This kind of pouring is essentially impossible without a gooseneck kettle, and it certainly requires a bit of effort to master. For best results, the kettle should be about three-quarters full (the flow rate out of the spout changes more drastically as the water level in the kettle decreases, which can be tricky for beginners), and it can feel a bit heavy at first. Over time, people supposedly develop a “barista muscle,” and it becomes easier for them to hold and control a full kettle in one hand for the entire pour time. (I, for one, remain a weakling to this day.) It’s also helpful to practice pouring into your device with a filter but without the grounds. Practice continuous pouring with a familiar amount of water—say, 250 to 400 grams. Time yourself and start over if you break your stream. See how slowly you can go. If you can pour 250 continuous grams of water in three minutes or longer, you can probably do anything.
A Note about Agitation
Agitation happens when the coffee grounds move around in the water. Agitation exposes coffee particles to fresh water more quickly, which in effect speeds up extraction. A certain level of agitation happens with most devices because you must introduce the water at some point, and that’s going to stir things up a bit. As the water level rises and falls, the coffee grounds move with it—that’s more agitation. Most of the time, you probably want to keep extra agitation, beyond what’s happening as you pour the coffee, to a minimum. However, some methods, particularly full-immersion methods, may benefit from a quick stir or two. How do you know how much to agitate? It’s just something you’ll have to pick up with practice. But in the beginning, it’s a good skill to keep in mind and work toward developing.
Pulsing
Pulsing is a different kind of pouring technique. Instead of continuously pouring the water, you take breaks at certain intervals to allow the water to drain. How often you break and for how long is highly variable—everyone has their own opinions about what’s best for what kind of device. Generally speaking, one break every 50 to 60 grams is fairly standard.
While pulsing involves taking a break in between pours, that doesn’t mean it’ll draw out the brewing time. Pulsing necessitates pouring faster (because of the breaks), and the target brewing time on a pour-over device generally remains the same whether you pulse or continuously pour.
In my experience, pulsing is more forgiving and easier to master than continuous pouring. Pulsing is way less stressful for one thing, and it lets you easily make adjustments to your speed as you go. Pulsing also allows you to brew smaller batches of coffee and still maintain the proper contact time.
Blooming
No matter which technique you use, blooming your coffee—that is, thoroughly prewetting the grounds with a small amount of hot water before you continue pouring—is another easy way to improve your cup. It sounds silly: How could just wetting the grounds and waiting have a significant effect on the end flavor of the cup? But it seems to. At base, the heat and moisture provided by the bloom prepare the coffee for extraction, and they do so in two ways:
•Releasing carbon dioxide. Fresh coffee contains a lot of carbon dioxide because it gets trapped in the beans during the roasting process. When you wet coffee grounds, they swell and bubble as the carbon dioxide is released. (One good indicator that your coffee has gone stale is that there is little to no bubbling during the bloom). Coffee naturally off-gasses carbon dioxide, but hot water speeds up the process. Carbon dioxide, as anyone who has drunk soda water can tell you, is bitter. Blooming makes sure all of that bitter carbon dioxide doesn’t end up in your cup.
•Beginning the extraction process. Blooming ensures that the beans’ carbon dioxide gets out of the way of the other solubles before real extraction starts. If the carbon dioxide isn’t released, the gas repels the water, providing the other solubles with a protective shield. This makes it more difficult for the water to reach these solubles, which makes it harder for you to make a tasty cup.
How much water should you pour for a bloom? A good rule of thumb is to double the weight of your dose and use that amount of water. For example, if your dose is 14 grams (about 2 tablespoons) of coffee, your bloom weight would be 28 grams (about 41⁄2 tablespoons) of water. You want enough water to soak the grounds but not so much that it streams through the device (some dripping is okay). Adding too much water at once can trap the carbon dioxide and defeat the purpose of the bloom. How long should you wait before continuing with the brew? A good bloom time is about 30 to 45 seconds, depending on the coffee’s freshness, roast, and dose. For example, fresh, light-roasted coffee usually needs a longer bloom time, as do bigger doses. Once the bubbles start to slow, that’s a good sign that the bloom time should be ending.
At this point you might be thinking: Why only 30 to 45 seconds? Why not wait until all of the bubbles have completely subsided? For one, the bubbles usually don’t stop. Two, if carbon dioxide is escaping, you can bet your butt that other volatile aromatic compounds are escaping as well. Volatile aromatics are incredibly delicate and prone to wafting off into the ether—that’s why they are called volatile!—but it’s important to keep them in the coffee because they greatly contribute to flavor (aroma is a big part of flavor; see page 193).
Zero That Scale!
Don’t forget to zero your scale before you start pouring water for the bloom. The weight of neither the device nor the coffee should be included in the bloom weight.
DIALING IT IN
As mentioned earlier, when coffee professionals use the phrase “dialing it in,” they are talking about using trial and error to determine the correct brew variables, or specs, for a cup of coffee (or a shot of espresso). In other words, they’re talking about fine-tuning their brew. As you’ve seen, all of the brew variables discussed in this chapter can affect the outcome of the cup, so it’s important to get them just right.
Professional baristas may need to tweak some of these variables as often as daily. This is because brew variables simply are not constant. As previously discussed, grind size is not uniform, and water temperature can vary throughout the brewing time. On top of that, the device, type and age of the bean, pouring consistency (in the case of pour-over methods), and even the weather outside can all affect how a cup turns out—yes, even temperature and humidity can influence the way your coffee brews! That’s because coffee is hydroscopic, which means it sucks moisture from the air. This plumps up the beans (at least on a molecular level), which may make them denser once they are ground. One solution for this might be to coarsen the grind. This issue is more common with espresso, but it’s a good example of how certain nonobvious variables can affect the cup and force some changes to the base specs.
Another common instance of specs needing to be tweaked is when super-fresh beans are used instead of not-so-fresh beans. A professional barista might use a slightly finer grind than usual with very fresh beans because they contain a lot of carbon dioxide and the gas can interfere with extraction. A finer grind can help counteract this interference early on, and as the week goes by, the barista may loosen the grind accordingly.
While you are learning and dialing it in at home, be sure to change only one brew variable at a time. That way, you can track your progress. If you change two or more variables at once, you’ll never be able to draw a definitive line between the adjustment and the result. It’s also easier to understand and remember each variable’s effects when you test them individually. For example, if your coffee is too strong and you think either the brew ratio or the grind setting is off, only change one at a time to see which one is the problem.
As you brew more and more coffee, the process will become less like trial and error and more like concrete decision-making. You’ll eventually be able to identify problems and ways to solve them quickly without using a lot of guesswork. You can also learn some tips and strategies for troubleshooting problems in the Appendix (see page 251).
CHAPTER 2
Choosing Hardware
YOU MAY BE WONDERING why this chapter comes before the chapt
er on beans, which would seemingly be the first step to better coffee. Let me put it to you this way: you can put the best beans in the world into a horrible automatic machine and it will turn them into bad coffee as quick as you please (you’ll learn why in this chapter). If you don’t have a device with the potential to make great coffee, then even great beans can’t make it happen.
The simple fact is that the device you choose to brew on—and how you choose to brew with it—has a measurable impact on your cup. You have a series of important device-related choices ahead of you, and this chapter will help you make them. There is a ridiculous number of options in the world of brewing devices, but the first favor I did for you is reduce that number. This chapter focuses on 10 devices, including my favorites. Any one of them could be a great choice, but the point of this chapter is to help you make the best choice for you. That’s why I focus on the factors that tend to be most important to home brewers looking to buy a new brewing device: ease of use, availability, and affordability.
However, you can’t make a good purchasing decision without considering the other types of equipment you want (or don’t want) to invest in—most brewing devices require a bit of company. This chapter outlines some of the other additions you can make to your brew bar—filters, grinders, scales, kettles, and more—and how they can improve (or damage) your cup.
FULL-IMMERSION VERSUS POUR-OVER BREWING DEVICES
There are two primary ways to manually brew coffee: the full-immersion method and the pour-over method. When choosing a brewing device, this is the first decision you’ll have to make: Which method do you want to use? As you’ll see, the kind of method you choose will affect not only the characteristics of your brew but also how much money you spend, how much time and energy you use making coffee, and how much additional equipment you might need.
Full-immersion (often simply called immersion) brewing involves essentially the same process as what you would use to steep tea. The water is introduced all at once, and the grounds soak fully submerged. The water then penetrates the grounds to extract the flavor and texture compounds. At the very end of the brewing process, the grounds are filtered from the coffee.
Pour-over brewing, on the other hand, involves pouring water over the grounds and through a filter. The key there is to introduce the water slowly throughout the length of the brew cycle. As it washes through the grounds, the water takes the coffee’s flavor and texture compounds with it.
One big advantage of immersion devices is that they tend to be a bit easier to master than pour-over devices because they do not require a high level of technique or any special equipment. Immersion brewing is a set-it-and-forget-it way of making coffee. In contrast, pour-over devices require a certain degree of technique to make sure enough water is reaching the grounds for the correct length of time. Such precision generally warrants an extremely slow and controlled pour, a feat most easily accomplished with a gooseneck kettle. This kind of attention to detail is less important when it comes to immersion brewing, so if you aren’t interested in investing in extra equipment right off the bat, you may want to reconsider using a pour-over method.
Keep in mind, however, that all devices exist on a spectrum. As you’ll see in the device profiles starting on page 69, some pour-over devices require less technique (and less additional equipment) than others.
A NOTE ON THE AUTOMATIC COFFEE MACHINE
Even though coffee is simple, I’ve just spent several thousand words talking about its various facets and making suggestions that will help you replicate coffee from a shop at home. It’s not difficult to see why pushing a single button on an automatic coffee machine is much more tempting than dealing with any of this.
The problem is that most standard automatic coffee machines will never replicate coffee-shop quality at home—even if you opt for drip coffee instead of pour over when you go out. That’s because most automatic machines simply aren’t designed for optimal coffee brewing, for two main reasons:
•Most automatic machines cannot reach the proper brew temperature quickly enough or maintain it for the length of the brew cycle.
•Most automatic machines do not achieve the proper contact time.
In other words, automatic coffeemakers have temperature and time working against them.
On the other hand, a manual device allows you to easily beat a typical automatic machine on both fronts. Here’s an anecdote to put this into perspective. At the office where I work, we mostly use a Melitta pour-over system, but we also have a standard automatic coffee machine. When we make pour-over coffee, we do not consistently or precisely measure the water or the beans, and we don’t use a gooseneck kettle. We don’t have scales or even volumetric measuring cups, and we don’t use a good grinder (yet). In short, there is very little special technique involved with our pour-over method. We have work to do, after all! Still, coffee made with the pour-over system is perceptibly better tasting than that made with the automatic machine, even though the automatic machine is arguably making coffee more consistently than we humans are. But, at the very least, we humans are bringing the water up to the correct temperature, and the design of the Melitta device slows down the pour time—even if we pour into it as much water as we can as quickly as we can.
Does using the Melitta this way result in craft coffee-shop coffee? Not usually, but sometimes it does. Either way, it is good enough for the context of our situation—and, again, it is perceptibly better than the coffee made with the machine. I cannot stress this enough. It’s crazy!
This isn’t to say that no automatic machines can brew high-quality coffee. Most coffee shops use automatic drip machines that can produce delicious coffee, but those are for commercial use and baristas calibrate them regularly. The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) tests consumer-grade coffee machines each quarter, and if a machine meets its standards (mainly the time and temperature considerations described previously), it becomes an SCA Certified Home Brewer, and you will likely be able to make a good cup with it. As of this writing, that list includes the following machines:
•Bonavita 8-Cup Digital Coffee Brewer model BV1900TD (retail: $199.95)
•Bonavita 8-cup Coffee Brewer model BV1900TS (retail: $189.99)
•Behmor Brazen Plus Customizable Temperature Control Brew System (retail: $199)
•KitchenAid Custom Pour Over Brewer model KCM0802 (retail: $230)
•KitchenAid Pour Over Coffee Brewer model model KCM0801OB (retail: $199.99)
•OXO On 12-Cup Coffee Brewing System (retail: $299.99)
•OXO On 9-Cup Coffee Maker (retail: $199.99)
•Technivorm Moccamaster (retail: $309 to $360)
•Wilfa Precision Automatic Coffee Brewer (retail: $329.95)
This isn’t an exhaustive list of automatic coffeemakers that can make high-quality coffee, but it’s a good place to start your research if you are in the market for one. As you can see, they are all rather pricey, which makes them inaccessible to a lot of people who want to make coffee at home.
It’s also important to realize that simply owning a machine doesn’t mean you’ll be able to make foolproof coffee without thinking about anything. The machine may take care of water temperature and brewing time for you, but you still need to make decisions about the brew ratio, the grind size, and what kind of coffee to use, and you need to operate the machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
BASIC SETUP AND TECHNIQUE: FULL IMMERSION
Use the Full Immersion basic setup and technique for:
The French Press page 212
The AeroPress page 219
The Abid Clever page 224
Use the Pour Over basic setup and technique for:
The Melitta page 232
The BeeHouse page 235
The Walküre page 237
The Kalita Wave page 240
The Chemex page 243
The Hario V60 page 246
Note: The Siphon requires a modified setup (see page 228).
BASIC SETUP AND TECHNIQUE: POUR OVER
HOW DO FILTERS FACTOR IN?
Almost all coffee devices need some kind of filter to keep grounds out of the final brew. If you are currently using an automatic coffeemaker, then you are likely familiar with the wavy, flat-bottomed filters that work with many of those machines. Manual brew methods use an array of different filters—generally a far cry from the wavy kind—that are designed to work with specific devices (I talk about these more specifically in the device profiles starting on page 58). These filters come in different shapes, are made from a variety of materials, and are not always readily available to you—all factors to consider before you settle on a device. For example, if you don’t want to mess with purchasing filters at all, you may want to choose a device with the filter already built in.
The filter you use, I would argue, has a greater effect on the quality of your brew than the device itself. The oldest and most primitive forms of filters, such as those found on the French press (metal) and Walküre (ceramic), trap insoluble solids (the grounds) and allow liquid to pass through, making the brew more drinkable. Although these filters are fine enough to trap most of the grounds, they still allow insoluble oils and solids—also referred to as sediment, the very fine wisps of suspended particles you may see floating near the bottom of your cup—through. These filters tend to yield coffee that feels heavy on the tongue (because of the suspended sediment) and features robust notes (because of the flavor-packing oils).
Meanwhile, paper filters, which date back to the early 20th century, are designed to trap finer sediments and insoluble oils, leading to what professionals call a cleaner cup. Some people prefer this to the fuller-bodied feel of coffee made with metal or ceramic filters, but others don’t—it’s completely based on personal preference.
Craft Coffee Page 5