How I Brew
For existing members, hi again and I hope everyone has had a chance to dig into (and enjoy) the coffees I delivered last weekend. For new members, thank you for joining and I look forward to delivering some excellent coffees next month! For today’s fairly lengthy but essential discussion, I just wanted to share what some of my go-to starting brewing recommendations are.
“New” equipment - I
recently acquired an Acaia scale and have been using the app to track how I am
brewing and I have to say they are way better for home use than I expected. I
never used them to their full potential in a service setting, cause who has
time to get the app set up and save a brewing print in the middle of a rush?
This is not necessarily important to brew great cups at home, but it certainly
helps tracking your brewing history.
WATER - I hate talking
about water, but I do have a lot of opinions on it. Here we go. The official
SCA standard for water hardness is 50-175 ppm of CaCO3, which is a pretty wide
range. What this means is don't use distilled water (0 ppm) but also don't use
city tap water if your city has bad water. Chicago is actually at 148 ppm so technically it’s okay to use; this is
because those giant industrial-ass looking machines way out in Lake Michigan
are positioned far enough out to not collect the dirtier water closer to the
shore. In general though, if you use any sort of filter, your water is going
to end up in the recommended range. However, the most important thing is
that if this number remains constant, your brew parameters will adjust around
it, which is one of the many reasons I may use a different ratio with my PUR
filter than someone with a full on reverse osmosis system, and even different
again than someone putting their trust in the great Chicago Department of Water
Management.
TEMPERATURE - Now while
I have absolutely zero scientific evidence to back this up, in my experience
the worse your water filtering is, the lower your temperature needs to be. At
home, I use a water temperature of 92-93 C. While working at Purple Llama, I
needed to use a higher water temperature of 95 C because the reverse osmosis
system kept the water at around 60-70 ppm. Higher water temperature is able to
extract more flavor compounds/acids from ground coffee; however, sometimes it
takes undesirable acids from the grounds, especially when combined with a
higher water hardness. A lower temperature with higher water hardness is how
we get around undesirable flavors. Especially in coffees like the frozen
cherry, which I'm sure at a high extraction is going to give you some funky
flavors.
RATIO/GRIND IN RELATION
TO TDS - Next is a tricky topic that I know people in the coffee establishment
won't agree with...how the TDS [total dissolved solids] reading from a finished
brew only matters in terms of repeating a successful brew method. I was once
told by a very pro-establishment coffee person that a finely ground, faster
brew time and a coarser, slower brew time would make the exact same flavor
coffee. This is just not true. They will have the same TDS theoretically, but
based on experience, the acids and flavor compounds will be very different.
Some coffees need to be ground coarser and brewed slowly (more pouring
increments/pulses) and some coffees benefit from a faster brew time and finer
grind. In my previous and future posts, you will see me mention a faster or
slower brew time with associated grind settings. I am basing this off of how I
experience tasting each coffee at different particle size and brew time. So,
here’s an experiment for you: next time you make coffee, try going a little bit
finer and try to complete all pouring at least 30 seconds faster than you
normally do. This can be done by pouring faster and/or taking less pulses; the
latter means that your pour volume per pulse should increase. Record what your
drop time is and take a long pondering trip into the world of flavors. Then,
next time go a couple clicks coarser than normal and do the opposite of the
previous (finer grind) brew; either pour slower and/or add more pulses with less
water volume per pulse. Compare this drop time to the previous faster brew.
This slower brew could be about a minute longer than the faster brew. Now taste
the difference. In general, the faster brew will be more delicate/tea-like
with more acidity. The slower brew will have more body and more sweetness, with
less pronounced fruit notes. If you’re using an immersion brew method
(Clever, French Press, AeroPress) just decrease/increase steep time and
disregard all mention of pulses. The differences in cup quality should still be
present. So if you’ve tried the experiment for yourself, you have now tasted
two drastically different tasting brews that have probably very similar TDS. Which
brings me back to my point of all this: don't shoot for a TDS when you make
your coffee. I tend to use the "faster" brew method for coffees
with a profile similar to washed Ethiopian coffees or Kenyan coffees; something
that is tasty because of brighter flavors. Sometimes this can sacrifice
sweetness, however, the complexity of citrus notes and tropical fruit can
become more clean and clarified. The "slower" brew method is what I
use for coffees like the frozen cherry natural I delivered last month from
Junto. Sometimes with coffees like that, if you grind too fine and brew too fast
you extract the high acidity flavors and those flavors from a natural can be
fermenty and iodiney. Thus, a coarser grind and slower pour will extract the
desired big sweet flavors.
As always, if you have
any questions/thoughts about any of this please feel free to leave a comment
that I can reply to. Someone else might have the same question so better to
leave a comment to help an all-around understanding as a group!
Comments
It has been absolutely invaluable in helping me improve the coffee I make and showing these beans the respect they deserve.
As I’ve acquired tools and brewed more and more I’ve had a number of questions that could use answering / clarification.
Here we go:
1. Grind
a) What grinder do you use?
b) What is you normal grind setting on your grinder? When you say “slightly coarser” or “much coarser” how much are you changing the grind setting?
c) I have a Porlex mini (thanks to you). How many clicks would you guess are equivalent to your standard grind? I know this is not exact as they vary per grinder (and it’s not exactly a science).
d) If you were to brew 34 grams instead of 17 grams how much would you change the grind? Are there any grind-thresholds for to fine or to coarse?
2. Taste Adjustments
a) If a brew is too bitter or too watery what would you adjust it?
b) If the taste is off what is the first thing you adjust. Grind, ratio, pulse, temp?
c) How do you determine which one is the one to change?
3. Bloom
a) How do you calculate the grams for bloom? Is it a ratio, something you eyeball?
b) Following your bloom quantities in specific posts my bloom generally has a thin layer of water covering the grinds. Is that correct or should they just be damp?
c) How long do you let the coffee bloom? Is it timed?
d) Do you count bloom-time in overall brew time?
e) I assume you count the bloom-grams in total grams of water but might as well confirm while we’re at it.
4. Pulse
a) What is your normal pulse time? Is it more when a quantity of water has passed through the grinds?
c) How do you determine when it’s time to pour another pulse?
b) What are you using as the determining factor in choosing the amount of pulses?
Thanks again for doing all this, it has been fantastic.
1:
a. I use a wilfa svart for filter and baratza sette 270 for espresso. the Sette sucks for grinding coarser.
b. So a normal grind setting might be like 19 for me. Slightly finer on mine is 20-21 and slightly coarser is 17-18. Much finer would be a 22. So these are all small adjustments and for v60 I never go too far out of a 4-5 click range.
c.The steps on a porlex are greater than by grinder. So I would actually suggest using same grind when i say slightly finer/coarser but then slowing down or speeding up your pour to achieve a similar result.
d. You would need to grind a couple clicks coarser on your porlex. I am not sure about thresholds on that thing, but I bet five clicks finer or coarser is too much.
2
a. Too bitter I would probably go a little coarser on the grind as it might be overextracted but it could be the brew is too strong also, which means I would use more water. If it is watery then it is most likely too much water and I would tighten the ratio.
b. Usually a combination of grind and ratio, following my above answer. If i go a lot coarser then I will need to split up the pulses a bit as well.
c. Takes many years of experience to know the answer to that. I sometimes am clueless as to next step so I will guess occasionally. For example - weak and bitter might mean too much water went through and brewing lasted too long. So less water and faster pour and/or coarser grind. Heavy, aggressive, and one-dimensional might mean too much coffee and not enough water and grind was too coarse. I know the latter because not enough flavors were extracted from the fibers of the bean, causing the complexities to remain in the grinds.
3
a. It is usually about 2x the dry dose of coffee. But more or less depending on makign sure bed is wet.
b. Sometimes there will be a layer and sometimes not, depends on the coffee and how old it is.
c. Also depends on how old coffee is. You don't want to let it rest too long and dry out, but also you don't want to start again while it is aggressively degassing.
d. Yes
e. Also yes.
4
a. You normally want the bed to fall a bit before performing a pulse. But typically from the start of one pulse, the next pulse should fall 35-40 seconds after.
b. I typically just have a pouring schedule. Like 30 s, 70 s, 110 s. But if it is falling faster I will adjust that schedule and pour less in each pulse and add another pulse I wasn't planning on.
c. Tends to be where the coffee is from. A washed ethiopian or bright Kenyan i know is gonna be bright I will want to grind it as fine as I am able to To make sure it is clean as possible and let the acidity shine.
No problem glad you're so interested!
1.
a. I’d love to know which grinders you think are best: Price, size, etc. Maybe a short post?
c. This is interesting and jives with what I’ve been finding. Moving a click doesn’t always work well / correspond to slight grind size adjustments in your notes. Treating this as a more precious variable has really helped.
3.
c. What do you do / use as a guide to know when it is done degassing?
4.
a. If I want the bed to fall a bit, what does that mean? Am I seeing the top of the grinds below the water surface? Just letting some water go through?
5. Quantity (NEW)
a. How does the quantity of beans effect brew time. If you brew 17g and I brew 34g am I aiming for the same brew time? Twice as long?
Judging this has been one of the harder aspects as my assumed “correct” brew time. The expected correct time and the best tasting cup don’t generally correspond.
b. Same for pulses, if you brew 17g and I brew 34g is my pulse schedule the same, twice as long?
6 .Specs (NEW)
a. How do you record your brewing specs after each attempt / test? Do you use an app, write them down?
3. A few different things, sometimes there is just a really gassy coffee and is still bubbling away at 45 seconds. Sometimes there is hardly any. For a coffee still de-gassing at about 40 s, I look for a change in color. When it goes from light to darker brown that means hydration is escaping the bed and I need to begin the extraction phase.
4. That means there is an outer layer of coffee on the filter that you can see, as the center of the bed is falling. AKA you can see a ring of non-immersed grounds on the filter.
5. a. So for brewing more coffee, the size of the bed of grounds increases. This provides more resistance to water flow. Meaning water takes longer to get through the grounds, adding more contact time of water to coffee. I would go a click or two coarser and expect a longer brew time if your pulse times are the same. Of course if your pulse times are the same you are going to be pouring much more water per pulse to achieve the same pouring schedule.
b. If i was doing 3 pulses in the 17 gram brew, I would do 4-5 pulses in the 34 gram brew. With a coarser grind, and each pulse taking longer to pour than in each 17 gram pulse pour. This is all steps that will need to be experimented with though to find the best taking brew.
6. I have an acaia scale that comes with an app. It shows my ratio, brew time, grind setting and temperature. Of course this is something I could just be writing down, it is nice having the visual.