffee. I think i will give them a go once i buy an electric drip machine… maybe even an espresso grind to try once i manage to get my amazon nespresso pods delivered to self fill. Hopefully it works out! Five senses is definitely on the list too… i have been inundated with coffee ads when is scroll instagram and facebook now so I have heaps to look at… seems like every roastery has a social media targeting ad.
Let me know if you see any others that pop up on social media ads that look good - we do prefer a dark roast/strong tasting coffee so it's quite hard to find a good one.
Thanks a lot for the detailed info, sorry it is not percolator, but more like drip coffee. I use a vessel, overseas type - where you put the grounds on top, add a limiter to regulate flow and add 95degree approx water on top and seal it and the coffee drips to bottom part which is separate.
Once this pandemic thing is over I'll head to a nearby roaster to try them out
This one actually : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_filter_coffee
@otter-raptor: See my note to SaberX - the Sunbeam PC7900 might give you what you need in a basic automatic drip filter machine.
In terms of beans to feed it - see my previous advice, including getting a grinder to add to your setup ;-)
But if you want something really special, try this.
@[Deactivated]: how is toby's estate compared to some of the roasterys i mentioned above?
i"ll checkout the PC7900 -thanks. For someone who has no coffee experience, what grinder would you recommend that's an ok price? Nothing too cheap or expensive? My issue is not knowing grinding sizes, so wondering if there is an idiot's convenient grinder that pretty much pre-selects espresso vs drip filtter vs aeropress etc. grind settings?
Otherwise i wouldn't have a clue (no prior barista experience) grinding to the appropriate size. My thinking was to get the roastery to grind and ship the coffee, but understand the purist way is to grind before drinking, or at least within a short few days or week if your needing to grind and store.
Edit: i do note toby's unlike the other roasters only has a generic mixed grind available besides whole beans?
"We offer ‘Multi-Grind’ which is suitable for brewing methods such as plunger, stove top, drip, syphon and chemex."
Not sure how useful the multi grind is as i would have thought your electric drip would be coarse but more fine than say a plunger? as you need more exposure to the water as it drips through, but not as fine as espresso that it gets caught in the filter and can't drip down fast enough e.g. over extracts?
Whereas a plunger as the coffee is essentially left in the water you need a much coarser grind so it doesn't go through the filter and also over brew/extract?
what grinder would you recommend that's an ok price
You just need a burr grinder that doesn't get too hot. Something like the Breville BCG600SIL or a Baratza Encore will serve you well for years. Both are around the $200 price point. If that's a bit silvery - hunt down a Bodum Bistro from a kitchen place or Harvey Norman. I've seen them for as little as $70 from their original $179 rrp. AMAZING piece of kit.
grinding to the appropriate size
Go back to my original advice and buy coffee from your local roaster or coffee shop. ;-) Bring your grinder with you and have a chat with them. Grind size is something you will constantly tweak depending on the beans, humidity etc. You don't need to be quite as precise as an espresso grind but some hands-on guidance is helpful from someone who can show you what to look for and feel in the grind.
Multi-Grind
You probably won't notice the difference on this stage of your coffee journey but I would definitely grind differently for plunger vs siphon for example.
Whereas a plunger as the coffee is essentially left in the water you need a much coarser grind so it doesn't go through the filter and also over brew/extract?
Yep. Big difference in technique and flavour between extraction under pressure (eg espresso), steeping (eg French Press) and drip (eg siphon)
@[Deactivated]: Thanks for the grinder recommendations. I'll do some googling on the models you sent through. I didn't realise grinders were so expensive. Years ago i got a $50 one from adeliade markets (the coffee place) while on holidays, and it was just an one button grinder that basically you had to judge the grind yourself. Never ended up using it, but parents used it for their gloria jean coffee beans while covid 19 restricted sales of pre-ground gloria jeans haha. I am not sure what a "burr" grinder is to a normal grinder spruiked e.g. herbs and coffee grinding but I'll do some reading.
Ok - might try the local roaster or coffee shop once covid 19 is lifted.. for now it's online candy shop shopping for what looks good haha. Isn't bringing our grinder and plug abit excessive to then grind beans there/ask for tuition? Be nice if they taught/showed you, guess I can't necessarily discount it. It would definitley be invaluable to know how to get a feel for the grind size/look as you mentioned.
Re: multi grind comment: i won't notice it but think I will stick with the like of fox coffee or other roasters who don't label it as just a 'multi grind' but have specific filter vs cold drip vs espresso grinds to order. To me I guess it shows they are abit more serious given the different options? maybe I'm being overly judgemental though.
Re: the different extraction under pressure methods I'd be keen to do a coffee flight at a local coffee place when things return to normal. I definitely can't say i've enjoyed alot of cold drips and other methods, but comparing the coffes would be an interesting educational thing to try.
That said i looked up the sunbeam pc7900 - what is the reason behind the recommendation? Features? or the taste relative to cost and quality of machine? I don't know alternatives but i did see the sister in law with a breville aroma style machine which seems to be 12 cup also, slightly more expensive (but still affordable in a relative sense) and the breville seems to have more and higher review rating overall when googling? So just keen to hear why the sunbeam?
Is it possible to get little espresso machines in a nespresso machine size sense? Or is it too hard to get a proper espresso machine in that size where you can load grounded beans into and draw an espresso shot? Presumably only get the big machines (automatic or manual) that you see in kitchens?
Works out to $20kg, not bad if you dont want a whole kg ….. or just want ground for cold brew and cant be bothered grinding 80-10gm for cold brew.
Vittoria is a bitter coffee,and Italians and other Europeans prefer their coffee this way,especially Espresso.Australians like their Coffee sweet.Everybody's different.
For a similar flavour at cheaper per kilo price, try this.