Transcription
Good morning! Welcome back to the vlog. If you guys are new here, welcome! My name is Brandon. This morning, we are heading to my friend's place because one of our friends just came back from Japan and brought one of my absolute favorite beans that I've ever tried in my entire life. We're going to head over right now, and I'm also going to bring some different bags of coffee. I got some Stereoscope Gisha coffees that I really wanted to try, so I'm bringing them with me so that we can basically try them all. We're going to be doing a lot of sharing, which is going to be fun, and we're just going to head over there right now.
Hello! I brought beans! He brought the goods! Holy [expletive], he brought the goods! He brought the—oh, he brought the goods! Grah! Hold on, I need to sniff these. AAP! He just brought—he brought the goods! Ambiguous black bag! Oh my God, it smells like home! Smells like—oh my God, dude! Oh my—no, give it back! Oh my God! How is this one different? Oh, this one's different! Yeah, cold—oh, it's the other pretty one! And now one is more like chocolatey type stuff. Well, this smells like watermelon! Yeah, woah, wait! Yeah, it's quite nice! That smells like watermelon! What? This one—this one—this one! If you're going to get glitch coffee in Tokyo, get this one! Our friend Stephen—our friend, not just my friend—our friend brought these beans back from Tokyo! My absolute favorite! I wish everyone could smell it through the camera; that would make such a difference. They would understand! Yeah, we're going to be wired by the time we try all this! We'll do a 300-gram yield, you know, out of a 15:1 ratio. You know? Yeah, love a good 15:1 ratio! I don't even know what that means!
Alright, I'm going to open these two because they've been snowing real good lately. Che, I had it iced, and I think it's way better hot. You think it's way better hot? I have to let it cool down a little more. Alright, we're making the—wow, my mouth is bright as—open mouth breathing while—here, let me—here's the better cut with my mouth shut, you know? Alright, true! I feel like the recipe would have been stronger, though, so it would have been like this. Yeah, this is just really dark roast. It's just like a really dark roast. Which one do you want to do next? We should do one of the Stereoscope ones. Let's try Mex Chips. The time it takes to get there—alright, this is the Stereoscope one. Mmm, fruity sweetness! It's very fruity, actually! Oh my God, how good it is! It is a Gisha blend, so I definitely expected a lot from it. Last beans—the glitch ones—here, smell it, guys! Watermelon! It's crazy because one of them smells like watermelon, and then one of them smells like white chocolate butter, and it actually tastes creamy! The color of this coffee is so pretty! I'm going to do fancy pour! It's such a nice, nice brown! Oh wait—oh my God! Woah! You put it on the back of your tongue, like the back sides—like you really taste them! It's like a good slurp! Oh wow! Woah, wait a minute! I think I just ate a watermelon! Oh my God, that's crazy! I feel like I taste a cantaloupe more! I do taste a cantaloupe! Oh my God, did I do good? You did great! Oh wait, that's cool! What do they do to these beans, dude? What? Yeah, what the—what do they—oh my God! I don't know what they do! They just can pull out a certain taste and flavor of everything so easily, where sometimes coffee just feels like it tastes fruity or acidic. You taste like—you taste like a specific thing! The specific thing! That's a great way to describe it! Thank you for bringing these beans! Thank you for sharing! Oh my God, thank you! So yeah, come back! Come over again! We'll crank these, and we'll hear about your skiing adventures!
How do I open it and just show you guys the inside of it without—see you! Wow! I've seen this espresso machine everywhere on the internet, but I've really wanted to try one for myself because it's technically a hand-cranked espresso machine, and I've never done anything like that before. I've only had these kinds of espresso machines, so I'm actually really excited to try this out! Can you guys even read that? Okay, let's take it out! I always think it's the nicest thing when they provide another portafilter! Oh my God! Ah, there it is! So this is the pressure meter; you got to install it on yourself. This goes here—wait! Oh, and there's a mirror! You guys can see yourselves! Look! A few minutes of work for a lifetime of espresso! Okay, so we pretty much, I think, just finished building this. That was really, really fast, actually! This is just a reminder: with all espresso machines, you need a solid grinder. The grinder is the most important thing! If you're going to invest in something, invest in your grinder more than your espresso machine!
Raise lever for preheat. Okay, let's turn this on! Press the button on the pre-controller to set the light. It's going to blink, and once it's solid like this, we can change the temperature to a medium temperature or a high temperature. So this thing is—oh wow, that's hot! We did just get some fresh beans from Stereoscope. Pretty usual LB blend—very, very solid roast! State was the 17th; today's the 23rd. Seven-ish—one week! One week to about two weeks is pretty much the prime time to use these freshly roasted beans because you do want this to sit a little bit. This is either going to go really good or really bad, so let's give this a shot! I'm going to try to get it to six. [Music] Oh! [Music] I'm not even close to hitting this six bar! I feel like we definitely under-extracted! Okay, so for the first two shots, we under-extracted, and I realized I really need to go a lot finer! You are under-extracting, and you need to grind finer! That's like the first step you should do before anything else or any other changes, basically!
Alright, we're going to do a quick coffee bar tour! So this is what it looks like essentially in the beginning of the year, and it might change—it might not change throughout the year. First of all, is the grinder! I currently use a Breville Set 270WI. This grinder is very, very strong, and it is really convenient because you can just slide the portafilter in there. I think the one thing is that this thing does sound like a jet engine! It's super, super loud! If you're making coffee more for espresso, I do suggest this one. If you're doing more pour-over and something like that, I do suggest going with something like the Fellow Opus grinder. I probably use this thing the most! This is the Fellow Tally Precision Scale. No matter what I do, I'm using a scale because I think ratio is probably the most important thing when it comes to measuring out your coffee, your milk—anything for lattes!
Okay, so next we have the knock box and a couple of accessories here. Got a little scooper just to scoop out any extra beans. Espresso machine here—this is the Breville Dual Boiler. This is probably, I'd say, the espresso machine that I use the most just because it is a dual boiler, which means that you can pull your espresso shot and you can also steam your milk at the exact same time, so it's really, really convenient! Next to it, I have the manual Flair espresso machine. I just got this recently! And then over here, I have the Fellow EKG kettle, and it's a really nice kettle! Mostly because when you turn it on and when you set it to your desired temperature, it'll essentially reach that temperature and then stay at it for a long time! And then to the left of that is the Anza espresso machine. It's a pretty nice machine to use! So basically, I do have three—technically three espresso machines! I do just kind of shift between them basically like randomly, so it kind of genuinely just depends on my mood!
Got my little flower pot, VP9 lamp—it's a pretty nice lamp! Just really cute, just standing in the corner of my bar table over here. So if we look up here now, this is the shelving system that I use. It's called the String Shelving System. They sell it in a couple of places, but I got mine from Design Within Reach, and I thought it would just match pretty well with the white and natural wood colors. So as you guys can see, a lot of my coffee beans, a lot of my mugs, any matcha stuff—some more matcha cups, matcha bowls. So overall, for this bar table, this is an IKEA kitchen cabinet, so it's technically not a bar table, so to speak. It's more so a kitchen cabinet that we kind of just ripped the top off and put a different tabletop so that it just is more uniform with the current bar table setup that's over here as well. But we custom built this with my friend Andrew. We also bought this tabletop! If you guys can tell, it's the exact same countertop as this kitchen cabinet just because we wanted a uniform color. But this is basically what it looks like in January 2024. I'm pretty excited to see if this will change or not basically at the end of this year. But so far, I think I'm pretty content with how everything is! I might add—I think one of my goals is to add a lot more plants and also some decorations to this side because this side of the wall is pretty bare. It's pretty empty, and I don't really have much of it, and it feels like an empty space. But we're going to find some meaningful pieces or maybe some art pieces to add, and it'll be good!
So just really quickly wanted to say it is almost the end of the year now. I don't know when this vlog is going to come out, but I just really want to say thank you to everyone who's been supporting me! I honestly didn't expect to be doing all this, or I didn't expect so many of you guys to enjoy my coffee content or interior content—everything like that! I already have a couple of things planned in the beginning of 2024. We're going to host another pop-up, but not in my own apartment this time! And we have a lot of other things going on as well. I'm going to be focusing a lot on the YouTube side of things, so it doesn't mean I'm going to disregard Instagram at all! I'll also be doing fun recipes; I'll still be doing other cool stuff! But I really love vlogging, so I definitely want to do a lot of this! I really think you guys are going to like what I have coming because all the content that I do is genuine to help other people do the same thing! So I'm really excited to do this! [Music]