Arabica coffee futures are about to register their largest annual gain in a quarter-century due to a global deficit.

Arabica coffee futures jumped 78% to about $2.30 per pound in New York this year, putting it on track for the best year since 1994.

Inflation is big this year

The most popular type of coffee in the U.S. is good old drip coffee, with 63 percent saying they consumed it. 22 percent of Americans said they drank iced coffee, followed by instant coffee (18 percent) in third place.

One huge advantage of espresso is that you get it fast with very rich flavor and much less caffeine.

The US is the largest coffee market in the world with over $80 billion in revenue, and almost 60% of the coffee sold in the country is brewed with premium beans.

We analyzed 481 US coffee roasters and looked at what services they offer to their customers. Let's take a look at the results.

The average price for a 12oz (340 grams) bag of freshly roasted coffee is $16.90 (around $50 per kg). The least expensive price is $7, and the most expensive bag will cost you $59.

For reference - good green arabica cost (in US) is $6 per kg (this is not big wholesale). $12 is really top kinds. Robusta is $3 per kg. Farmers get from around 20% for small to 70% for large owners from this.

For example, espresso blend will be sold to you for around $40-$50 per kg, but source cost is $5-5.4. If you add water evaporated during roast it will be $6.4 tops. So, it is 5-7.8x times price rise for pretty basic procedure.

Old and new espresso

Classic definition

Hot water, passing at a pressure of 9 atmospheres through a correctly ground dose of coffee (7 grams), produces a portion of espresso (25-30 milliliters) during the extraction time (25-30 seconds).

This is also formula used by Nespresso machines - 5.5-7.2 grams of coffee per capsule.

Modern roasters and influences will try to convince you to use maximum capacity of 58mm basket - around 18-20 gramms. All of them stand for 1:1,9 to 1:2.1 ratio. So, for 19 grams you get around 38 grams of coffee.

Notice how much more profits it is for them... :-)

@RoadsidePicnic

Note that since COVID start prices for good coffee jumped significantly due to consumption jump, industry is very inert and can't react with more supply.

Yet, income of most people did not.

On coffee marketing and roasters

Freshness Coffee freshness is very clearly important, especially for smell, But importance is exaggerated as small coffee producers compete mostly on this point and they invest most money in marketing focused on this, they can't buy coffee in large amounts and normally get much worse terms.

Roast date If you think that roaster will be honest and will print real roast date - think again. As errors in market demand is very frequent, hence, for medium and small roasters sometimes up to 20-30% of coffee, especially it concerns more expensive and rare lots, can be out of their advertised optimal time frame. In such case they normally just put fake roast date.

Quality All roasters are capitalist businesses, they are not aimed at offering you best thing, they are optimizing profits and income for their owners first. Such way they frequently chase cheaper and more problematic lots, buy coffee with issues. Love to add cheaper coffee to more expensive one, less responsible firms just replace more expensive region coffee with less expensive one as they actually got it much cheaper.

Roasting stability and quality For many small roasters stability is from average to bad, this also originates in wast difference of coffee batches they usually get. You can get completely different coffee next time. Including here staggering errors. Small business can't throw their errors away, so many of them have computer system allowing them to get rid of this and get profit at the same time, so they try to offload such coffee on less important clients who order many different items.

Very large roaster you can find in shops can make more stable coffee as they use much larger machines and mix big amount of similar lots, this is why sometimes variation inside one pack is larger, but resulting coffee is more stable in taste and quality.

It is important to understand that in order to feel the "currant notes", "fruity bouquet" or some "spicy aftertaste" - you need to develop your taste for a long time and thoroughly through a large number of trials and repetitions. And this is unattainable for ordinary coffee lovers - they do not taste coffee in hundreds of cups, because for them it is not a job or a profession, but just love or a habit.

To be short - modern coffee industry is very similar to wine one.
Lies, more lies and lot of important sounding words.
Capitalism makes people do all such nasty things - as specialty coffee is just little better, but can be many times more expensive. So they invent lot of dreamy stuff to get your money for almost nothing.

E61 group construction

On wrong boiler design

Thing that you see here is preheater box.

https://coffeeforums.co.uk/topic/30868-gaggia-classic-preheater-box/

Why people are doing it? Because most boilers for small home machines are designed strangely, as cool water inlet is located low near the place where water go into brewing. Hence the fast temperature drops.

Gaggia use quite ill attempt with tube going up - issue with such design is that after steaming you can have situation where top of the boiler is empty. Hence the flushing needed.

In good design you need vertical divider in boiler that ends just before boiler top with two water inlets going to both parts, in the brewing setting you will have cool water going to one half and hot water going from the other half. In steam mode you need to turn on second inlet via solenoid, as otherwise half of boiler can have no water with time.

Another solution is to have preheat boiler or use thermocoil.

Three way solenoid valves and problems they can cause

Such valve seems like very good idea:

http://espressomyespresso.com/3way/1.html

It's a valve that releases the brew pressure from the grouphead, allowing you to immediately remove the portafilter after an extraction.

Superb isn't it?

It is just one issue - it is not so important on home machine with single boiler, as you can just turn the steam dial and drain the pressure, if you are in hurry.

If you do milk right after brewing and keep portafilter in place you have some dripping happening on machines without OPV. And it is not bad thing, as such cheap machines have very simple mechanical valve inside head (that prevents water leaks before you start brewing) and it plays the role of pressure valve during steaming, so some excess steam and little water go through the puck. With OPV machine you can have pressure buildup.

Most of the more basic models of Espresso Machines tend use the aptly named "Group Valve," a spring-loaded rubber check valve which plugs the group head, which is forced open when the pump is switched on.

Yet - it makes stuff more complex and expensive

Above is the three way valve used in one of medium range popular espresso machines.

And its price is around 40-70% of whole used machine in good state. Because it has slightly changed solenoids. More standard parts will cost less.

Such valves are not designed to be under constant big heat, large pressures and so on, hence they like to die. Especially in some machines designs that are not good for them.

Also you need to do so called regular backflush to clear this three way valve and tubes.

http://espressomyespresso.com/3way/7.html