Day: September 13, 2023

After-dinner brew

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: “Cold Brew Blend” medium roast (Guatemala/Colombia) from Local Coffee Roasting Co. in Roxana, DE
  • 17g coffee / 250g water (1:14.7)
  • JX: 2 rotations (20 on the grind chart / 60 total clicks)
  • Water at 95°C
  • Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique (see below)
  1. Preheat V60, pre-moisten filter, add coffee, and tare scale
  2. Make small indentation in center of coffee grounds
  3. 0:00: Pour 55g of water to bloom, then return kettle to base
  4. 0:10 – 0:15: Gently Swirl
  5. 0:45 – 1:00: Pour up to 100g total (40% total weight)
    • Hold kettle for the remainder of the brewing process
  6. 1:10 – 1:20: Pour up to 150g total (60% total weight)
  7. 1:30 – 1:40: Pour up to 200g total (80% total weight)
  8. 1:50 – 2:00: Pour up to 250g total (100% total weight)
  9. 2:00 – 2:05: Gently swirl
  10. Drawdown finished around 2:45

This cup was just about perfect — full-flavored, well-balanced, and well-extracted. It’s the same recipe that I brewed a few days ago. I added a few extra details here to try to document what I did as closely as possible. I find that I really prefer holding the kettle over returning it to the base after each pour. It makes the whole process seem more smooth and fluid, and I doubt that it makes much difference with regards to the water temperature. It does make me wonder if the volume of water in the kettle has any effect on the resulting brew (the more water in the kettle, the greater its thermal mass, so the longer it will hold its temperature) but I think that’s getting to the point of splitting hairs.

I do wonder why all of my AeroPress brews lately have been weak. Everything I read says it’s because the coffee is ground too coarse, the water temperature is too low, the steep time is too short, etc., but I’ve tried adjusting all of those, and the brew is still weak. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. I know it wouldn’t be weak if I brewed it at 1:10, but I feel like I shouldn’t have to — this evening’s pourover was fantastic at 1:15, and my French press cups are good at 1:13 to 1:14. To add to the confusion, it wasn’t too long ago that I was consistently brewing good cups in the AeroPress at 1:14, with different beans that are long gone now. I haven’t been able to replicate that success with any of my other beans. If I have to brew at 1:10, then I don’t see the point of using the AeroPress when I can get the same results with pourover using less coffee. I expect I’ll eventually sort this out, but in the meantime, it sure is vexing.

Latest AP Attempt

lpaulriddle

After a few days of dodging it, we finally got a significant, torrential rainstorm last night. It poured for a couple of hours and I suspect we got 2-3″ of rain (one of these days, I need to buy a rain gauge, so I’ll know for sure). It was the first real test for our new driveway trench drainage system, and it seemed to go fine, as we had no water in the basement except for wetness behind the bar, which is a known issue. In theory, the drain should keep a lot of water from reaching the sump pump on the east end of the house, so the pump should not run as often any more. In practice, the jury is still out. The pump still runs occasionally, but I need to hang around it for a while during a heavy rainstorm to get a better sense for how often it runs now. Last night, I rode the storm out in bed. This morning, I rode to work through Patapsco Valley State Park, and the only evidence of flooding I saw was on the road near the parking for Lost Lake and the Grist Mill trailhead, which is a common trouble spot. No issues on the trail itself — the new bridges seem to be working great. Overall, the trail (and the park in general) was in much better shape than it would have been a few years ago after a similar rainfall event.

Here was this morning’s AeroPress experiment:

  • Beans: “Cold Brew Blend” medium roast (Guatemala/Colombia) from Local Coffee Roasting Co. in Roxana, DE
  • JX: 2 turns minus 6 clicks (Grind setting 18)
  • 95°C water
  • 17 grams coffee / 220 grams water (1:13)
  • One new paper filter (pre-moistened)
  1. Set AeroPress up in standard orientation and add coffee
  2. Add all water at once, spinning brewer to wet coffee while pouring, ending by around 0:10
  3. Stir several times
  4. Insert plunger, then pull up to create a vacuum
  5. At 1:15, remove the plunger and stir several times again
  6. Re-insert the plunger and press gently, finishing between 1:50 and 2:00

This recipe comes from stumptowncoffee.com, and is similar to the instructions that ship with the AeroPress. There are small, likely negligible differences in the amount of coffee and the water temperature, but the main difference is that this recipe adds a little bit of stirring right before pressing. I didn’t zero my scale until I had already poured a little bit of water, so the total volume may have been off a little bit, but I suspect not enough to really matter. I’m probably starting to sound like a broken record, but this brew was similar to the last several I’ve done in the AP: the flavor was fine, but the body was thin. The quest for fuller-bodied AeroPress coffee will continue, but I may take a break and go back to pourover for a little while.