You all prolly dont care at all but does any of you know a method to log back into an instagram account..? I stupidly forgot the password. I love any tips you can offer me.
I’m the culprit who wanted to see James suffer! James, I especially liked your coining the phrase “zombie coffee”. A great expose. Thanks for taking on the challenge.
things i have done with used coffee grounds: skin exfoliant, slug repellant, worm food, mushroom propagation substrate, dyed wool, composted. things i have not done with used coffee grounds: made more coffee
I did, you know. I started drinking coffee in the last couple of years. When I fist got my French press, I did try to make a second round of coffee with used grounds. I won't be doing that again. I now understand how curiosity killed a cat.
I'm interested with that mushroom propagation substrate. Did the mushroom taste any different from normally grown ones? I.e it has a coffee aroma/note. Wait, what mushroom you're talking about here? Edible mushroom (i.e Shiitake) or "that" kind of shroom?
Whoever sent this item to James you are such a treasure. You actually got him to 1) ruin some good coffee 2) brew two bad cups of coffee 3) taste both bad cups ... willingly.
My dad has been reusing grounds since I can remember, says it's just as good as fresh. Then wonders how my coffee is so delicious when he comes to visit his grown son. I just smile and say it's all in the grind, Pop.
It would be amazing if he did the method from the video every time for the past 30 years, meaning some 1990 coffee might still be in there. Well, not great, rather TH-cam-worthy.
@@DomenBremecXCVI If, every day, you mix one part old coffee to two parts new, the fraction of the original coffee that remains after _n_ days is _1/3^n._ Even after seven days, that's just 0.05%. After two weeks, it's less than one part in a million that remains. After 30 years, there is essentially zero chance that any of the original coffee remains.
Interesting. I don’t see why equal recycled coffee with fresh coffee would be a 30% savings. I might do a video on this. James: drop me a line! Curious to know what the instructions say.
Stand-up Maths loss during the brewing process + volume difference between fresh coffee and recycled + reduced yield of recycled blend most likely. Also i believe someone linked the manual on the Reddit thread associated with this episode.
What I wanna know is, once you’ve brewed with 30% recycled coffee, you then recycle again, that must mean 30% of the recycled coffee is recycled? So, by the third cycle, 15% has been used twice and 7.5% used three times? Eventually the recycled coffee has been used so many times, only a small fraction is on its second cycle, and that 30% eventually breaks up into such old coffee.......I mean I don’t know if my percentages are correct but it’s disgusting anyway
I love how you emphasize in "bad cardboard" as if you had tasted good quality cardboard before 😂 You make me picture you saying "this is nothing like my average imported cardboard"
You see, there's All Bran, and then there's Bran Flakes. Both very particular flavours of cardboard that have just as much old man debates on which tastes better.
@@dw3403 As someone that enjoys coffee, but is also kinda cheap on a budget I honestly still get folgers and always forget what is the worse of them. I can't reasonably justify spending $20 for a 12oz bag of beans, so until I find a new place (recently moved also, horrible year for that) that I can get half decent stuff for like $10 a pound or less I'm stuck with cheap stuff to get my pretend coffee (mostly caffeine) fix.
When I was a child, my mother used to add probably 20% fresh coffee to the basket of an automatic coffee maker and boldly state that it was just as good. Even as a child, I knew she was freaking nuts.
If it just tasted like cardboard all the Canadians watching would be like: "So it makes the coffee taste like a sandwich from Tim Horton's?" #timhortons #canada
When I was growing up and the internet started taking off, I used to be obsessed with finding weird and quirky gadgets from the 50s-80s online, and my dad used to always tell me "if they were actual good ideas, you would still see them today." I feel like that is true more than ever and this product is the perfect example of it all
This stimulated me to try another crazy coffee idea, James. A friend sent me a video for something called Navajo Coffee. At a time in Navajo history when they were moved to reservations and given rations, flour played an important part in their diet. Navajo fry bread for example. In order to stretch the coffee ration, they roasted flour and added it to the coffee beverage, thickening it in the process. Now, if you toast flour too much (re: Cajun gumbo for example) it loses its thickening ability and just becomes a flavor component. So, I had to follow the video my friend sent and make Navajo coffee. Now this beverage does have precursors. In Mexico, nixtamalized masa is added to beverages to thicken them (champurrado and atole, for example). And we've all had thickened hot chocolates in Spain and Portugal (flour or corn starch). It wasn't totally unpleasant. I would never waste good coffee on making Navajo coffee. But it was historically interesting. Type Navajo Coffee in TH-cam for instructions?
"It's Cardboard.. It's BAD Cardboard.." I honestly didn't know there were different grades of cardboard in tasting coffee but I've learnt something new haha.
I seem to recall way back when that coffee went through a period in the 70s or 80s of very high prices. This could have been a response to that, and people would have considered it "worth" it.
Excellent reference point there explaining this unusual zombie coffee contraption--and yeah, I was in late childhood / very early adolescence then, but I remember this. It was the later 1970s and coffee got rather expensive owing to a major frost in Brazil in 1975. . As I bought it at the time, Mad Magazine memorably referenced the coffee price spike in their first Star Wars spoof in Jan 1978 ("Star Roars") as Princess Laidup (Leia) asks Ham Yoyo (Han Solo) why he's trying to rescue her: . PL: And what's your reason for doing this Mr. Yoyo? HY: Princess, I'm doing it for the money! PL: Then I will see to it you will get plenty. I will give you $20 million! HY: Wow! Just think of what I can buy with $20 million! PL: Well, if you go to Earth, you can buy a pound of coffee for $20 million. This is 1999, you know . . . ! www.starwarsarchives.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/1978Mad196.pdf (pdf page 11).
I’m feeling like this was a 70’s thing. Everyone was trying to “economize.” Gas shortage, energy crisis, inflation.. that is what I remember from my childhood in the 70’s. My parents had a number of doo-hickeys to save money. Especially memorable was a thing to roll newspapers into logs to burn in your fireplace, because energy crisis and turn the heat down to 67 was what they wanted is to do (in the US).
@@lizzieb7373 The brown and orange packaging screams 1970s, too. And you really have to wonder whether running an (admittedly small) electric heater for multiple hours at a time during an energy crisis was any kind of way to save money...
If it was meant for Percolator coffee you should try again with a percolator. Those things turn any coffee into a vile poison, I wouldn't be surprised if the difference is much less notable if you ruin the good coffee as well.
@@ToWhom i meant that james hoffmann simply james hoffmanned his james hoffmann to become the james hoffmann we james hoffmann and james hoffmann to this james hoffmann.
This gadget reminds me of the thing my mum used to make a new bar of soap out of all the old bits of soap too small to use. You compacted the bits of soap together to make what I now know was a bar of zombie soap.
My mother used to just "glue" the old scrap of soap onto the new bar by pressing them together when both were wet. No waste! I still do this, as does my daughter.
The majority of the US back then was percolating coffee. It was rare to see even a drip coffee maker let alone pour overs or espresso. The coffee quality reflected the equipment. I'm sure the reused grounds were cooked with boiled water through the percolator which probably turned out charcoal water. Yumm!
Everyone: we want a new 'ultimate technique video! How about Aeropress? Or Chemex! Espresso maybe? James: 'this coffee cycler box is a thing of beauty' Btw recently got the World Atlas of Coffee. It's fantastic. 10/10 would recommend.
This was perhaps worth it as an intresting bit of coffee chemistry because it shows just how inert coffee is after brewing it vs something like green tea which sometimes is quite good brewed more than once
Soo, this used to be a thing in at least Sweden. (I've been told) Usually people would make coffee in a pot and just add more water and some coffee to the already steeped out grounds. Coffee used to be expensive! 😁 If there were no coffee around, people could sometimes use tree bark instead to make it really cheap. Great video!
I always rebrew my grounds at least twise, adding at least 50% fresh coffee. This is actually traditionally done when you do traditional Swedish boiled coffee. The second brew is my favorite.
Instead of giving this away, I’d vote for a part two where James tries to make something useful of this otherwise horribly conceived “invention”. e.g. can you roast coffee which is too light into medium roast range, or can you enhance regular coffee ground for immersion brews into an espresso-suitable level of roast? Of course this is all just an excuse for more of James’s wonderfully expressive “taste tests”. Cheers!
Hypothesis: this would have been used with stale darkly roasted grocery-store coffee. Taking out 1/3 of that coffee and replacing it with wood-pulp had the advantage of less cigarette-ash flavor. So, in testing it was deemed a success.
This is interesting. My grandfather used to recycle his coffee grounds. He even went as far as having his church save the grounds from the between Sunday school and main service coffee and doughnut break. He would place the coffee grounds on parchment paper and then place that in a food dehydrator. Not sure what people thought of his re-brew.
James, sometimes I find myself in a situation where I can't get good ground coffee. Could you do a video about store-bought pre ground coffe? Like is there any technique to help it? Brewing temperature, time, what to look for? Thanks, dude! Your videos hooked me up on good coffee!
Try growing oyster mushrooms using your used coffee grounds. It works great! You buy the oyster mushroom spawn online. you keep the spawn in the fridge until you have enough coffee grounds. Keep your used grounds in a ziploc bag in your freezer. When you have a large amount (lets say a cubic foot of grounds) you put them into a pot and boil them with some water (not too much) to sanitize them. You can also throw in some straw or oak chips or other hard wood chips, but no pine/conifer type chips. You then keep the pot covered overnight to keep out any mold spores in the air from getting in. Once cooled you transfer the grounds into a heavy duty plastic bag. You then mix in the mushroom spores. Make sure your hands are clean and that you do this step rapidly to reduce mold spores in the sir from getting inside. You then plan the bag in a cool, dark place. Give it a few months and you will see the pure white mycelium growing on the grounds. Once the mycelium has taken over and solidief the grounds into a solid white mass, you cut a few slits in the top of the bag. In a few weeks you will see oyster mushroom 'pins' sprouting out. These will then form into large fans of delicious oyster mushrooms for you to enjoy!
Ridiculously entertaining. I downloaded lots of your vids to watch during my flight. Coffee has been my hobby for a few years now, so happy I've found this channel to help me expand my knowledge and laugh uncontrollably.
I dispose of coffee grounds by using them as skincare and haircare, but they can be used in pellet fuel, manufactured log fuel and manufactured briquettes. Take a look at British company Bio-Bean used to do that.
This was super interesting to me as a tea drinker. High quality tea should be resteeped multiple times, and some types of tea (puerh and oolongs) are best in steep 3 to 6 snd still good through steep ten. My guess is the difference is that less of the plant actually ends up in the liquor. Still, when I was first getting into high quality tea, it seemed wild to resteep expensive tea, but it’s really true that it’s the best way to go.
I've loved all of your videos, James, because each one has taught me things I didn't know. Essentially, that after 20 years of brewing espresso, I'm still a beginner : ) I loved this one because I was laughing loudly from about 4:45 onwards!
You’re a brave soul, thanks for taking one for the team.. I do have a friend of the family that… you can’t make this stuff up, he reuses the Keurig cups.. I think they’re shit on first extraction but my girlfriend and her sister both love the speediness of the pods, I pack my French press when we go to the lake house
This reminds me of the type of thing my grandmother used to tell us about how they got by during the Great Depression and during WWII rationing. I forget how many times they would use a teabag :)
Loose leaf tea is specifically made to be resteeped multiple times, often tasting best after a few. Cheap bagged tea is less able to produce high quality tea over and over, but honestly they are usually ok for a few steeps too.
Given that my late-grandmother reused tea-bags until well after they just made tea-colored water, I can see her using something like this. Perhaps this was being geared to people who grew up in the depression [for the US]. My father-in-law grew up in post-war Germany and he sort of has similar habits, so I can see him using it today.
While tea bags often can’t be steeped multiple times, good quality loose leaf tea is specifically made to be steeped multiple times. In fact, oolong and puerh tea taste best after a few steeps and are good through ten. Black and white tea tend to be good through a few steeps too but loose their quality quicker, and they don’t have the amazing flavor changing ability of other types.
The other issue: You can't do this more than once. So, even if it worked, you couldn't mix the recycled grounds into the fresh coffee, then "recycle" that. It would get endlessly worse and worse. So the best you could hope for is to use these every other time, which significantly reduces the potential savings. Thanks, James, for subjecting yourself to this so any other inventors out there know not to try this again.
Sure, you can keep doing it. You're always using two parts fresh coffee to one part heat-dried garbage (and, presumably, throwing two thirds of youe heat-dried garbage away). On each day, one third of your heat-dried garbage would have been heat-dried more than once. But it's garbage, so that isn't going to make it significantly worse. Actually, it might make it slightly better, as it's going to get slightly more neutral as more of the badness gets burnt out of it. And it would be very important to do this every day. If you're drinking fresh coffee every other day, you'll constantly be reminded about how bad recycled days are.
I get the poverty driver for using recycled coffee, hey I've reused teabags in my student days, but to invest two thirds of fresh coffee in it just doesn't make sense. Just have two thirds of a cup of decent coffee instead.
Chris Roberts the version of the story I’ve heard is people would brew coffee multiple times before they threw the grounds out. As I said, it was during the Depression.
@@chrisjrobrts but this device makes no sense, 100 watts for 2 hours isn’t particularly cheap, it comes out to about the same as the amount of coffee you’d use to actually just make a good cup
Sometimes I use a pour-over twice...with the same grounds...and every time I imagine James heart breaking a tiny bit. And for that, I am sorry, Coffeeboi.
I dry my used coffee grounds and mix it with aloe vera gel for a good body scrub! Love it. Silky smooth and fair skin after scrubbed. I also use it to deodorise the fridge. Some other grounds I use as compost for plants. But no need for electricity. Sun dried.
100 watts, for 2 hours. That's about 7 cents of energy (here in NL). That's the same price as a cup made with cheap supermarket coffee... Ridiculous product.
James you always make my day. How you manage to leave off your lovely end music section with no consistency... it’s like an Easter egg that makes me watch to the end of every video!
I tried drinking Tom Hortons black once. I was you and naive and at the start of my coffee career. Burnt fetid bong water was about the best descriptor I could muster at the time
I think I already know roughly what his opinion will be "if you like super dark coffee made with high extraction, and more of the bitter coffee flavours great. But the current taste for single origin coffee isn't compatible with this style since you get far less of the unique flavours that more popular brewing methods offer." or something along those lines.
@@danielbateman6518 Wired Gourmet does it with specialty coffee and alsp changed the technique substantially, so it's not bitter. Haven't tried it myself. Traditionally you would add a lot of sugar most of the time.
I love the humour in this video. I love people that know what they are talking about but don't take everything seriously - that's the best form of entertainment - well done sir!
My Grandmother did something similar. She would lay it out on a sheet pan and dry it in the oven. The next day she would mix it half old and half new. See she lived during the Great Depression and always did things to make ends meet. I heard that this kind of thing with coffee was not uncommon than and as this was made in the 70's or 80's in the United States that thought was still alive in the minds of a lot of Americans that grew up in that time.
There was also a coffee shortage in the 70s that led to a lot of coffee saving devices, the Mr. Coffees of the era have a camp to make the brew basket smaller for using less coffee.
Quick question : what does the manual say you should do with the mix of good + zombie grounds after you brewed them ? Re-recycle them again ? And if so, how many times ? :D
I guess you recycle them infinitely. At the ratio of one part recycled to two parts fresh, you're throwing away two-thirds of the recycled coffee, so the vast majority of it will only get recycled a couple of times. After a week, less than 0.05% of the original coffee remains. And I would expect that repeatedly recycling actually makes it taste less bad then recycling once. If you recycled the same coffee multiple times, it would essentially just be flavourless filler in the basket, which has to taste better than grounds that have "only" been used once before, so still have the stale remains of coffee in them.
If I can wake up healthy on a Saturday morning, pull a Espresso on my Rancilio and watch a video of James, 2020 is not all bad. Entertaining as ever, thank you for letting us visit other places and decades in our minds.
I love it when you always read the instructions first. Anyway, not related but really hoping one day James would try coffee from the Philippines in his future videos. :)
Looks like some sad 1970's design on that device/box. I can't imagine how awful it must have been to use the 1970's canned ground coffee most people were using back then. I have an idea! Let's get James to use some vintage coffee with that device...yeah!
It looked like an invention from the 1970's America and that person found it collecting a LOT of dust in their attic, cleaned up the box and sent it to you for testing. Bravo for being brave!
It also likely helps that coffee back then wasn't quite so gourmand, you had your coffee and that was it.. Maybe in a few places you might have cafes which did espressos but those were fairly rare
I was thinking the exact same thing. Like what if this is used with canned coffee and a method from the period (I mean pour over was a thing... just with zero precision.) I'd bet with crap coffee it probably actually works since there's not much there to go with.
@@SilvaDreams also, most people aren't like James. He's kind of a drama queen, and I don't know if what portion of him being a drama queen is real and what portion is him needing to maintain his persona as a coffee snob. His channel relies on him having that persona so people believe he's got such a refined pallet that he can taste things normal people can't. So it might not be as bad as he's making it out to be; if he can truly "taste things normal people can't."
I think the 100W remark was a pun intending to remind us of how NOT energy efficient appliances were in the ‘80’s. As a comparison, a laptop today which does a heck more than this “device” runs on 15W of power.
Coffee grounds are insanely valuable to any organic gardener. You can compost them but you can also grind up egg shell and add to the grounds with any common vegetation around and make a fermented plant juice with added calcium from eggshell and added magnesium from the coffee.
Protip from the frugal - Brewing method matters when re-using grounds. Keep in mind-- this ridiculous kitchen accessory was made during a time in which drip coffee machines were probably the most likely to be found in an average consumer's home, but from a chemistry perspective you'd really want to give the grounds a lot more time to release the last echoes of coffee still in them. Bonus if you can actually introduce steam atop the grounds instead of liquid water (water molecules will penetrate the grounds easier). It will still taste like stale, old coffee but your experience might improve from bad cardboard and potatoes to mediocre packing peanuts and squash.
I feel like there are a ton of products from that era that got loads of interesting claims and nothing to back them up. Thank you for taking the time to test this ‘invention’ out!
![ไปอยู่ไสมา - ช๊อปเปอร์ โตเกียวมิวสิค [ OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/sWuVNbRTJbc/mqdefault.jpg)
To the gentleman who found this and thought "James Hoffman is the right person for this!", we Sir salute you!
He recycled his coffee recycler into a James Hoffman video. Thats a victory for mother earth and humanity at the same time
m
James, I've got some old crap in our attic as well. Where do I send it?
You all prolly dont care at all but does any of you know a method to log back into an instagram account..?
I stupidly forgot the password. I love any tips you can offer me.
To the gentleman, HERE HERE, PROST!
I’m the culprit who wanted to see James suffer! James, I especially liked your coining the phrase “zombie coffee”. A great expose. Thanks for taking on the challenge.
You sir, and your RV espresso travels, are a legend. Any other caffeinated artefacts that may wash up on our shores are cordially welcomed.
I can't believe he didn't pin your post or even reply saying thanks. That's so weird.
Well, @@xenonram, he did hate it, after all.
True coffee related body horror
What is the full story behind this? Was it an unused Christmas present?
things i have done with used coffee grounds: skin exfoliant, slug repellant, worm food, mushroom propagation substrate, dyed wool, composted.
things i have not done with used coffee grounds: made more coffee
but then again if i lived in a war zone?
@@pippabuchanan1792 If you lived in a war zone would you want to wast precious clean water and scarce electricity on creating undrinkable swill?
I did, you know. I started drinking coffee in the last couple of years. When I fist got my French press, I did try to make a second round of coffee with used grounds. I won't be doing that again. I now understand how curiosity killed a cat.
I'm interested with that mushroom propagation substrate. Did the mushroom taste any different from normally grown ones? I.e it has a coffee aroma/note.
Wait, what mushroom you're talking about here? Edible mushroom (i.e Shiitake) or "that" kind of shroom?
Don't forget there is one more usage... soaking paper in to turn it into "aged paper" for those of us who bind books :)
Whoever sent this item to James you are such a treasure.
You actually got him to
1) ruin some good coffee
2) brew two bad cups of coffee
3) taste both bad cups
... willingly.
taste both bad cups TWICE!
omg I read this while taking a drink, legitimately made me choke for second
@@stronkq is not james if he doesn't drink something bad, gets horrified by the taste, then keeps drinking
James:"This tastes like forgotten coffee and stale potatoes".
Also James: Goes for another sip.
Why? Why did you take another sip?
@@olipito you Always take another sip
thatsthejoke.jpg
absolute madman
I was drinking water when he said that...
It‘s not that I really enjoy seeing people suffer. It‘s just that your suffering is so endlessly entertaining...
🤣
It was his second sip of the zombie drainage which got me
Haha, yes.
Right?!
Schadenfruede but only when it applies to James
My dad has been reusing grounds since I can remember, says it's just as good as fresh. Then wonders how my coffee is so delicious when he comes to visit his grown son. I just smile and say it's all in the grind, Pop.
It would be amazing if he did the method from the video every time for the past 30 years, meaning some 1990 coffee might still be in there. Well, not great, rather TH-cam-worthy.
Why even buy new coffee! As it’s the best kept secret that they don’t want you to know!
life is too short for shit coffee
@@DomenBremecXCVI If, every day, you mix one part old coffee to two parts new, the fraction of the original coffee that remains after _n_ days is _1/3^n._ Even after seven days, that's just 0.05%. After two weeks, it's less than one part in a million that remains. After 30 years, there is essentially zero chance that any of the original coffee remains.
@@beeble2003 So you're telling me there's a chance.
Interesting. I don’t see why equal recycled coffee with fresh coffee would be a 30% savings. I might do a video on this. James: drop me a line! Curious to know what the instructions say.
Stand-up Maths loss during the brewing process + volume difference between fresh coffee and recycled + reduced yield of recycled blend most likely. Also i believe someone linked the manual on the Reddit thread associated with this episode.
interesting to see you're into coffee matt!
Matt Parker and James Hoffman. That's definitely the most random crossover I've ever seen in a while. Nice
What I wanna know is, once you’ve brewed with 30% recycled coffee, you then recycle again, that must mean 30% of the recycled coffee is recycled? So, by the third cycle, 15% has been used twice and 7.5% used three times? Eventually the recycled coffee has been used so many times, only a small fraction is on its second cycle, and that 30% eventually breaks up into such old coffee.......I mean I don’t know if my percentages are correct but it’s disgusting anyway
Boggled, and quite pleased, to find Matt Parker here.
I love how you emphasize in "bad cardboard" as if you had tasted good quality cardboard before 😂
You make me picture you saying "this is nothing like my average imported cardboard"
It's only cardboard if it comes from the Càrdbóard region of france, otherwise it's just thick paper.
You see, there's All Bran, and then there's Bran Flakes. Both very particular flavours of cardboard that have just as much old man debates on which tastes better.
@@cptn.penguin902 Basically if you buy from the Papier Maché region in France you are buying the same thing except it's way cheaper.
All of these talks make me picture that there's some sort of legit cardboard sommelier and it's hilarious.
I would think of "good cardboard" as like the flavor of plain cheerios.
"what kind of idiot would want this stupid re-roast coffee grounds thing that came out in the 70s"... Oh, I'll send it to James, He'll love it.
1 reason only. To save money
@@Mikey-ym6ok it's not saving money when you waste it on something you are just going to throw in the trash after the first use
Here in the US in the 70's everything got cheap as in cheaply made.
Coffee back then was folders and a few others. Not the best tasting stuff.
@@dw3403 As someone that enjoys coffee, but is also kinda cheap on a budget I honestly still get folgers and always forget what is the worse of them. I can't reasonably justify spending $20 for a 12oz bag of beans, so until I find a new place (recently moved also, horrible year for that) that I can get half decent stuff for like $10 a pound or less I'm stuck with cheap stuff to get my pretend coffee (mostly caffeine) fix.
@@JohnA... Do Taylors of Harogate export to the US? Their pre-ground stuff is a good option if you aren't grinding your own beans
“They have gone volatile, they’ve left the building” 😆
I howled when I heard him say that 🤣
When I was a child, my mother used to add probably 20% fresh coffee to the basket of an automatic coffee maker and boldly state that it was just as good. Even as a child, I knew she was freaking nuts.
If you are a 70s kid - that is because the economy was bad.
I just love the moments when James looks at the coffee, stare into nothing and thinks "Why am I doing this to myself?". And then takes a sip.
And then another one 😂
I’m glad you clarified that it tasted like BAD cardboard. Might have been confusing otherwise.
And even after all that you hope we have a great day!
Right? At first I was like "like good quality cardboards or what?"
Snake : "Well there are different flavours of cardboard"
If it just tasted like cardboard all the Canadians watching would be like: "So it makes the coffee taste like a sandwich from Tim Horton's?" #timhortons #canada
@@GreysUES
Yeah. Rivita is one of them.
Soooo..... Apparently you've never had good cardboard before..
When I was growing up and the internet started taking off, I used to be obsessed with finding weird and quirky gadgets from the 50s-80s online, and my dad used to always tell me "if they were actual good ideas, you would still see them today." I feel like that is true more than ever and this product is the perfect example of it all
This stimulated me to try another crazy coffee idea, James. A friend sent me a video for something called Navajo Coffee. At a time in Navajo history when they were moved to reservations and given rations, flour played an important part in their diet. Navajo fry bread for example. In order to stretch the coffee ration, they roasted flour and added it to the coffee beverage, thickening it in the process. Now, if you toast flour too much (re: Cajun gumbo for example) it loses its thickening ability and just becomes a flavor component. So, I had to follow the video my friend sent and make Navajo coffee. Now this beverage does have precursors. In Mexico, nixtamalized masa is added to beverages to thicken them (champurrado and atole, for example). And we've all had thickened hot chocolates in Spain and Portugal (flour or corn starch). It wasn't totally unpleasant. I would never waste good coffee on making Navajo coffee. But it was historically interesting. Type Navajo Coffee in TH-cam for instructions?
Thanks for the history lesson, Jay. Very interesting!
"It's Cardboard.. It's BAD Cardboard.." I honestly didn't know there were different grades of cardboard in tasting coffee but I've learnt something new haha.
Silver lining. Jamed is learning a whole new palate for BAD coffee.
He can now roast bad baristas more articulately. (Pun intended.)
Check your privilege
Cardboard that wrap your expensive Apple products. Good cardboard.
The cardboard box that houses your Amazon refurbished product. Bad cardboard.
Band name?
I seem to recall way back when that coffee went through a period in the 70s or 80s of very high prices. This could have been a response to that, and people would have considered it "worth" it.
Excellent reference point there explaining this unusual zombie coffee contraption--and yeah, I was in late childhood / very early adolescence then, but I remember this. It was the later 1970s and coffee got rather expensive owing to a major frost in Brazil in 1975.
.
As I bought it at the time, Mad Magazine memorably referenced the coffee price spike in their first Star Wars spoof in Jan 1978 ("Star Roars") as Princess Laidup (Leia) asks Ham Yoyo (Han Solo) why he's trying to rescue her:
.
PL: And what's your reason for doing this Mr. Yoyo?
HY: Princess, I'm doing it for the money!
PL: Then I will see to it you will get plenty. I will give you $20 million!
HY: Wow! Just think of what I can buy with $20 million!
PL: Well, if you go to Earth, you can buy a pound of coffee for $20 million. This is 1999, you know . . . !
www.starwarsarchives.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/1978Mad196.pdf
(pdf page 11).
I’m feeling like this was a 70’s thing. Everyone was trying to “economize.” Gas shortage, energy crisis, inflation.. that is what I remember from my childhood in the 70’s. My parents had a number of doo-hickeys to save money. Especially memorable was a thing to roll newspapers into logs to burn in your fireplace, because energy crisis and turn the heat down to 67 was what they wanted is to do (in the US).
@@lizzieb7373 The brown and orange packaging screams 1970s, too. And you really have to wonder whether running an (admittedly small) electric heater for multiple hours at a time during an energy crisis was any kind of way to save money...
If it was meant for Percolator coffee you should try again with a percolator. Those things turn any coffee into a vile poison, I wouldn't be surprised if the difference is much less notable if you ruin the good coffee as well.
james hoffmann is truly the james hoffmann of james hoffmann
that's so james hoffmann of him
I could do with an unhelpful summary of this comment
@@ToWhom i meant that james hoffmann simply james hoffmanned his james hoffmann to become the james hoffmann we james hoffmann and james hoffmann to this james hoffmann.
“Zombie Coffee” should be a T-shirt
no joke, I'd buy this. Please James!
Agreed
I would prefer coffee zombie
The maker of this machine was a resurrection believer.
And a TV show
No one suffers as good naturedly as you do, James! You're a trooper and we love you the more for it.
This gadget reminds me of the thing my mum used to make a new bar of soap out of all the old bits of soap too small to use. You compacted the bits of soap together to make what I now know was a bar of zombie soap.
My mother used to just "glue" the old scrap of soap onto the new bar by pressing them together when both were wet. No waste! I still do this, as does my daughter.
That's at least still actually soap
@@fionaclaphamhoward5876 the perfect demonstration of waste not want not.
The majority of the US back then was percolating coffee. It was rare to see even a drip coffee maker let alone pour overs or espresso. The coffee quality reflected the equipment. I'm sure the reused grounds were cooked with boiled water through the percolator which probably turned out charcoal water. Yumm!
Everyone: we want a new 'ultimate technique video! How about Aeropress? Or Chemex! Espresso maybe?
James: 'this coffee cycler box is a thing of beauty'
Btw recently got the World Atlas of Coffee. It's fantastic. 10/10 would recommend.
Thank you! I’m working on useful stuff too - it just takes a lot longer
I mean, there seems to be a sizable contingent that does in fact come here to see James suffer, just as he says in the postscript.
@@JasperJanssen I love both the informational content as a coffee fan, and watching him suffering as a man-child. Best channel on TH-cam!
@@JasperJanssen he suffers in such a dignified and gentlmanly way it's impossible to look away
“It’s got some characteristics.” When you want to say something good, but can’t.
My dad once tried something like this. He is no longer allowed to make coffee.
This was perhaps worth it as an intresting bit of coffee chemistry because it shows just how inert coffee is after brewing it vs something like green tea which sometimes is quite good brewed more than once
"zombie coffee"... hahaha i just loved this.
Brilliant, someone should really trademark that “zombie coffee”
Respect for the reading of instructions. Truly, a dying art form
Soo, this used to be a thing in at least Sweden. (I've been told)
Usually people would make coffee in a pot and just add more water and some coffee to the already steeped out grounds.
Coffee used to be expensive! 😁
If there were no coffee around, people could sometimes use tree bark instead to make it really cheap.
Great video!
I always rebrew my grounds at least twise, adding at least 50% fresh coffee. This is actually traditionally done when you do traditional Swedish boiled coffee. The second brew is my favorite.
I guess that's why you're called Simon the Delusional 🤣🤣🤣
🤮
"I will be sending this re-roaster resurrecter to one of my lucky patreon subscribers..." 😂
Instead of giving this away, I’d vote for a part two where James tries to make something useful of this otherwise horribly conceived “invention”. e.g. can you roast coffee which is too light into medium roast range, or can you enhance regular coffee ground for immersion brews into an espresso-suitable level of roast? Of course this is all just an excuse for more of James’s wonderfully expressive “taste tests”. Cheers!
@@geoffseyon3264 Good plan, but wrong channel. Maybe Tested or BigCliveDotCom can make something usable out of it?
Why not have an unlucky patreon draw?
I'm thinking Will It Blend?
@@geoffseyon3264 Pancake machine. This 110V heating coil will end up with 4x the power at 220V, makes it a perfect pancake maker.
James is such a good guy. He knows we come here to laugh at him and watch him suffer and he still wishes that we have a great day.
Hypothesis: this would have been used with stale darkly roasted grocery-store coffee. Taking out 1/3 of that coffee and replacing it with wood-pulp had the advantage of less cigarette-ash flavor. So, in testing it was deemed a success.
This is interesting. My grandfather used to recycle his coffee grounds. He even went as far as having his church save the grounds from the between Sunday school and main service coffee and doughnut break. He would place the coffee grounds on parchment paper and then place that in a food dehydrator. Not sure what people thought of his re-brew.
That look when he tasted the "recycled coffee" 😂
Probably thought - what am I doing? Why am I doing this to myself?
TH-cam, James. It's for TH-cam.
It's for us, it's all for us.
The Algorithm is a spiteful god.
James, sometimes I find myself in a situation where I can't get good ground coffee. Could you do a video about store-bought pre ground coffe? Like is there any technique to help it? Brewing temperature, time, what to look for? Thanks, dude! Your videos hooked me up on good coffee!
Try growing oyster mushrooms using your used coffee grounds. It works great! You buy the oyster mushroom spawn online. you keep the spawn in the fridge until you have enough coffee grounds. Keep your used grounds in a ziploc bag in your freezer. When you have a large amount (lets say a cubic foot of grounds) you put them into a pot and boil them with some water (not too much) to sanitize them. You can also throw in some straw or oak chips or other hard wood chips, but no pine/conifer type chips. You then keep the pot covered overnight to keep out any mold spores in the air from getting in. Once cooled you transfer the grounds into a heavy duty plastic bag. You then mix in the mushroom spores. Make sure your hands are clean and that you do this step rapidly to reduce mold spores in the sir from getting inside. You then plan the bag in a cool, dark place. Give it a few months and you will see the pure white mycelium growing on the grounds. Once the mycelium has taken over and solidief the grounds into a solid white mass, you cut a few slits in the top of the bag. In a few weeks you will see oyster mushroom 'pins' sprouting out. These will then form into large fans of delicious oyster mushrooms for you to enjoy!
Ridiculously entertaining. I downloaded lots of your vids to watch during my flight. Coffee has been my hobby for a few years now, so happy I've found this channel to help me expand my knowledge and laugh uncontrollably.
Yes we needed this.
Oh no we didn't.
"This was interesting, but also bad"
Yes! That's what we want!
I dispose of coffee grounds by using them as skincare and haircare, but they can be used in pellet fuel, manufactured log fuel and manufactured briquettes. Take a look at British company Bio-Bean used to do that.
This was super interesting to me as a tea drinker. High quality tea should be resteeped multiple times, and some types of tea (puerh and oolongs) are best in steep 3 to 6 snd still good through steep ten. My guess is the difference is that less of the plant actually ends up in the liquor. Still, when I was first getting into high quality tea, it seemed wild to resteep expensive tea, but it’s really true that it’s the best way to go.
Technology from an era whose attitude toward children and seatbelts was "Meh"
The attitude was: use it if you want, it's not the government's business to control
for anyone curious about the whole 120/240 volt discrepancy, technology connections released a video 4 days ago talking about it
Just checked out that video... awesome! Thanks for the tip!
He also did a great video on the love Yankees have with the percolator lol
I've loved all of your videos, James, because each one has taught me things I didn't know. Essentially, that after 20 years of brewing espresso, I'm still a beginner : ) I loved this one because I was laughing loudly from about 4:45 onwards!
You’re a brave soul, thanks for taking one for the team.. I do have a friend of the family that… you can’t make this stuff up, he reuses the Keurig cups.. I think they’re shit on first extraction but my girlfriend and her sister both love the speediness of the pods, I pack my French press when we go to the lake house
This reminds me of the type of thing my grandmother used to tell us about how they got by during the Great Depression and during WWII rationing. I forget how many times they would use a teabag :)
Loose leaf tea is specifically made to be resteeped multiple times, often tasting best after a few. Cheap bagged tea is less able to produce high quality tea over and over, but honestly they are usually ok for a few steeps too.
I black out when all the numbers come flying at me...
Nice bike! We love coffee:)
My new idea is to pack a La Marzocco, Chemex and V60 into an adventure van to cater our friends at the trailhead
Dyscalculia?
This video was great. All the faces you made. Fantastic.
My grandma would love this thing!
Given that my late-grandmother reused tea-bags until well after they just made tea-colored water, I can see her using something like this. Perhaps this was being geared to people who grew up in the depression [for the US]. My father-in-law grew up in post-war Germany and he sort of has similar habits, so I can see him using it today.
While tea bags often can’t be steeped multiple times, good quality loose leaf tea is specifically made to be steeped multiple times. In fact, oolong and puerh tea taste best after a few steeps and are good through ten. Black and white tea tend to be good through a few steeps too but loose their quality quicker, and they don’t have the amazing flavor changing ability of other types.
The other issue: You can't do this more than once. So, even if it worked, you couldn't mix the recycled grounds into the fresh coffee, then "recycle" that. It would get endlessly worse and worse. So the best you could hope for is to use these every other time, which significantly reduces the potential savings.
Thanks, James, for subjecting yourself to this so any other inventors out there know not to try this again.
Pretty sad that anybody would do this... I honestly bet the right kind of sawdust would make a better filler material!
Sure, you can keep doing it. You're always using two parts fresh coffee to one part heat-dried garbage (and, presumably, throwing two thirds of youe heat-dried garbage away). On each day, one third of your heat-dried garbage would have been heat-dried more than once. But it's garbage, so that isn't going to make it significantly worse. Actually, it might make it slightly better, as it's going to get slightly more neutral as more of the badness gets burnt out of it.
And it would be very important to do this every day. If you're drinking fresh coffee every other day, you'll constantly be reminded about how bad recycled days are.
I love your videos. I was cringing along with you the whole time.
Love the 70's pot and cups in the back!
I wonder if they sold this same product as a food dehydrator
It actually runs too hot to be a good dehydrator - it would have been bad at that too!
It looks more like an electric frypan.
During the Great Depression, this was apparently pretty common in households to recycle grounds.
Surely for roasting hickory, buckwheat grains, or dandelion root, from fresh to dry goods ready to use as fake coffee, though?
That's depressing.
I get the poverty driver for using recycled coffee, hey I've reused teabags in my student days, but to invest two thirds of fresh coffee in it just doesn't make sense. Just have two thirds of a cup of decent coffee instead.
Chris Roberts the version of the story I’ve heard is people would brew coffee multiple times before they threw the grounds out. As I said, it was during the Depression.
@@chrisjrobrts but this device makes no sense, 100 watts for 2 hours isn’t particularly cheap, it comes out to about the same as the amount of coffee you’d use to actually just make a good cup
Thumbs up for the aeropress in the morning. 👍 and thank you for giving us such great content.
Sometimes I use a pour-over twice...with the same grounds...and every time I imagine James heart breaking a tiny bit. And for that, I am sorry, Coffeeboi.
"The zombie coffee, resurrected and evil" should have been the title
I wonder how many people re-roasted the re-roast coffee back then, just like a never ending cycle of madness.
Probably any diner cheap enough to see one of these as an investment.
There are still people stuck in the cycler, cycle to this day. It is sad to see them and what they have become...
Given how frugal some of my older relatives were back in the 80s, I suspect many did this. Those folks reared in the Depression didn't mess around.
I wonder how long until you have no extractables left
I think after a few cycles, it'll hit the point where even a steeped lawn dirt will taste better than these zombie coffee grounds.
I dry my used coffee grounds and mix it with aloe vera gel for a good body scrub! Love it. Silky smooth and fair skin after scrubbed. I also use it to deodorise the fridge. Some other grounds I use as compost for plants. But no need for electricity. Sun dried.
"Battle of good and evil... And the evil is winning". Thank you. And I did wish you luck, as your expression was priceless.
100 watts, for 2 hours. That's about 7 cents of energy (here in NL). That's the same price as a cup made with cheap supermarket coffee... Ridiculous product.
when's that "weird coffee person" mug becoming available? It's cute
James you always make my day. How you manage to leave off your lovely end music section with no consistency... it’s like an Easter egg that makes me watch to the end of every video!
LOL! My mom got one of these from someone, I had pretty much forgotten about it. Pretty funny that it was ever a thing.
next installment in this series: James flies to Canada to order a drive-thru double double at Tim Hortons.
I'll ship him a 5L if he doesn't want to, let face it, it's still gonna taste the same lol
I tried drinking Tom Hortons black once. I was you and naive and at the start of my coffee career. Burnt fetid bong water was about the best descriptor I could muster at the time
The most amazing thing is that Tim Horton's Coffee is preferred by the majority of Canadians! As a proud Canadian, I am ashamed!
@@jameshoffmann James has tasted bong water: confirmed!
Jack Weinberg speak for yourself. I can't stand it and I one I know drinks it. McDonald's tastes better.
This sounds like some weird thing my grandma would see in an infomercial at 3 am and buy over the phone.
I think I’d enjoy a solid 20 minute video of you just tasting horrible coffee. Your reactions are priceless!
I think my favorite part of this channel is watching you drink unpleasant things. I don't know why, but it's incredibly amusing.
You should call this series "I tried it so you don't have to".
James quick question: Do you have any opinions on "Turkish Coffee"? It's unfiltered and uses very fine grounds.
I am sure he does...
I think I already know roughly what his opinion will be "if you like super dark coffee made with high extraction, and more of the bitter coffee flavours great. But the current taste for single origin coffee isn't compatible with this style since you get far less of the unique flavours that more popular brewing methods offer." or something along those lines.
The coffee you refer to originates from Yemen. Shouldn't be called Turkish coffee
@@danielbateman6518 eh I think light roasts work well as Turkish.
@@danielbateman6518 Wired Gourmet does it with specialty coffee and alsp changed the technique substantially, so it's not bitter. Haven't tried it myself. Traditionally you would add a lot of sugar most of the time.
I love the humour in this video. I love people that know what they are talking about but don't take everything seriously - that's the best form of entertainment - well done sir!
Another great video... you sir do us a huge favor everytime.
My Grandmother did something similar. She would lay it out on a sheet pan and dry it in the oven. The next day she would mix it half old and half new. See she lived during the Great Depression and always did things to make ends meet. I heard that this kind of thing with coffee was not uncommon than and as this was made in the 70's or 80's in the United States that thought was still alive in the minds of a lot of Americans that grew up in that time.
There was also a coffee shortage in the 70s that led to a lot of coffee saving devices, the Mr. Coffees of the era have a camp to make the brew basket smaller for using less coffee.
me while sipping on the instant, watching James recycled ground coffee: *bloody hell*
7:55 nice tea you got there!
A video on recommended grind sizes for your beans specifically and what machine and setting etc would be good as a vid
Quick question : what does the manual say you should do with the mix of good + zombie grounds after you brewed them ? Re-recycle them again ? And if so, how many times ? :D
I guess you recycle them infinitely. At the ratio of one part recycled to two parts fresh, you're throwing away two-thirds of the recycled coffee, so the vast majority of it will only get recycled a couple of times. After a week, less than 0.05% of the original coffee remains. And I would expect that repeatedly recycling actually makes it taste less bad then recycling once. If you recycled the same coffee multiple times, it would essentially just be flavourless filler in the basket, which has to taste better than grounds that have "only" been used once before, so still have the stale remains of coffee in them.
"For people who enjoy watching me suffer"... Yeaaaah, that's why I'm here..
If I can wake up healthy on a Saturday morning, pull a Espresso on my Rancilio and watch a video of James, 2020 is not all bad.
Entertaining as ever, thank you for letting us visit other places and decades in our minds.
I love it when you always read the instructions first. Anyway, not related but really hoping one day James would try coffee from the Philippines in his future videos. :)
"Wait for fragrant aroma" sounds like this is the coffee version of a candle warmer, but not in a good way!
Looks like some sad 1970's design on that device/box. I can't imagine how awful it must have been to use the 1970's canned ground coffee most people were using back then. I have an idea! Let's get James to use some vintage coffee with that device...yeah!
Glad that I got my daily Squarespace dose from you today
It looked like an invention from the 1970's America and that person found it collecting a LOT of dust in their attic, cleaned up the box and sent it to you for testing. Bravo for being brave!
One mistake: This machine was designed for a percolator. Maybe the losses are not apparent when you use an inferior brewing method.
It also likely helps that coffee back then wasn't quite so gourmand, you had your coffee and that was it.. Maybe in a few places you might have cafes which did espressos but those were fairly rare
I was thinking the exact same thing. Like what if this is used with canned coffee and a method from the period (I mean pour over was a thing... just with zero precision.) I'd bet with crap coffee it probably actually works since there's not much there to go with.
A percolator (googling shows a moka) is an inferior brewing method? Isn't this used for Italian espresso?
Esmeralda M. AFAIK Percolators basically boiled your coffee grounds for potentially quite some time, making strong and very bitter coffee.
@@SilvaDreams also, most people aren't like James. He's kind of a drama queen, and I don't know if what portion of him being a drama queen is real and what portion is him needing to maintain his persona as a coffee snob. His channel relies on him having that persona so people believe he's got such a refined pallet that he can taste things normal people can't. So it might not be as bad as he's making it out to be; if he can truly "taste things normal people can't."
“Uses the same energy as a 100w light bulb” So uses 100w?
100w is measure of power, not energy.
Adi Yadi You’re right, but the same applies to a 100w light-bulb in the original claim of the package
I think the 100W remark was a pun intending to remind us of how NOT energy efficient appliances were in the ‘80’s. As a comparison, a laptop today which does a heck more than this “device” runs on 15W of power.
@@geoffseyon3264 this thing isn't really comparable to a laptop, it's basically just a hotplate - so it would be pretty efficient at what it's doing
@@shuzzd not just pretty efficient, 100% efficient. All power is being turned into heat.
Coffee grounds are insanely valuable to any organic gardener. You can compost them but you can also grind up egg shell and add to the grounds with any common vegetation around and make a fermented plant juice with added calcium from eggshell and added magnesium from the coffee.
My dad only emptied the filter once a day and he made 4 pots a day. Just kept scooping it in
"Ten grams of zombie coffee that has been resurrected and is evil." Bravo, sir, for battling with zombie coffee!
You forgot: "I'm interested to know YOUR experiences with this device! Do you have it? Do you use it often? Do you also hate it?" ;P
"Are you a zombie who drinks this stuff?"
@ 5.10. "one third is the filth" James educates me on coffee but he is also a comedian as well. That made me laugh, a lot.
You go above and beyond for us, thanks from NZ.
Protip from the frugal - Brewing method matters when re-using grounds.
Keep in mind-- this ridiculous kitchen accessory was made during a time in which drip coffee machines were probably the most likely to be found in an average consumer's home, but from a chemistry perspective you'd really want to give the grounds a lot more time to release the last echoes of coffee still in them.
Bonus if you can actually introduce steam atop the grounds instead of liquid water (water molecules will penetrate the grounds easier).
It will still taste like stale, old coffee but your experience might improve from bad cardboard and potatoes to mediocre packing peanuts and squash.
Zombie coffee: a coffee for zombies, made up of zombified coffee to be brewed by zombies.
davidevoid GRAAAAIIINSSS!!!!
You’re welcome.
Certified FZBZ(For Zombies, By Zombies)
It's called "instant".
You are brave and you've taken one for the team today James. Bravo.
I feel like there are a ton of products from that era that got loads of interesting claims and nothing to back them up. Thank you for taking the time to test this ‘invention’ out!