Midlife crisis

Plein Air is certainly the best cafe in Hyde Park. (Arguably Build Coffee is fine as well, but they are only open about 5 hours a week.) But it is also true to say that Plein Air is (at best) pretty inconsistent when it comes to espresso drinks; some baristas are definitely better than others, but frequently the result is honestly pretty disappointing. As a daily ritual, I really would hope for a lot more. So what better time to (finally) get serious about making coffee myself.

Thus the latest addition to my office: a Silvia Pro X, a Baratza Sette 270 grinder, shims added, and some other accoutrements, perhaps most gratuitously a Luna Acaia scale. A few days in and I’m already very pleased; not only is the taste better than anything else one can get in Hyde Park, but even the ritual of waiting for the machine to warm up is not at all an unpleasant experience. Also, as far as midlife crises go, neither very expensive nor excessively time consuming!

I’ve always been a little resistant to going down this path — my experiences with Jared Wunsch’s Silvia at Northwestern suggested a certain learning curve was required, and I would not call myself mechanically adept. But a few things have changed. First of all, modern espresso had moved a bit more towards “science” than “art” over the past few years: a meticuluous approach via weighting, ratios, tamping, the science of extraction, etc. have made consistency and reproducibility much more possible. Add to that a souped up version of the Silvia with more controls to make things easier, and an infinite number of online resources (James Hoffmann youtube videos) available online.

My intent it to experiment with milk drinks at some point, but for now I’m quite happy just concentrating on espressos. Arriving soon: extra cups for visitors!

Here is the setup. Those with a keen eye will note the novel application of potential modularity…