Burgeon

Coffee

4 min read

I started brewing coffee in 2021 after being recommended to give it a try by some friends. My primary focus and joy has been pour overs using the Hario V60 but I’ve recently been mixing it up by occasionally using a Kalita Wave. I personally have not felt the need to venture into espresso based drinks especially due to the potential health concerns associated with unfiltered coffee.1 Like many things in life, this one isolated thing isn’t something of concern but when stacked with known and unknown things it can be. Light roasted single origin beans are my preference as these beans typically do not taste like coffee you can get at a major chain. I have a bias towards fruity and floral tasting notes and a disdain for everything overly “roasty.”

I used to keep a coffee diary of sorts where I would note down the following when working through a bag of beans:

  • brew time and ratio
  • water temperature
  • grind size (clicks)
  • final brew weight

I have stopped this completely and now brew with a holistic approach that uses first principles as a guide and experiments that trusted figures in the community have done to guide my brewing methodology. All recipes really are just starting point as you will need to adjust how you brew everything you get a new bag of beans.

A couple things I do that might not be mentioned in the recipe section and are worth explaining:

  • rinsing V60 filters to get it “set” in the brewer, it is not to remove any taste as the tech has improved a lot
  • Ross Droplet Technique2 Basically adding a minisicle amount of water to reduce static electricity so grounds do not stick/make a mess
  • maintaining a flat coffee bed, note that this is different from making the bed flat right before you finish brewing

Gear

  • Stainless steel3 I used to use plastic V60s but I switched to a stainless steel one once I realized I wouldn’t stop brewing coffee. I still think a plastic V60 is easier to brew with.
    • Gooseneck kettle (stove top)
    • Hario V60 (02)
    • Kalita Wave (185)
  • Timemore
    • C1 grinder
    • Black Mirror Scale (2021)
  • Bleached OEM filters
  • Filtered water
  • Nonwoven bags for cold brew
  • AeroPress - original

Recipes

The following pour over recipes were developed using 18g of beans and 300ml of water.

V60

  • 02 variant
  • grounds
    • 20 clicks on C1
    • ratio of 1000ml/60g
  • set filter with water
    • preheat your brewer if you’re not using a plastic one.4 It’s fine to just quickly pour hot water over a stainless steel brewer but for ceramics you will need a lot more.
  • add grounds to brewer
  • bloom with twice the weight of the beans using boiling water for 45s, swirl the brewer to help saturate beans
  • in a circular motion, slowly pour until all the floating grounds have sunk, then switch to a pour in the middle and bring the spout as close as possible to the surface of the water while maintaining the same flow rate
  • target brew time for the baseline is 3 minutes

Kalita Wave

  • 185 variant
  • grounds
    • 24 clicks on C1
    • ratio of 1000ml/60g
  • DO NOT set the filter, this will cause the brew to instantly stall5 This is a known issues with the original stainless steel Kalita Wave, apparently the special edition variants do not have this problem
  • gently place the filter in the brewer, then dump the grounds, ideally it doesn’t sit all the way down in the brewer
  • bloom with twice the weight of the beans using boiling water for 45s, swirl the brewer to help saturate beans
  • for the remaining water, split it between three pours, resting until water line is approximately 1 cm above the coffee bed
  • target brew time for the baseline is 4 minutes

AeroPress

I’m working on a modified version of James Hoffmann’s technique

Cold Brew

The cold brew recipe was developed using 50g of coffee to 600ml of water to make ready to drink. It should be noted that scaling this up to the extreme in terms of concentration or volume will likely involve a mix or all of the following:

  • a longer steeping time
  • finer grind size
  • using multiple bags/clothes to increase the surface area to volume ratio

I also opted to use nonwoven brew bags as they help with clean up.

  • grounds
    • 35 clicks on C1
    • 1000ml/84g
  • put grounds into nonwoven bag and place in brew vessel
  • (optional) keep the bag open, bloom with equals parts boiling water and stir
  • tie bag
  • fill until target weight is reached
  • cover and wait overnight
  • remove bag and serve
  • (optional) for maximum clarity you can run it through a filter

Graph View

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