The Rig

How a Vietnamese Coffee Turned Into All This.

Latte on a Gobbo Fabbro's Orange Label Medium Dark Roast from Venezuela

That's my latest pour. Dark crema, thick microfoam, the kind of cup I used to think you needed a serious coffee shop budget to pull off at home. You don't. My whole setup is simple and honestly pretty affordable, and I want to start this blog by showing you exactly what's in it. But first, a story.

The Night It Started

It was one of those late nights hanging out with the crew at my friend Plinio's apartment. He looks at me and goes "bro, want coffee?" I said sure, expecting a plain filtered coffee, agua de colador, nothing special. Instead he hands me this beautiful layered thing. Dark browns at the bottom, a thick yellowish cream in the middle, white foam on top. A Vietnamese coffee. Condensed milk under a shot of espresso, topped with foam.

It was amazing. And from that moment all I wanted was to recreate it at home. That's the rabbit hole I'm still in, only slightly moderated by the hundred other hobbies competing for my attention. Since then I've gone from "how do I even make this" to traveling to coffee farms, consulting for coffee shops and roasters, and, with nothing more than a simple home setup, changing how people think about coffee. At least I like to think so.

Thanks Plinio. He'd probably just shrug and say "I like to do things like that."

The Rig

Here's everything I'm actually using. Nothing here requires a coffee shop budget, and if something's worth an upgrade, I'll tell you.

Scale. All you really need is a scale with a built in timer. Mine is similar to the Bomber 3. This is non negotiable if you want consistent shots or pour overs, everything else on this list is secondary to weighing your coffee and your water.

Espresso machine. I run the infamous Breville Barista Express. It's powerful enough to pull a solid shot and steam milk well. The built in grinder, though, didn't make the cut. If I were buying again, I'd get the version without the grinder and put that money toward a proper standalone one.

Basket. I swapped in a bottomless 19 gram basket so I can actually see the shot as it pulls. It also just makes the Breville perform better and gives you real control, instead of the pressurized baskets that do some of the work for you (and hide your mistakes along with it).

Grinder. This is the one I researched the most. I needed something that could give me a consistent espresso grind but also handle a good pour over grind, without breaking the bank. After trying my dad's unit, I ended up with the same one, the DF54, a single dose grinder. Single dose means the coffee isn't sitting in a hopper losing its properties before it hits your cup. Unless you're running the volume of an actual coffee shop, I'd recommend going single dose.

The tamper. This is the jewel of the whole setup, and I only have it because my best friend is a genuinely talented artist and made it for me (@gobbofabbro). It's a small thing that makes the whole experience feel like a 10 out of 10.

Pour over. A ceramic dripper, the flower shaped one. It's got grooves I didn't think much of at first, and later learned actually affect the final cup. In this case, for the better.

Kettle. A Melier goose neck. Nothing fancy, no temperature control, but it gets the job done.

French press, times two. One is the bigger Starbucks one (yes, the green lady), which I use when I'm bringing coffee to my volunteers on Sundays since it holds a few cups at once. The other is a small glass Ikea press that works like a charm when it's just me making a single cup.

The Coffee

I'll go deeper on this in future posts, but the short version is this: my taste has evolved a lot since that first Vietnamese coffee, and it's taken me from just trying to recreate a cup at home to actually visiting farms and working with shops and roasters. For now I'll keep it general. More specific coffee talk is coming, I promise I won't run out of things to say.

Try It Yourself

This particular cup was pulled at a 1:2 ratio and dialed in on the DF54. If you want to play with your own numbers, there's a ratio calculator right below this post, the same one I use to keep my recipes consistent. Plug in what you've got and see where it lands.

This is post one of many. Rig deep dives, the actual coffee posts, the tamper's whole backstory, maybe even a Sunday volunteer coffee run story. It's all coming.