What switches does it have? Are they lubed? Are the stabilisers modded? Does it have case foam or other case mods? What type of mount is it? What about the plate? Swing weight and force curve? Linear, clicky or tactile? Silent, oring, ball bearing mod?

There are so many different variables and that’s before you even get to layout changes it’s perfectly possible to build your own keyboard that is perfect or close to it for you.

I have keyboards with different layouts and typing feel that I pick for how I want my typing to feel on any given day. It’s no different from a guitarist having multiple different guitars chasing a different feel and sound.

Not everyone is going to appreciate it and that’s perfectly fine, but there are significant differences with the right changes during a build.

Pretty sure he pays cash or close to it rather than a traditional leveraged buy out. He normally only buys struggling or collapsed brands he can get cheap like Wiggle.

Ashley wants two main things out of his purchases, the brand name to slap on a web store with any head start it can give into running a business in that sector, and the retail space. Any decent retail space he wants to flip into residential property while stripping any fixtures and fittings of any value, anything else will be gone or rebooted into the lowest common denominator for that area.

Getting it exactly the same would be hard, getting it close enough is not that hard. There isnt some magic ingredients in third wave to massively improve solubility, just Magnesium Sulfate, Calcium Citrate, and Sodium Chloride in classic for example. Any decent hand mixer (or electric milk frother) ran for a minute or two is going to spread the ingredients around plenty.

I would recommend getting some testing strips to compare a DIY vs. the ready done packets to at least confirm the alkalinity and pH is a close match, then go by taste for the Epsom salts starting from the baseline from an existing guide. Just scale the recipe for the size you want to make, you do not have to stick to a gallon, its also not a magical prerequisite for making it.

Its not for everyone as Third Wave sure is convenient but it is significantly cheaper if you use a lot of 3rd wave.

Have you seen Kyles video on how to make your own? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGYrEiubq2U

I agree they should do better.

Have you considered taking your preferred water recipe of theirs and making it yourself? Its considerably cheaper and no more individual packets.

I cannot suggest a widely recommended brand as I don’t have experience of anything I would recommend, however have you considered a medium to dark roast? Most people drinking coffee outside the speciality scene will be expecting a traditional Italian style coffee. This might not be what you are trying to go for but you might get some mileage out of it.

While this is local to the UK and not supermarket cheap it is cheaper than a mid to high end light roast, single origin bean: https://ravecoffee.co.uk/products/the-italian-job-blend?variant=3150416248858 I have had it for group holidays where I am making the coffee and it has gone down well.

Yeah the DF grinders are like that without theirs or water, the messy grinder in the video looks like a DF to me. I could not put up with it without RDT.

My sculptor has the knock ring that keeps the mess constrained really well, that is a proper magnet for chaff.

Interesting, would need some clever placement to target between the burrs. I will stick with water, much easier.

Leave it to James to get the author of the paper for his video.

Bit I hadn’t picked up before is that Ionisers like on the df64 are in the wrong part of the workflow to reduce static in order to improve coffee uniformity as they are on the exit rather than before the chamber. Obviously they still reduce mess.

Whatever works for you.

I am too focused on getting the exact weight of grounds out to make my recipes exactly repeatable (and pretty much essential for espresso anyway), which is so much harder to do with the majority of affordable grinders, to even entertain using a hopper. Then the retention caused by not being able to use bellows and RDT shudders

I am only going through about a kilo of espresso and a touch less than that of pour over beans a month, so its not like I am high volume.

And that’s a perfectly valid choice.

Beans and water quality >>>>> technique >>> grinder >>>>> espresso or pour over gear, for coffee quality anyway. You’ll get most of the way there just getting the first two right

Personally an extra minute a day isn’t going to kill me and I like tasty coffee. Modern home grinders are trending towards single dose anyway, so it becomes closer to the norm than hoppers that are better suited to commercial grinders due to the throughput of coffee beans they need.

Lol, always happy to help people who ask.

There are a lot of simple things, often free or low cost that people can do to get a lot more out of their existing gear, and the more people know that the better.

I wouldn’t recommend that approach, its more suited to single dosing, which is based around grinding only the amount of beans you need for that single lot of coffee by only feeding the hopper with the amount of beans needed rather than using the hopper for bean storage.

So weighing out your beans first for a single espresso or pot of pour over, wetting those beans with a drop or two at most of water, giving them a shake/stir, then feeding them into the hopper and making sure everything comes out that you put in.

Single dosing makes it easier to get the exact amount of coffee by weight each time from cheaper grinders and can lower retention (how much ground coffee the grinder holds in its burr chamber and spout) when combined with RDT and flushing out the grinder with something like bellows and discarding what comes out as its mostly chaff and fines that you do not want. Coffee tends to build up even in expensive grinders without flushing it out, this goes stale over even a few hours and works its way into your normal cups of coffee.

Grinding by weight is still pretty limited availability, most with a hopper tend to offer grinding by time, which is nowhere near as accurate. Grinding by weight makes it easier to make your coffee more predictable, its especially important for espresso as you are trying to fill the basket almost but not quite the top. Espresso is better measured by volume as coffee density varies by roast type and by time since the beans were roasted, but that is much harder to do than by weight on a regular basis so most people just use weight.

My favorite part of that paper is that thanks to them actually measuring particulate size we now have empirical proof adding a small amount of water improves the consistency of your grind:

it is clear that the inclusion of even small quantities of water (as low as 5μLg−1) results in an immediate reduction in electrostatic aggregates of boulders and fines

They would just exempt themselves from it as they did with both reporting on people accessing porn using the HoP network and with the investigatory powers bill.

When they did report on it, it was a shockingly high number for a place of work: https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/09/04/mps_binge_on_smut_theyre_trying_to_ban/

If you make them that wet you are doing it wrong, lol.

You only need a drop or two of water for espresso and only slightly more for a larger amount of beans for a pour over, it’s a tiny amount. People have been doing this since 2005 without problems.

Check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuqVUsMPs-U&t=2620s

If you don’t believe me

If it applies to both I would still post it here as the community is bigger and would still benefit from it. Even for basic stuff as there appears to be far more total beginners than the subreddits in the other place.

RDT is useful for pour over as well, really helps improve majority of grinders and grind types.

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Even slightly wetting the end of your finger and stirring it through the beans can be enough to make a difference.