Fruddled Gruntbugglies

Enthralling readers since 2005

Category: Coffee

  • Morning Brew

    • Beans: “Angel Albino Corzo-Chiapa” medium roast (Mexico) from Amity Coffee Roasters in Greenwood, DE
    • 20 grams coffee, 280 grams water (1:14 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

    This is my standard French press recipe, with slightly more water to get a 1:14 ratio vs 1:13. Just wanted to try it with these beans. The cup turned out fine, with more earthy and roasty notes than the pourover recipe I’ve been using. Overall, I think I prefer the pourover, but would be fine drinking this every day. Where the pourover (and AeroPress) win is convenience: both methods are faster and less messy than the French press.

  • Saturday Morning Update

    Here’s what I brewed this morning:

    • Beans: “Angel Albino Corzo-Chiapa” medium roast (Mexico) from Amity Coffee Roasters in Greenwood, DE
    • 18g coffee / 250g water (1:14)
    • JX: 2 rotations less 6 clicks (18 on the grind chart / 54 total clicks) Note: subsequent cups at this setting tasted bitter — better at 2 rotations / grind setting 20 / 60 total clicks
    • Water at 95°C
    • Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique (see below)
    1. 0:00: Pour 60g of water to bloom
    2. 0:10 – 0:15: Gently Swirl
    3. 0:45 – 1:00: Pour up to 100g total (40% total weight)
    4. 1:10 – 1:20: Pour up to 150g total (60% total weight)
    5. 1:30 – 1:40: Pour up to 200g total (80% total weight)
    6. 1:50 – 2:00: Pour up to 250g total (100% total weight)
    7. 2:00 – 2:05: Gently swirl
    8. Drawdown should finish around 3:00

    This turned out just about perfect to my taste. I just have to make sure to remove the spent grounds immediately after the drawdown finishes to avoid the slight bitterness I alluded to yesterday. I have enough beans left for 4 more cups, and I don’t think I need to tweak this recipe any further (although I’m slightly curious to try the beans in the French press, just to compare). I’ll likely use this recipe as a starting point for my next bag, which is also a medium roast.

    This morning was beautiful, with temperatures in the upper 50s/low 60s and low humidity. With a heat wave looming, I seized the opportunity and got out just before 8 and ran 10 miles. I am hoping to get myself conditioned to run 10 miles once a week over the cooler months, and after a few more of these, I should be ready to tackle my short-term goal of running the entire BWI Trail loop, which (according to gmap-pedometer.com) is about 10.7 miles.

  • This and That

    I’m trying a new WordPress theme out. I had been using “Twenty Twenty” for a long time, but never liked that it didn’t have a widget sidebar. So, I’m trying one out called “Simple Life”. It’s responsive, has a sidebar, and seems fairly lightweight, without a lot of bells and whistles and other stuff I don’t need. So, I’ll probably use it for a while until I get tired of it.

    As promised yesterday, I brewed a pourover cup of my medium roast Mexican coffee beans using 18 grams of coffee to 250 grams water (around 1:14) and it was just about the perfect strength. It did have a tiny touch of bitterness that I didn’t notice yesterday, but I think that was because I wandered away and let the coffee sit and drip for a little too long. I’ll fix that tomorrow, and if it’s not perfect, I’ll try it just a tiny bit coarser.

    I did my usual Friday morning session at the climbing gym today, and felt pretty good after climbing 8 routes ranging from 5.10- to 5.11-. There definitely is a huge difference in my energy level between my morning and evening climbing sessions. I suspect part of it is because I typically commute 22-25 miles on the bike on the same days as my evening climb sessions, with the 8-mile homeward leg wrapping up an hour or so before I leave for the gym. Something probably needs to give there…

  • Brew Notes

    • Beans: “Angel Albino Corzo-Chiapa” medium roast (Mexico)
    • 20g coffee / 250g water (1:12.5)
    • JX: 2 rotations less 6 clicks (18 on the grind chart / 54 total clicks)
    • Water at 95°C
    • Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique (see below)
    1. 0:00: Pour 66g of water to bloom
    2. 0:10 – 0:15: Gently Swirl
    3. 0:45 – 1:00: Pour up to 100g total (40% total weight)
    4. 1:10 – 1:20: Pour up to 150g total (60% total weight)
    5. 1:30 – 1:40: Pour up to 200g total (80% total weight)
    6. 1:50 – 2:00: Pour up to 250g total (100% total weight)
    7. 2:00 – 2:05: Gently swirl
    8. Drawdown should finish around 3:00

    This is the same V60 recipe I’ve been using for light roast, with 20g coffee (vs 15), proportionally more initial bloom water, and slightly lower water temperature. I wanted to try brewing a stronger pourover cup, and it appears I have succeeded. This tasted well-extracted and very rich. I’m going to try my next cup at 1:14 (18g coffee / 60g initial pour) and see how that turns out. Over the past 3 days, I’ve now brewed 2 different AeroPress recipes and 1 pourover cup with these beans, all at roughly the same ratio. Both of the AeroPress cups tasted weak, but the pourover was strong. The pourover method is obviously doing a better job of extracting the beans, which makes me wonder what I could be doing differently with the AeroPress. It’s pretty clear that just upping the ratio is not the answer. I suspect that I need to be grinding the beans a lot finer, and/or increasing the steep time. But, if I get consistently good results with pourover, I’m inclined to stick with that for the time being.

  • Brew #2

    Round 2 with the same beans as yesterday:

    • Beans: “Angel Albino Corzo-Chiapa” medium roast (Mexico)
    • Grind: Medium-coarse – 2.5 turns on the JX minus (25 on the grind chart, or 75 total clicks)
    • 90°C water
    • 16 grams coffee / 180 grams water (1:11.25)
    • One new paper filter (pre-moistened)
    • Recipe: 13g that makes you happy (inverted: add 40g water, stir 5x, top up to 180g at 0:30, stir 10x, flip at 1:30 and press very slowly, finishing at 2:30)

    This turned out similarly to yesterday’s cup. The flavor was fine, and while it was a tiny bit stronger (in line with the slight difference in ratios) and overall a pleasant cup, it was still a little bit weaker tasting than I would prefer. So, not much difference between the two recipes, at least when it comes to the finished product. I feel like I’m going to end up at 1:10 again, which tasted really good with a dark roast, but seems kind of like overkill. Based on an interesting Reddit thread I found, I think as an experiment, I’m going to try the following, not necessarily in this order, and see what I end up with:

    • One of these two AeroPress recipes at 1:12 to 1:15, with a very fine grind
    • Pourover using 20 grams of coffee with 250 grams of water and a similar grind to my previous pourover cups

    If neither of these do the job for me, then I’ll break down and try 1:10.

  • Brew and Run

    Got a bunch of medium roast coffee beans to use up before I resupply. Here was this morning’s attempt:

    • Beans: “Angel Albino Corzo-Chiapa” medium roast (Mexico)
    • Grind: Fine – 1.5 turns on the JX minus 6 clicks (13 on the grind chart, or 39 total clicks)
    • 95°C water
    • 16-17 grams coffee / 200 grams water (around 1:12)
    • One new paper filter (dry)
    • James Hoffmann’s Ultimate Aeropress Recipe (20 second pour, 2 minute steep, swirl, wait 30 seconds, press 30 seconds)

    This is essentially the same thing I brewed about six weeks ago, with slightly hotter water and a little bit more coffee. The result was similar to last time: just fine flavor-wise, but lacking in body. I guess I could try grinding even finer, or I could try my go-to inverted recipe again, although that attempt also yielded a thin-bodied cup. Maybe I’d get better results with pourover or French press. I’ll figure it out one way or another.

    I left the house at 7:10 this morning and ran a little over 7.5 miles. It was not a bad run on yet another damp, overcast, humid morning. Similar to yesterday’s bike commute, I wanted to get a sense for how the bell schedules for all of the local schools will affect my route. Verdict: unless I wait until after 9:15, I’m going to be dodging kids in one place or another. 7:10 worked out OK, but there may be another window between 8:00 and 8:20ish that may work out. I may try leaving around then on Thursday.

  • Threading the Needle

    It’s the first day of school in Howard and Baltimore Counties. The past couple of years, I have telecommuted on the first day of school, but I decided to ride to work today to get an early start on fine-tuning my routine for the school year. There are certain times when it’s bad to leave the house due to school traffic, and certain routes that need to be avoided as well. My route passes through several school zones, so I have to take several bell schedules into account, and different schools affect me in the afternoon than in the morning. This year will require some adjustments to my routine, as HoCo has tweaked the start and end times for most of their schools, and also expanded the walk zones near where I live. This morning, I rolled out at 7:20, and it worked well. I think any later than 7:20-7:25 will cause issues with car and foot traffic heading to the nearby middle school. That should clear out by 7:45 to 7:50, but last year, when I left that late, I ran into issues with school traffic in Baltimore County. So, I think 7:10 to 7:20 might be the sweet spot this year.

    I killed the last of my light roast coffee beans this morning. Next, I’ll work on using up my remaining half-pound bags I bought in Delaware, which are both medium roast. One bag is sourced from southern Mexico, and the other a is blend from Guatemala and Colombia. The light roast I just used up was from the same roaster and also from Guatemala and Colombia, so I suspect it might be the same blend of beans, just roasted differently. It is labeled a “cold brew blend”, and I’ll try it that way, but I suspect it’ll make good hot coffee as well. Since both bags are medium roasts from the same general region of the world, I’m hoping I can find a single recipe that works well for both, whether it’s pourover, AeroPress, or French press.

  • More Pourover Notes

    My AeroPress has been a little bit neglected lately, as I’ve been really enjoying the pourover cups I’ve been brewing with my bag of light roast beans. Both the pourover and AeroPress methods take about 5 minutes (start to finish) to brew a single cup, so going forward, I’ll probably be using both, depending on the beans and (to an extent) my mood. Two things I’ve learned over the past week:

    • With pourover, small adjustments to the grind size seem to have a larger effect on the finished cup than with the AeroPress. The first few pourover cups I brewed tasted a little bit sour and under-extracted, but at just a slightly finer grind (6 clicks on my JX), I’ve been getting fantastic cups.
    • When brewing single cups with boiling water, the coffee will cool to a drinkable temperature faster if I use a room temperature ceramic mug instead of an insulated Hydro Flask mug, so I can enjoy it sooner and without burning my tongue. 😀

  • Cold Brew Redux

    I made some cold brew at dinnertime today, with the same recipe I’ve been using for most of the summer, and decided to measure the quantity of water used so that I can double the recipe more easily and accurately. Here’s the latest recipe. Note that a “scoop” refers to the scoop that comes with the AeroPress.

    1. Set AeroPress up in inverted orientation and add 1 heaping scoop of drip-grind coffee
    2. Add 200 to 220 grams room-temperature water (enough to fill AeroPress to about 1cm of the top)
    3. Stir vigorously for 1 minute
    4. Flip and press into a glass tumbler (30 seconds)
    5. Add 2-3 ice cubes and a few drops of stevia to taste
    6. Stir and serve

    Doubled recipe:

    1. Set AeroPress up in inverted orientation and add 2 heaping scoops of drip-grind coffee
    2. Fill AeroPress with room-temperature water to 1cm from top and note how much was added by weight
    3. Stir vigorously for 1 minute
    4. Flip and press into a tall glass, small pitcher, or carafe
    5. Top up to a total of 400-440 grams of water
    6. Add several drops of stevia to taste
    7. Stir, pour into tumblers, add ice, and serve

    I’m still using Wellsley Farms Breakfast Blend pre-ground coffee to make this, but I’m almost out of it. Once it’s gone, I’ll try it with some Maxwell House Original Roast that we have in the cabinet.

  • Morning Notes

    After alluding to it yesterday, I brewed a cup of pourover coffee this morning using this recipe, with the same beans and a slightly finer grind. I went back and forth over whether to try it coarser or finer, eventually settling on finer just because of how my earlier pourover cups have tasted. I used a setting of 18 on the JX grind chart, which is two rotations minus 6 clicks (54 total clicks). I think this was the right call. The cup had a little bit more fruitiness than the cup I brewed with the AeroPress, with more body to balance out the fruity acidity than my previous pourover cups. Now I’m wondering how fine I can go before it starts to taste bitter.

    The weather was quite pleasant this morning, and the past several days have been dry, so I hit the trails and commuted to work through PVSP on my mountain bike. It was my third bike ride in 4 days. On the HoCo side of the river, I rode Belmont Trail to Morning Choice to Lewis and Clark to Garrett’s Pass, which is a route I take frequently. It was a great ride, except something stung me on my arm at one point. I am wondering if maybe I ran over an underground hornet’s nest, and one of them got me. If that’s the case, I’m glad I was moving fast (and I’m not allergic)!! We’re still in heavy summer growth season, but with a few exceptions, the trails I rode were not overgrown. Upper Soapstone Trail, which is on my route home, may be another story, so I’ll see how that is doing later this afternoon.