Roast #23: V3 Brewing Methods

📝 + ☕

last edit: 06/24

Hello hello!

This week is the week! I've canceled most of my plans and will likely be roasting every day for two weeks. 🥲

Below is the brewing guide for V3

Also, note that everyone's palate is different. What tastes good to you might taste bad to me. I'm simply sharing brewing methods and brewing strategies that I found to have made coffee taste good to me. Treat what's shared here as suggestions rather than rules.

My setup for this round is as follows:

• Coffee grinder: EK43

• Coffee filters: Hario V60 Size 02 filters (coffee filters)

• Crewer: Plastic V60

• Kettle: Fellow Stagg EKG

Several other variables that I kept constant:

• Brew temperature was around 92-95C for my testing

• Amount of grounds used was around 18g

• I let the bloom sit for at least 40-60 seconds

  • For the other pours, I don’t track too much on brew time. I’ve found the first pour (after bloom) goes by okay, and then the second pour could sometimes clog. I’d pull the brew if it starts to clog. I view the last drips as drips contributing to the body, and am okay losing those last drips.

• I swirled the brewer for the other non-blooming pours to level the brew bed

Honey Pink Bourbon:

Grind Size:

Honey Pink Bourbon on EK43 at 8.5

I went with a dial setting of around 8.5. I found that acidity was better expressed with a coarser grind setting.

Pour Results:

This bean was very heavy and sharp in taste. I found that to best get the citrus out without bringing out the muddier and deeper notes, we should go with a more diluted recipe. 

The recipe:

1. 60ml bloom

2. 150ml pour

3. 90ml pour

If the resulting taste is still too heavy, then go with an even more diluted recipe.

Aim to brew for something that tastes balanced with hints of orange and citrus.

Resting Notes:

I found that this bean didn't need too much rest. And I think because of this, letting this bean rest too long resulted in a loss of the "orange" acidity. I wouldn't let this rest two weeks+ before brewing. Start your box with this bean first.

Koji Caturra:

Grind Size:

Koji Caturra on EK43 at 7.5

I went with a dial setting of around 7.5. Like the Honey Pink Bourbon, I found a coarser grind size to accentuate the desired sweetness.

If you are getting more acrid, sour notes, grind finer. I got hit with this while I was dialing in beans for my pop-up. I noticed that beans that were rested longer didn’t do well with the 7.5 grind size, so I moved it down to 6.75 and I was back where I wanted.

Pour Results:

I found this bean to work well with the same recipe as the Honey Pink Bourbon.

The recipe:

1. 60ml bloom

2. 150ml pour

3. 90ml pour

I suspect something similar is happening where the sweet yeast notes are accentuated when you pour with a strategy that's more diluted.

The difference between this and the honey pink bourbon is if you go with a lower volume of water, the umami flavors come out, and the sweetness kinda disappears. With the honey pink bourbon, the orange notes are still there, but they become much less clear.

Flavors for this bean are best when warm to hot. Once it cools down to cold, the umami takes over.

Resting Notes:

This bean needs rest. What I'd suggest is you brew this when you get it just so you can get a baseline of how it tastes without rest. Then give it a 7 to 12 days of rest, rebrew, and compare. I found instances where the bean excelled even close to a month out.

I'll be honest; roasting this bean was really tricky. If you are getting hints of grass, that's a signal that it should rest more. If you are getting more sour notes, go finer.

Yirgacheffe Kerume:

Grind Size:

I went with a dial setting of 6. I found the brew to be very lacking when we went coarse.

Pour Results:

I found that this bean performed better when we tuned our brewing strategy to optimize for extraction.

The recipe:

1. 50ml bloom

2. 100ml pour

3. 100ml pour

The flavors I got were light acidity with a good balance in body.

I also accidentally found that this bean goes well for espresso. Since it's not too acidic in flavor, the resulting shot wasn't mouth-puckering but rather almond and chocolate with a hint of grape. So if you have a machine, I'd be curious about your thoughts on this too!

Resting Notes:

This bean didn't change too much with rest. I'd give it maybe 2 to 4 days rest before brewing, though I wouldn't expect a massive difference in quality if you let it rest for longer.

I did notice that two weeks resulted in reduced acidity and an increase in stale notes.

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Again, these are my notes on the beans with my palette and my equipment. You will likely have to do some tinkering with your setup to get a brew you like. 

If you have problems brewing, feel free to contact me, and I'd be happy to try and help figure out what we should change to get you a good brew.

Thanks again for reading!