- Beans: “Colombia Sierra Nevada” from Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
- Roast level: Light to medium (3/8)
- Origin: Colombia (Sierra Nevada)
- Roast date: 7/29/24
- Purchase date: 7/29 or 7/30/24 at Green Valley Marketplace in Elkridge, MD
- V60:
- 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15)
- JX: 20 (60 clicks)
- Water at 97°C
- Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with size 1 dripper
- AeroPress:
- 18g coffee / 250g water
- JX: 20 (60 clicks)
- Water at 95°C
- Prismo with metal + paper filter
- Pour all 250g; stir front to back 6-7x; steep until 2:45; stir again; press slowly
I bought my first bag last September, so it’s been a little while. It took a few cups to get there, but I see that I’ve settled on similar brewing parameters to last year’s bag. The last few cups have been pretty good, if not spectacularly good. I’ve been on a kick of brewing strong cups lately — most of my recent pourovers have been 22g to 300g, or about 1:13.6. I’m trying to back off that a little bit, as I think it may be negatively affecting the flavor of the cups. I brewed this morning at 20:300 (1:15), and preferred it to some of my earlier, stronger cups. If this works out, I’ll also go through coffee less quickly. 😀
8/18: I’m definitely having a bad run with V60 coffee. Not sure if something is off with my technique, or if it’s just the beans I happen to be buying. With these, everything I have been brewing has been bitter, weak, or just OK but generally unremarkable. Grind setting 20 and 95-97C water seem to produce the cups that are the least bad. The AeroPress cup I brewed today (see above) was leaps and bounds better than anything I’ve gotten from the V60. It had a nice flavor with a hint of sweetness that was totally lacking with the V60 cups. The immersion method seems to do a better job of extracting the beans. I suspect that the issue with the V60 is that the beans aren’t staying wet long enough to fully extract. I might get better results by brewing a larger volume of coffee (maybe 500-600g), or possibly using a filter that is more dense and drains more slowly (maybe Abaca?). I could also grind the beans finer, but that seems to make the coffee taste bitter. As I’ve written before, I’m curious to try a Kalita Wave dripper at some point. It has a different design which (on paper) sounds like it will result in longer immersion time with washed beans like these. Lots of potential things to try, but for now, it seems like AeroPress is the way to go with the rest of these beans.