Category: Coffee

Brew Notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: German Street Coffee & Candlery Private House Blend
  • 20 grams coffee, 260 grams water (1:13 ratio)
  • French press
  • Gooseneck kettle
  1. Preheat French press
  2. Heat brew water to 95°C
  3. Coarse grind (JX setting: 3 rotations + 4 clicks or 94 total clicks)
  4. Start timer and pour at the same time
  5. 60 second bloom (including pour time)
  6. Stir a few seconds until grounds settle
  7. Steep 6 minutes

Prior to today, I had been pre-weighing my hot water by pouring it into a glass measuring cup, and then adding it to the French press all at once. Today, I just put the press on the scale and poured directly from the gooseneck kettle, which took 20-30 seconds, and then I let it steep/bloom until the timer hit 1 minute. Probably not much difference between the two methods, but I suspect there is less initial loss of water temperature with today’s method. The previous method allows for slightly more precise weighing, but all in all, I think today’s method is a little bit better, just because of the temperature thing. To be honest, a regular kettle without the gooseneck might be a better choice for the French press, especially if I’m brewing more than one cup. All that said, this produced a really tasty cup of coffee, which makes me happy, as I have had no luck at all with these beans with the Aeropress.

Today’s (cold) brew notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: German St Coffee & Candlery Private House Blend
  • Coarse grind (JX: 3 rotations + 4 clicks / 94 total clicks)
  • Recipe: https://www.acouplecooks.com/french-press-cold-brew
  • 140 grams coffee (roughly 2 cups ground), 840 grams water

With summer upon us, I decided to try making some cold brew. The hardest part of this was grinding 140 grams of coffee with the JX. This job would be better suited to a higher capacity electric grinder. Other than that, there’s not much to it: just add the ingredients to the french press, stir, cover with plastic wrap, refrigerate for 24 hours, and strain into a glass jar or pitcher. The resulting brew is concentrated, and the recipe recommends diluting 50/50 with either water or milk. I tried it with milk, and it was pretty good. Now, I need to work on trying to get a good cup of regular hot brew with these beans, but that’s for another day…

On an unrelated note, I just moved the back end database for this blog to a AWS RDS MariaDB instance. It had previously been running in a MariaDB Docker container on my old EC2 instance. This is the first step to getting my stuff off the EC2 instance and into (probably) EKS with Fargate. If you’re reading this, it means that it worked. 😀

Today’s Brew Notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: Lost Dog Coffee “La Esparanza” Organic Medium/Medium Dark Roast (Nicaragua)
  • 17 grams coffee, 160 grams brew water
  • 90°C water
  • JX 1 full rotation + 6 clicks (36 total clicks, or 12 on the grind chart) (fine)
  • Recipe: V60 Style Aeropress (dark roast)
  • 40 grams bypass water for a 200-gram cup (roughly 1:12)

This was the best cup I’ve gotten so far from these beans using the Aeropress. My previous tries all turned out under-extracted. I suspect I had been grinding the beans too coarse. This recipe seems to work best with a very fine grind. This was the exact same formula I used yesterday with a darker roast, except I increased the water temperature from 85°C to 90°C. Seems like I’ve found a go-to recipe for medium to darker roasts.

Brew Notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: Lost Dog Coffee “Mocha Sidamo” Organic Dark Roast (Ethiopia)
  • 17 grams coffee, 160 grams brew water
  • 85°C water
  • JX 1.5 rotations minus 3 clicks (fine)
    • See comments — an even finer grind than this (1 rotation plus 6 clicks, or 36 total clicks), seems to work better
  • Recipe: V60 Style Aeropress (dark roast)
  • Cup #1: 80 grams bypass water (240 grams total; 1:14)
  • Cup #2: 40 grams bypass water (200 grams total; 1:12)

I got pretty good results the first time I tried this recipe, but didn’t measure how much bypass water I added. The recipe calls for 100mg, but even 80 tasted weak to me. 40 grams (a 200g cup) seemed about the right strength, and was not a bad cup. Given that the recipe calls for so much more water, I’m wondering if I’m not getting enough extraction out of the beans. I don’t think I want to go up much on the water temperature, so I guess I could try grinding even finer and see what happens.

Today’s Brew Notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: German St Coffee and Candlery Private House Blend
  • Attempt #1:
    • 13 grams coffee, 200 grams water (roughly 1:15)
    • 95°C water
    • 2 rotations (medium-fine)
  • Attempt #2:
    • 11 grams coffee, 200 grams water (1:18)
    • 99°C water
    • 1.5 rotations (fine)
  • James Hoffman’s Ultimate Aeropress Recipe

I’m not sure exactly what kind of beans these are. It looks like a medium roast (darker than light, lighter than dark) but the bag doesn’t have any info on it. I remember getting OK but unspectacular results with it in the French Press. Previous attempts with the Aeropress were underwhelming, and today’s weren’t much better. This recipe assumes a light roast, so I started out by tweaking it with a slightly coarser grind, lower temperature and more coffee per volume (Attempt #1) and that turned out underextracted. Then I tried treating it like a light roast, following the recipe exactly, (Attempt #2) and that turned out weak and flavorless.

Although neither of these cups was very good, Attempt #1 was slightly better. I might try Attempt #1 again with a finer grind, and see if I can get more extraction out of these beans. If not, maybe I’ll go back to French press with a really long steep time, or just use the beans to make cold brew.

Brew Notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: Starbucks house blend medium roast
  • 18 grams coffee, 210 grams water (1:12)
  • 205° water
  • Medium-fine grind (JX: 2 rotations minus 6 clicks)
  • Our Favorite Aeropress Recipe

Reused 2 paper filters (this was maybe their 4th or 5th cup). Started timer and pour at the same time. 20 seconds or so to pour. Steeped 40 more seconds (60 second total bloom per recipe), stirred 10 seconds. Flipped at 1:30 and pressed all the way through the hiss, ending at 2:00. I have had good results with these beans and this recipe in the past, but it turned out bitter today for some reason. Could be that I forgot to pre-wet the filters.Will use new, pre-moistened filters next time, and may stop pressing a little earlier, although that has not been an issue in the past.

Just an update: I brewed another cup of this after dinner with the following changes: I poured slightly faster (about as fast as I could go with the gooseneck kettle without overshooting), I used 2 new paper filters pre-moistened with warm water, and I stopped pressing as soon as I heard air escaping. Same overall brew time (60 second bloom which includes pour time, 10 second stir, flip and press at 1:30, finish at 2:00). Turned out perfect! I doubt the pour speed made any difference, so maybe it was the dry filters? Who knows.

Brew Notes

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: Lost Dog Coffee (Shepherdstown, WV) “La Esparanza” Organic Medium/Medium Dark (Nicaragua)
  • 0.75 oz coffee, 9.5 oz water (1:13 ratio)
  1. Preheat French press
  2. Heat brew water to 200°F
  3. Coarse grind (JX setting: 3 full rotations + 4 more clicks)
  4. Add all of the water at once, then start timer
  5. 30 second bloom
  6. Stir a few seconds until grounds settle
  7. Steep 6 minutes

I was having a hard time getting a good cup of coffee with these beans with the Aeropress, so I decided to try the French press and this turned out pretty good. Started timer after fairly slow pour from gooseneck kettle. Made a pretty strong cup. Might cut back to an 8 oz cup or possibly try at 1:14 next time.