• Beans: Maple Street Blend
  • Roaster: PJ’s Coffee (New Orleans, LA)
  • Roast level: Medium (3/5)
  • Origin: Brazil/Honduras
  • Roast date: unknown
• V60:
  • 18.75g coffee / 300g water (1:16)
  • Ode: 3
  • Water at 95°C
  • Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique

PJ’s apparently started out in NOLA in the late ’70s, but has evolved into a large chain (not on the scale of Starbucks, but they have multiple locations in several states). I’m not sure where or when the beans were roasted. The bag had a lot of husks and bean fragments in it — I don’t know if it was a handling issue during transit, or a Q.C. issue during bagging. It didn’t seem to affect the taste of the coffee until I got down to the end of the bag. My second-to-last cup was a little bitter. For the last cup, I spent several minutes picking out the whole beans, and composted about 3.5 grams of husks and fragments.

The beans worked well with a fine grind, but I really felt the caffeine, more than most other beans I’ve brewed to date. Not sure why that is. I brewed most of my cups at 1:16 or thereabouts. Taste-wise, it didn’t knock my socks off, but was perfectly drinkable. The web site describes it as “nutty/floral”, which I mostly agree with. No fruitiness or acidity at all, and no burnt/roasty taste, either. I have a sneaking suspicion that the beans were a little past their prime, but have no way to back that up. It’d be interesting to get my hands on a bag that I know was freshly roasted, just to compare, but with chain coffee, that’s easier said than done.

• Beans: Old Man Winter
  • Roaster: Orinoco Coffee and Tea (Jessup, MD)
  • Roast level: Light
  • Purchase date: 12/24/2024 at Martha’s Café in Arbutus, MD
• V60:
  • 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15)
  • Ode: 3
  • Water at 99°C
  • Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique

I bought a bag of this on a whim, not realizing that it was flavored. I got the best cups at grind setting 3 after initially starting at 5. This was OK black, but the maple/butter/cinnamon flavoring didn’t really work for me. It would probably be better with sweetener and/or creamer, but that’s not how I roll (except on very rare occasions). Oh, well, live and learn.

• Beans: Snow Day Blend
  • Roaster: Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
  • Roast level: Medium (3/8)
  • Origin: Bali, Indonesia (Blue Krishna) / Tanzania (Peaberry)
  • Roast date: 12/30/2024
• V60:
  • 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15)
  • Ode: 6+1
  • Water at 90°C
  • Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique

This is my second bag, and my first time grinding the beans with the Ode. Last March, I ended up using a very coarse grind with 95°C water, with good results. With this bag, I again started with 95°C water, but couldn’t quite get it dialed in. Grind settings 5, 6, and even 7 all had an unpleasant bitterness. Grind setting 8 was way too coarse — it did get rid of the bitterness, but the cup was weak and watery. So, I backed off to setting 6 (still on the coarse side for V60) and dropped the water temperature to 90°C, and the last couple of cups at those settings have been good. Interestingly, these are the exact same settings I used with my recent bag of Rise Up Winter Warmer, and the two also have a somewhat similar flavor. This tells me that when I buy Indonesian coffee in the future, I might want to start off with a coarser grind (e.g. Ode setting 6), and then adjust from there.

1/28: I nudged the grind setting 1 click “coarser”, to 6+1, for my final couple of cups. Both were among the best I’ve brewed with this bag. Recipe adjusted accordingly.

• Beans: “Winter Warmer”
  • Roaster: Rise Up Coffee Roasters (Easton, MD)
  • Roast level: On the darker side of medium (4/5)
  • Origin: Indonesia (Sumatra/Java)
  • Roast date: 12/3/2024
• V60:
  • 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15)
  • Ode: 6
  • Water at 90°C
  • Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique

This is Rise Up’s winter seasonal blend, and I last had it in December 2023. The big difference this time is that I’m grinding the beans with the Ode instead of my hand grinder. I started off at setting 3+2 with 95°C water, which was a little bitter. 4+2 (this afternoon) was much better. With both settings, the draw-down finished at around 2:35-2:40.

1/8/2025: I’ve been nudging the grind coarser over the past few days to try to chase some pesky bitterness, and am now up to 5+1 (which was pretty good this afternoon).

1/11: I am now at grind setting 6 and water temperature 90°C, which was good this morning. Setting 6 at 95°C was still a tiny bit bitter the other day. The web site lists this as a “medium+” (4 out of 5) roast, and I am definitely finding that it is behaving like a darker roast. However, it tastes more like a medium roast. I am tempted to try it in the AeroPress and see how that compares.

• Beans “Elysian Morning Blend”
  • Roaster: Bean Alchemy Roasters (New Market, MD)
  • Origins: Bolivia, Colombia
  • Roast level: Medium
  • Roast date: 11/21/2024
  • Purchase date: 11/30/2024 at Sykesville Holiday Mart in Westminster, MD
• V60:
  • 19.5g to 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15.4 to 1:15)
  • Ode: 5
  • Water at 95°C
  • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 40g bloom water – finishes 02:45-02:50

I started this bag on 12/14, which is a little longer past roast date than I typically like, but that’s how the timing worked out with travel, etc. this month. It’s only a 10oz bag, so I’ll likely use it up within a week to 10 days. I brewed my first cup using grind setting 3+1, mainly because that setting had worked well for my most recent bag of medium-roasted beans. However, these particular beans seem to like a coarser grind. Setting 5 was a noticeable improvement on 12/15, and as of 12/18, my last 2 or 3 cups at setting 5 have been excellent.

With winter once again at our doorstep, and the house getting cooler, I’ve gone back to preheating my mug with insta-hot tap water prior to brewing. I used to also pre-rinse the V60 filter with insta-hot water, but lately, I’ve been pre-rinsing with heated water from the kettle. I also have consistently been using the plastic size 2 V60 for all of my brews, because, for whatever reason, I find I get longer draw-down times and better extraction than with the size 1. I still can’t explain this phenomenon, and there don’t seem to be many people commenting on it online. But, “it is what it is”.

12/22: I used the last of the beans up this morning. The last 3 or 4 cups were decent, but not quite as good as the cups I brewed 12/15 thru 12/18. I tried one cup a little finer at grind setting 4, but it was on the bitter side, so I’m still thinking 5 was the ideal setting (maybe I should have tried an intermediate setting between 4 and 5). I’m thinking that most likely the beans were just getting past their prime. If I buy these again at some point, I’ll try to open and use them up a little sooner.

• Beans:
  • Café Medrano Medium Roast Organic (Kensington, MD)
  • Origin: Honduras (Copán)
  • Roast Date: 11/14/2024
  • Purchase date: 11/16/2024 at Chestertown, MD farmer’s market
• V60:
  • 19g to 19.5g coffee / 300g water
  • Ode: 2+1
  • Water at 99°C
  • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 40g bloom water – finishes 02:45-03:00

I believe I had read about Café Medrano a few months back when I was looking for smaller local(ish) roasters. They seem to be unique in that a single family owns both the coffee farms in Honduras, and the roastery/café in the D.C. suburbs. Kensington is (unfortunately) not all that convenient for me to get to regularly, but I wonder if they are at any other local farmer’s markets. I will have to keep an eye out.

First and second cups (today) were very good at grind setting 3 and 95°C water. We’ll see if it will need tweaking as the beans start to age a bit. I bought a 1-pound bag, so I’ll have them for at least a couple of weeks.

11/28: After a couple of ever-so-slightly underextracted cups, I made a couple of adjustments, and ended up at grind setting 2+1 and 99°C water. I’ve been happy with the past couple of cups at these settings. It’s not that the previous cups were bad — I just felt that there was room for improvement. This is (coincidentally) the same as how I brewed the bag I finished just before these. The difference is that those were light-roasted beans, and these are medium-roasted beans. However, over time, I’ve learned that those terms are rather subjective.

• Beans: Brazil (Cerrado) from Foxtail Coffee Co. (Winter Park, FL)
  • Roast level: Medium
  • Roast date: 10/4/2024
  • Purchase date: 10/21/2024 at Foxtail Coffee in Mount Dora, FL
  • Tasting notes: Almond, milk chocolate, toffee
• V60:
  • 19 to 19.2g coffee / 300g water (1/15.6 to 1/15.8)
  • Ode: 4
  • Water at 95°C
  • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with 40g bloom water – typically finishes at between 02:45 and 03:00

I bought these beans while we were in Florida visiting friends who had just moved down there. The above settings produced a nicely flavored cup. 19.4 grams was a little too strong-tasting, so I think 1:16 may be the sweet spot.

I seem to get more consistent brews with the Ode than I do with my hand grinder. It’s not that I can’t brew good coffee with the hand grinder, but it does seem like I have to play around with the brew parameters a lot more to get things dialed in. On the other hand, with the Ode, I’m finding that I’ll often go through an entire bag of beans without tweaking my starting settings at all. In light of this, I may rethink how I do these blog posts at some point. I want to continue to track how I’m brewing various beans (mainly to have something to refer back to if I buy them again) but I don’t want to fill this space up with repetitive posts. Maybe I could start creating pages instead, or take them out of WordPress entirely and move everything into a spreadsheet. I will have to think on this a little bit.

• Beans: “Delaware Blend” from Local Coffee Roasting Co. (Roxana, DE)
  • Roast level: Medium
  • Origin: Guatemala/Colombia
  • Tasting notes from web site: smooth/chocolatey
  • Roast date: 5/27/2024
  • Purchase date: 6/17 or 6/18/24 at Three Blonde Bakers in Bethany Beach, DE
• V60:
  • 21g or 22g coffee / 300g water
  • JX: 18 (54 clicks)
  • Water at 95°C
  • Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover with slow pour

I bought an 8oz bag of these along with an 8oz bag of Beach Blend. I started them off at grind setting 20, but ended up at 18 mostly by accident — I forgot to change the setting after brewing the aforementioned Beach Blend, it was still pretty good, and when I’m working on two bags at once, I always prefer when I can use the same grind setting for both. Initially, it was kind of a toss-up which of these I liked better, but as the beans have aged a little bit, I think I slightly prefer these. My recent cups have had pretty good flavor and body, while the lighter-roasted Beach Blend seems to be getting a little flat. I should probably play around with the settings a bit, but the beans are almost gone. I suspect I’ll use up both of these by the end of next week. Looking forward to next year’s Delaware trip so I can get some more.