I bought myself a Hario Switch this week. The Switch is essentially a V60 dripper with a rubber base and a lever-operated stopper. This provides more control over how long the water stays in the cone, so it can be used to make immersion-style brews as well as standard pour-overs (and combinations of the two methods). I like to brew a wide variety of different coffees, and while most of them work really well with the standard V60, with some of them, I struggle to get consistent cups. Most of the time, the issue is with weak/under-extracted brews, more often than not when I brew a single cup at a time. My hope is that the Switch will allow these coffees to steep a little longer, so getting even extraction is less dependent on timing and pouring technique. Or something like that. The Switch I bought has a glass cone, and is a size 3, which is the largest available. An article I read somewhere online recommended going with the size 3, because it can hold more water should I ever decide to try a full-volume immersion brew. I don’t have a standard size 3 V60, either, so the switch also gives me an option for brewing larger pour-over batches (e.g. for guests).

I used the switch for the first time today, with the coffee I had on hand (Zeke’s Beans of Summer). I ground 19.5g of beans at Ode setting 3+2, and brewed them with 300g water (1:15.4). To start, with the Switch’s drain closed, I poured 50g bloom water, agitated, and steeped until 0:45. Then, I opened the drain and followed my standard single-cup V60 technique the rest of the way. So, the bloom phase was the only variation from my usual way of doing things. This had more of an effect than I had expected: the finished cup had a more robust mouthfeel, and seemed a little “better” overall, than the other recent V60 cups I’ve brewed with these beans. Perhaps the “immersion bloom” is helping to wet the beans more evenly and leading to more consistent extraction. It will be interesting to see how subsequent cups turn out.

7/18: This afternoon’s cup was the third that I’ve brewed like this, and I’d put it up against anything I’ve brewed in the past 2 years. The only thing I’m doing differently is blooming with the Switch drain closed, and that seems to have made a huge difference. I’m starting to think that I may be onto something here.

• Beans: Brazil — Daterra Sweet Yellow (8oz)
  • Roaster: Amity Coffee Roasters (Greenwood, DE)
  • Origin: Brazil (Campinas)
  • Roast level: Medium
  • Roast date: 6/24/2025
  • Purchase date: 6/29/2025 at T. S. Smith Orchard Point Market in Bridgeville, DE
    First cup: 7/7/2025; Last cup: 7/12/2025
  • Process: wet
  • Tasting notes: Chocolaty/Nutty
• V60 with Ode grinder:
  • 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15)
  • Ode: 4
  • Water at 99°C
  • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with size 1 cone, 50g bloom water and 60g pulses – finishes around 02:40

This is the third bag I’ve had from Amity, all of them single-origin beans, and all of them purchased at T. S. Smith while en route either to or from Bethany. The bags here always seem to be fresh, I guess partially because the roaster is only 4 miles away. One of these years, I should make the slight detour to Greenwood to stop there, as I suspect they’ll have a wider selection of beans.

My first and second cups (1:15 at grind 4 and 99°C water) were nice and smooth, and I agree with the stated tasting notes. Unless something convinces me otherwise, I’ll just keep brewing them like this.

7/9: Had my first bad cup this morning- guessing poor technique was the culprit, as I poured a little on the fast side and the draw-down finished faster than usual. The cup was weak and under-extracted. Next time, I am going to try 50g pulses to try to get a longer draw-down time. I have a feeling that if I can keep water in the cone until 03:00 or so, I should get better extraction.

7/10: 50g pulses did stretch things out a bit, but didn’t improve things much, nor did a finer grind (setting 3). I noticed a lot more grounds than usual stuck in the grinder chute after the last couple of cups, so before I brewed this afternoon’s cup, I brushed the chute out as best I could. Then, I went back to how I initially brewed it, except I nudged the grind one click finer to 3+2. The resulting cup was better than yesterdays’, but still didn’t seem quite as good as my first two.

7/12: I brewed two larger cups to finish the bag up (350g water at 1:15) and I used grind setting 3+2 with the size 2 V60. As I’ve very frequently noted, the draw-down was slower than with the smaller cone, finishing at 02:55-03:00, and it seemed like the cups were a little better extracted. I still feel like they could have been better, though — if I buy these beans again at some point, it may make sense to try immersion instead of pour-over.

• Beans: Breakfast Blend (8oz)
  • Roaster: Local Coffee Roasting Company (Roxana, DE)
  • Origin: Colombia, Papua New Guinea, and Ethiopia
  • Roast level: Light
  • Roast date: 5/19/2025
  • Purchase date: 6/23/2025 at 3 Blonde Bakers in Bethany Beach, DE
    First cup: 7/1/2025; Last cup: 7/6/2025
  • Process: n/a (blend)
  • Tasting notes: fruity
• V60 with Ode grinder:
  • 19.5g coffee / 300g water (1:15.4)
  • Ode: 3+1
  • Water at 100°C
  • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with size 1 cone, 50g bloom water and 60g pulses – finishes 02:40-02:45
• Previous bag: July/August 2023 (V60, AeroPress #1, French press, AeroPress #2, AeroPress #3

This had decent flavor at 1:16, grind setting 4, and 50g pulses, but seemed a little weak. Setting 3 with everything else the same did not thrill me (for lack of a better word, it just seemed dull). For cup #3, I upped the ratio to 1:15 and (just to feel like I was changing something) bumped the grind to 3+1 and brewed with 60g pulses, as noted above. This was an improvement: it had more flavor and body than either of the first two cups. It’s definitely on the mild side (vs bold) and contrary to what the bag says, I didn’t notice a ton of fruitiness or acidity. All in all, though, it’s not bad, and in line with what I’ve come to expect from coffees sold as “breakfast” blends. This is my second bag, and the first was noteworthy in that it was the first time I ever brewed pour-over coffee. I also experimented with at least 3 different AeroPress recipes with that bag, and brewed at least one cup in the French press. Given that these are sold in 8-ounce bags, it’s safe to say I probably didn’t brew those beans the same way more than once or twice. I learned a lot in the process, but overall, I suspect that I’ll get more consistently good cups this time around.

7/4: Yesterday afternoon’s cup at 1:15 tasted just a tiny bit too strong. Strong can be good if it’s a bold roast, but doesn’t work well with a milder coffee like this. It tasted fairly well-extracted, so it seems it’s just a matter of dialing in the strength. 19.5g/300g (around 1:15.4) worked well this morning. I’ll keep brewing it like this for now.

7/6: Had just under 32g of this left, so I brewed it with 500g water (around 1:16). I used a size 2 V60, 70g bloom, then poured to 300g, swirled, poured to 500g, and swirled again. It finished at around 02:50 (just a hair faster than a single cup), and tasted fairly well-extracted and a little less strong than most of my single cup brews. I got my best cups of this (to my taste) brewing at 19.5g/300g, per my 7/4 note. Of the two LCRC blends I bought this year, it’s kind of a toss-up as to which I liked better: this, or the medium-roasted Locals Blend. Next up, I have a half-pound bag from Amity Coffee Roasters, who also hail from Sussex County, DE.

• Beans: Locals Blend (8oz)
  • Roaster: Local Coffee Roasting Company (Roxana, DE)
  • Origin: Colombia, Guatemala, and Ethiopia
  • Roast level: Medium
  • Roast date: 5/19/2025
  • Purchase date: 6/23/2025 at 3 Blonde Bakers in Bethany Beach, DE
    First cup: 6/24/2025; Last cup: 07/01/2025
  • Process: n/a (blend)
  • Tasting notes (from web site): milk chocolate, stone fruit
• AeroPress with JX grinder:
  • AeroPress with Prismo, scoop, metal filter, and paper filter
  • 1 heaping scoop of beans (roughly 16g to 17g)
  • Around 250g of “pretty hot” but not boiling water (ratio 1:15 to 1:16)
  • JX grind setting: 16
  • Pour enough water to cover grounds; agitate; bloom until 0:45 or so; fill cylinder up to around 1/4″-3/8″ from top; stir 7x front-to-back with AeroPress paddle; steep until 02:45; stir 7x again; press slowly
• V60 with Ode grinder:
  • 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15)
  • Ode: 4
  • Water at 95°C
  • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with size 2 cone, 50g bloom water and 60g pulses – finishes 03:00-03:05

I can’t let a trip to the Delaware shore go by without getting some beans from LCRC. These are a little farther past roast date than I would typically buy, but retail availability is limited, so you take what you can get (within reason), and to be honest, unless it’s a dark roast, a month old is still reasonably fresh. This was my first time trying this particular blend. I’ll be grinding most of the beans with the JX and brewing them in the AeroPress. I started at grind 16, which is the fine end of the “AeroPress” range on the JX grind chart. The first cup was very robust and nicely balanced. I’ll be happy if all of them taste like this. Stay tuned!

6/29: I arrived home with enough beans to make a few pour-overs. V60 at 1:15, grind setting 4, and 95°C water was comparable to the AeroPress cups I’ve been brewing. It was maybe a tiny bit stronger than I like (at least in the summertime), so I may try it at closer to 1:16 next time.

It’s been a year since I’ve had the Delaware and Beach blends, so it’s difficult to make a fair comparison, but I think this could be my favorite LCRC blend that I’ve tried to date. Next up is a bag of Breakfast Blend, which I haven’t had in 2 years. Next time we go to Bethany, I want to stop at Parsons Farm Produce outside Dagsboro, to see if they have fresher bags and/or a wider selection of LCRC beans than 3 Blonde Bakers. T. S. Smith Market in Bridgeville used to carry them as well, but hasn’t had them the past two years.

• Beans: Beans of Summer (blend)
  • Roaster: Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
  • Origin: Indonesia, South and Central America
  • Roast level: Medium/Light (3/8)
  • Roast date: unknown
  • Purchase date: 6/15/2025 from Zeke’s at Baltimore Farmer’s Market
    Freeze date: 6/20/2025; Thaw date: 7/11/2025 or 7/12/2025
    First cup: 6/17/2025; Last cup: TBD
  • Process: n/a (blend)
  • Tasting notes: none noted on bag
• V60 with Ode grinder:
  • 19.5g coffee / 300g water (1:15.4)
  • Ode: 4
  • Water at 100°C
  • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with size 2 cone, 50g bloom water and 60g pulses – finishes 02:40-02:45
• AeroPress with JX grinder:
  • 16g to 17g coffee (I weighed out 50g of beans and split them into roughly equal proportions to yield 3 cups of coffee)
  • Around 250g of “pretty hot” but not boiling water (ratio 1:15 to 1:16)
  • AeroPress with Prismo, metal filter, and paper filter
  • JX grind setting: 16
  • Pour enough water to cover grounds; agitate; bloom until 0:45 or so; fill cylinder up to around 1/4″-3/8″ from top; stir 7x front-to-back with AeroPress paddle; steep until 02:45; stir 7x again; press slowly
• Previous bag: late July 2024

Well, I guess it’s summer again. On one hand, it doesn’t seem like that long ago that I had my first bag of these. On the other hand, it was before I had my Ode grinder, and it seems like I’ve had that for a long time. I bought the Ode last September, and a lot has happened in life (both good and bad) since then.

We bought these beans (as well as a bag of Zeke’s Tell-Tale Decaf) at the Baltimore Farmer’s Market, directly from the roaster. Strangely, while the bags of Zeke’s I get at the grocery store have roast dates printed on them, these bags didn’t. Typically, though, when buying directly from the roaster, I just kind of assume the bags are fresh. Of course, the $50,000 question is, would I be able to tell the difference between freshly-roasted beans and 6-month-old beans? I’d like to think I would, but you never know. 😀

According to my notes from last year, I had a hard time getting a good cup with the V60. Different story this time around, as my first two cups have been excellent. Granted, I have only brewed two cups so far, and I noted last year that the first two cups were also good, after which I started having issues. We will see how it goes with the rest of the bag. The differences so far have been: different grinder, much lower ratio (1:16 vs 1:14), and 50g pulses instead of 60g. The 50g pulse technique tends to keep water in the cone longer, which I suspect helps with extraction. My technique is probably a little better and more consistent now, as well, but who knows.

I likely will not use this entire bag up before heading to Delaware next week, so I think I may take some with me to brew in the AeroPress, and freeze the rest to brew after I get back. It will be interesting to see if there is any difference in taste between the frozen/thawed beans and the non-frozen beans. Stay tuned!

6/23: My more recent pour-over cups have been serviceable (other than one that was on the bitter side) but overall, not as consistent as, say, a typical single-origin roast like Zeke’s Colombia-Huila (which is fresh in my memory, as I just finished a bag). With blends, it’s impossible to get the exact same proportion of each type of bean in every cup, and I have occasionally wondered if that’s why I sometimes get inconsistent results brewing blends. However, I’ve learned over the past couple of years that brewing good filter coffee is not as subtle an art as I had originally thought, so my gut tells me that that theory is probably wrong. To that point, as of this writing, I have brewed two cups with the AeroPress and 1Zpresso JX hand grinder (see above), with no scale and no water temperature control. The first cup at grind setting 20 was OK (maybe slightly weak), and the second cup at setting 16 was very good.

I froze about half of this 1-pound bag on or around June 20, and the current plan is to thaw and brew those in early July, although that could change depending on how much coffee I buy (or don’t buy) in the meantime.

7/14: After thawing the beans a couple of days ago, I’ve now brewed 2 cups with 19.5g/300g, 50g bloom (vs 40 initially, if my notes are correct), and 60g pulses. I’m still using Ode grind setting 4. Both have been good cups. During the bloom phase, I’ve been picking the mug and cone up off the scale and agitating a little more vigorously than I had been previously, which, along with the extra bloom water, may be helping to get more of the grounds wet. Also, during the final swirl, I make sure I’m washing the water up over the edge of the bed, so I don’t get an accumulation of grounds there (which otherwise happens frequently with beans that draw down quickly). The brews have both finished at around 02:35 to 02:40.

7/19: I’ve brewed the last few cups with my new Hario Switch, with great results. See linked post for details. These beans really seem to like an immersion-style bloom phase with 50-55g of water, and the bloom phase seems to have more of a bearing on extraction and taste than the subsequent pour-over technique (e.g., using 5 pulses of 120g water vs 6 pulses of 100g water) likely isn’t making a huge difference.

• Beans: Colombia (Huila) – single origin
  • Roaster: Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
  • Origin: Colombia (Huila)
  • Roast level: Medium/Light (2/8)
  • Roast date: 4/1/2025
  • Purchase date: 4/7/2025 at Green Valley Marketplace in Elkridge, MD
    Freeze date: 4/8/2025 or 4/9/2025
    Thaw date: 6/2/2025
    First cup: 6/5/2025
    Last cup: 6/16/2025
  • Process: Washed; Varietals: Caturra, Castillo
  • Tasting notes: Orange, caramel, milk chocolate
• V60:
  • 19g coffee / 300g water (1:15.8)
  • Ode: 4
  • Water at 100°C
  • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with size 2 cone, 40g bloom water and 50g pulses – finishes around 02:50
• AeroPress with Prismo:
  • 17g coffee / around 250g water (roughly 1:15)
  • JX: 20 (2 rotations)
  • Metal + paper filter
  • Pour enough water to wet grounds / stir / bloom until 0:45
  • Fill cylinder to about 1/4″ from top / stir 6-7x front to back
  • Steep until 03:00 / stir again / press slowly
• Previous bag: May 2024

I bought and froze this bag in early April, so I would have some coffee in the house when we got home from our trips in April/May. I put all of the beans into a gallon freezer bag, got as much air out of it as I could, and put the bag in the basement freezer. It stayed there a little bit longer than planned, as I ended up buying a bunch of coffee in the meantime.

My first two cups were somewhat roasty and low in acidity. I brewed cup #1 at grind setting 3, and it tasted a little bit over-extracted. Setting 4 was better balanced. 1:15 was on the strong side, so I will try 1:15.8-1:16 tomorrow. Interestingly, I see that last year, I was brewing these beans at 1:14. I can’t imagine why I would want it that strong, but it could be that I’m getting better extraction using 6 pours of 50g water (vs 5 pours of 60g water), which keeps water in the cone a little longer. I was also using a different grinder then (JX), so it’s hard to compare grind sizes. My tastes have probably evolved over the past year, as well.

Final note: As of today, I am using a new scale. For the past year or so, I have had a cheap coffee scale from Greater Goods, which I liked just fine, until the tray started wobbling and giving inconsistent readings. You get what you pay for, I guess. After doing a bunch of research and comparison, I narrowed my choices down to the Timemore Basic Mini and the Mx. Cool Katze. I ended up going with the Katze. It was about twice the price of the Timemore (though still a good bit cheaper than Fellow Tally or Acaia Pearl) but the deciding factors for me were (1) it’s made in Taiwan vs China; and (2) it has a unique retracting control panel which protects the scale during storage. It seems solidly built, has some weight to it, and has a metal tray. Feature-wise, the only thing it has over the Greater Goods scale is an automatic timer for pour-over, which I have yet to try out. One of the Timemore’s selling points was a flow rate indicator, which the Katze lacks, but I’ve somehow managed to get by without one up to now, so it wasn’t a show stopper (and, surprisingly, the $190 Fellow doesn’t have one, either). The Taiwan-made Acaia would have been a strong competitor, but it had extra features I didn’t need (Bluetooth/app) which added $30 to the price tag. Overall, the Katze seemed like the best combination of price, features, and build quality. It has worked well for one cup of coffee thus far, hopefully with many more to come.

6/6: As I had suspected I would, I liked this better at around 1:16, so I’ve updated the recipe to 19g/300g.

6/11: I brewed some of this in the AeroPress at the office (see above), and it turned out pretty good, in spite of my not using a scale and not having the grind dialed in on the hand grinder.

6/16: Finished the bag up today, and once I got it dialed in, it was very consistent from cup to cup. Except for today, I brewed a little over 38g of beans per day, and used the 1lb bag up in 11 days. This morning, I had a little over 42g left, so I made the cups a little larger so I could use all of the beans up.