• Beans: “Holiday Roast MMXXIII” (Mexico/Uganda)
  • Medium roast (4/8)
  • Roaster: Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
  • Roast date: 12/19/2023
  • Purchase date: 12/22/2023
• 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15)
• JX: 23-24 (69-72 clicks)
• Water at 95°C
• Recipe: Single Cup V60 Pourover

12/24: I tried these for the first time yesterday at grind setting 20, and it tasted like I could go a little bit finer, so I went with 19 today. Interestingly, I didn’t notice much bubbling during the bloom phase either day. I’m not sure why some beans tend to bubble a lot, while others don’t. I’ll have to read up on that. In any case, this turned out pretty good. I may try some minor tweaks (a little bit finer grind, and/or hotter water) just to see how they affect the flavor, but this definitely works as-is.

12/28: A little bitter this morning at grind setting 19 with 300g water/20g coffee. Could be that the beans needed to degas. Could also be that the larger brew volume led to more extraction. Will try a 300g cup at setting 20 the next time.

12/30: 300g at setting 20 was good this morning. I’m wondering if the beans were too “fresh” on 12/24 and needed to outgas a little bit. The only difference is that I brewed a larger cup today. I’ll probably stick with this setting for a bit and see how the next few cups taste.

1/1/24: A little bit of bitterness creeping in at 20 today. Still not a bad cup, but I feel like there’s room for improvement. Try 21 next time.

1/5: Setting 21 still had a slightly unpleasant bitter flavor to it on 1/3, so I tried 22 today, and it was a reasonably pleasant cup. I suspect that 22 or possibly 23 will end up being the best setting, but I still have a lot of beans to experiment with.

1/6: Setting 23 was a very good cup, but I think it might be even better at 24. Recent experience with these beans as well as Zeke’s Hippie Blend have me wondering if I should tweak my starting grind setting for brewing light- and medium-roasted beans with the V60. I’ve typically started with setting 20 (2 rotations on the JX), but maybe I should try starting somewhere like 22-23 (or even coarser) instead. I still have a good amount of both beans, so it will be interesting to see what grind setting I ultimately end up at.

1/12: The past several cups have been really good at grind setting 24.

1/23: I’ve been using grind setting 24 for the past couple of weeks, and while the cups are generally good, I’ve felt like the last few could have been better. Hard to put my finger on it, but I’m wondering if it has something to do with the cooler ambient air temperature affecting the temperature of the brew water. As an experiment this morning, I brewed a single 300g cup using my size 2 plastic V60, instead of my usual size 1 ceramic V60. I kept everything else the same (grind setting 24, water 95C, same pourover procedure), so the dripper was the only difference. This cup tasted quite different than my recent cups, though. It was similar to earlier cups that I brewed using finer grind settings — not quite bitter, but a little bit over-extracted. Plastic is a much better insulator than ceramic, and even though I preheat the ceramic V60, I’m wondering if it’s still sucking too much heat out of the brew water. I’m curious to try this experiment again, although I’ll need to use different beans, as I only have 16g of these left.

1/24: I brewed the final 16g at grind setting 23 with 250g of water. This was not a stellar cup, but I think I figured out what was going on with my ceramic V60: the preheat water from my insta-hot tap is not as hot this time of year, so the V60 isn’t getting as hot, and the brew water is losing more heat. Usually, the insta-hot gets the V60 hot enough that it’s uncomfortable to handle for too long, but today, I noticed that it’s not getting that hot any more. The insta-hot tank is mounted under the kitchen sink, which is unheated and poorly insulated, and I doubt that the thermostat is all that precise, so the water in the tank likely isn’t staying as hot as it does during the warmer months. Today, I preheated with water from the kettle instead, and it got the V60 much hotter. I can’t put a finger on what was wrong with the coffee, but it may just have been the strength (1:15.6 vs my usual 1:15), or possibly that it was over-extracted, or possibly both. Too bad I don’t have more beans to experiment with, but I did get a lot of good cups out of these.

• Beans: “Winter Warmer” medium roast (Indonesia)
  • Roaster: Rise Up Coffee Roasters (Easton, MD)
  • Roast date: 11/23/2023
• Initial:
  • 18g coffee / 250g water (1:13.8) (A little too strong)
  • JX: 20 (60 clicks) (Occasionally bitter)
• Best:
  • 16g coffee / 250g water (1:15.6)
  • Also works well with 20g coffee / 300g water (1:15)
  • JX: 21 (63 clicks)
• Water at 95°C
• Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique (see below)

1. Preheat V60, pre-moisten filter, add coffee, and tare scale
2. Make small indentation in center of coffee grounds
3. 0:00: Pour 50g of water to bloom, then return kettle to base
4. 0:10 – 0:15: Gently Swirl
5. 0:45 – 1:00: Pour up to 100g total (40% total weight)
   • Hold kettle for the remainder of the brewing process
6. 1:10 – 1:20: Pour up to 150g total (60% total weight)
7. 1:30 – 1:40: Pour up to 200g total (80% total weight)
8. 1:50 – 2:00: Pour up to 250g total (100% total weight)
9. 2:00 – 2:05: Gently swirl
10. Drawdown should finish somewhere around 2:30-2:40

This was pretty good from the get-go. I used the same recipe that I have been using for Rise Up Organic Maryland Coffee (also a medium roast, but sourced from Central America) but made it a shade stronger, using 18g coffee vs 17g. I think I prefer the flavor at this strength, but definitely wouldn’t want to drink more than 250g at a time, else I’d be bouncing off the walls. 😀

12/4: 17g (1:14.7) had very good flavor without tasting overly strong, but I’m still feeling the caffeine afterward. Might be that this is the ideal strength, but I’m going to try at 16g next time to see how it turns out.

12/11: Tried 17g at grind setting 19 (slightly finer) just as an experiment, and was not crazy about it. It just tasted a little “off”. I wouldn’t expect it to taste much different from setting 20, so maybe the water temperature dropped too much during brewing, or something was off with my technique. I’ll have to decide what I want to do for the next cup. I could continue playing around with grind settings just to see what happens, or I could bump the water temperature a couple degrees higher, or I could just go back to what has been working up to today.

12/13: Went back to grind setting 20 this morning, and brewed 300g water with 20g coffee (1:15), pouring 60g at a time vs 50g. For some reason, 300g seems to taste “better” than 250g in some way I can’t quite put my finger on. I’ve noticed it with other light-to-medium roasts as well, when brewing larger quantities of coffee using the pourover method.

12/18: I seem to be getting cups that are alternately good and alternately bitter/over-extracted. Yesterday was in the former camp, but today was in the latter. Maybe it’s time to try a slightly coarser grind and/or slightly lower water temperature. I’d like to get a little better consistency out of my last few cups from this bag, so I have a starting point for the next time I buy these.

12/19: Tried grind setting 21 today for the first time, and it turned out very nicely, in spite of me having spilled the beans all over the place prior to grinding them. 😮 The cup was smooth with no hints of yesterday’s bitterness. Seems like at setting 20, it was more sensitive to very small variations in water temperature and/or brewing technique. Hoping that 21 will produce consistently good cups. I’ll find out over the next few days. It’s also worth noting that my past several cups (going back a week or so) have all been 300g water with 20g coffee.

12/24: Used up the last of the beans. I brewed several 250g and 300g cups at 1:15.6 and grind setting 21, and they all turned out good. Updated the recipe for posterity.

• Beans: “Harvest Moon” (Indonesia/South Asia)
  • Medium roast (5/8)
  • Roaster: Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
  • Roast date: 10/30/2023
• 18g coffee / 250g water (1:13.8)
• JX: 2 rotations (20 on the grind chart / 60 total clicks)
• Water at 95°C
• Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique (see below)

1. Preheat V60, pre-moisten filter, add coffee, and tare scale
2. Make small indentation in center of coffee grounds
3. 0:00: Pour 50g of water to bloom, then return kettle to base
4. 0:10 – 0:15: Gently Swirl
5. 0:45 – 1:00: Pour up to 100g total (40% total weight)
   • Hold kettle for the remainder of the brewing process
6. 1:10 – 1:20: Pour up to 150g total (60% total weight)
7. 1:30 – 1:40: Pour up to 200g total (80% total weight)
8. 1:50 – 2:00: Pour up to 250g total (100% total weight)
9. 2:00 – 2:05: Gently swirl
10. Drawdown finished around 2:55

I bought this bag yesterday at the grocery store, after using up the last of my bag of Zeke’s Market Blend. While both are labeled as medium roasts, visually, these beans are not as dark as the Market Blend beans. I decided to start off with the recipe I’ve been using for light roasts, with slightly cooler water. This is the exact same recipe I used initially with the Market Blend, which was good for the first cup or two, but required tweaking thereafter. We’ll see how it goes with Harvest Moon, but this afternoon’s cup tasted perfectly fine. I think this might be the first time I have brewed with beans from Asia, and they definitely have a uniquely different flavor compared to Central/South America and Africa.

11/6: Yesterday’s cup had a very, very small tinge of bitterness, which is one of those things where it really didn’t detract from the flavor, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to see if I could eliminate it. Tried today with a slightly coarser grind (63 clicks) and while it did eliminate the slight bitter taste, it made the cup a little bit weaker. I’m going to go back to the original grind setting. If the bitterness becomes problematic, I can either try the coarser grind with a little bit more coffee (say 1:13) or bump the water temperature down 5 degrees or so.

11/7: Brewed 500g this morning using the 2-cup recipe with 36g of coffee at grind setting 20 and 65-70g initial bloom water. Turned out pretty good. Once again, I think that brewing with the larger volume of water leads to slightly better-extracted coffee. (11/9) Second batch brewed like this was good as well, but seemed on the strong side.

11/10: Brewed using my starting recipe (pre-11/6) with one modification: I used 99°C water to bloom and 90°C water to brew. Yes, I’m sick (again) and my senses of taste/smell are accordingly blunted, and yes, I also burned my tongue, but from what I could tell in spite of all that, this turned out pretty good. It had no discernible bitterness, and seemed pretty smooth and balanced. I’ll try another cup like this soon.

Starting a new post for these beans, because this is a significant change from my original recipe.

• Beans: “Market Blend” (Ethiopia/Guatemala)
  • Medium roast (5/8)
  • Roaster: Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
  • Roast date: 10/2/2023
• 18g coffee / 250g water (1:13.9)
• JX: 2 rotations + 9 clicks (23 on the grind chart / 69 total clicks)
• Bloom water at 99°C, brew water between 81°C and 85°C
• Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique (see below)

1. Heat water; preheat V60 and mug
2. Pre-moisten filter, add coffee, and tare scale
3. Shake V60 to level coffee bed; make small indentation in center of grounds
4. Start timer and do the following, finishing between 0:45 and 1:15:
   • Pour 50g of water to bloom
   • Return kettle to base
   • Lower kettle temperature by 20° or so by adding room temperature water
   • Bring kettle water back up to 81°-85°C
5. Reset timer
6. 0:00 – 0:10: Pour up to 100g total (40% total weight)
   • Hold kettle for the remainder of the brewing process
7. 0:20 – 0:30: Pour up to 150g total (60% total weight)
8. 0:40 – 0:50: Pour up to 200g total (80% total weight)
9. 1:00 – 1:10: Pour up to 250g total (100% total weight)
10. Wait for drawdown (30-60 seconds)

As with my last bag of medium roasted beans, I had been trying to brew these using a pourover recipe that works well for me with lighter roasts, with unspectacular results: the cups were occasionally bitter, occasionally weak/watery, and generally lacking in sweetness/complexity. I couldn’t quite get things figured out with my last bag, so I ended up brewing most of my cups in the French press.

Visually, these beans look pretty dark, and they are also coated with oil, which makes me think maybe I should try to brew them like a dark roast. The problem is, I had never tried a pourover with a dark roast. I found yet another James Hoffmann video where he covers this topic. The main takeaways I got were:

• Bloom with near-boiling water, but brew with cooler water
• Grind coarser, because we actually want to extract less from the beans than with a light roast
• Corollary: extracting less at the same ratio as a lighter roast will result in a weaker-tasting cup, so use more coffee to compensate.

In practice: I started with a 1:14 ratio, and decided to shoot for a brew temperature of 85°, but I added a little bit too much cool water after the initial pour. As a result, the water took longer than the appointed 45 seconds to warm back up. I ended up blooming for an extra 30 seconds, at which point the water was at about 82°-83°. That, of course, pushed back the times for all of my subsequent pours, as well.

This cup was definitely a step in the right direction. It was better than any of the previous pourovers I’ve made using these beans. It had a nice flavor with no bitter aftertaste, and it seemed like a good strength as well. Next time, I’ll work on my water-cooling technique, and see how the next cup turns out.

10/23: After brewing several cups, I’ve found that this recipe works well with bloom times anywhere from 0:45 to 1:15 and water temperature between 81° and 85° (inclusive). Since the bloom time can vary depending on how long it takes to bring the water back up to temperature, I added a step to zero the timer after the bloom, to make it easier to keep the timing straight during the subsequent pours. I am hoping this will be a good starting recipe for medium to darker roasts.

10/28: Decided to try a slightly stronger cup this afternoon. I used 260g water and 20g coffee (1:13), which is the ratio I usually use for medium roasts with the French press. I poured 5 “pulses” of 52g each. It turned out great! I think that 1:13 to 1:14 is about the perfect range for these beans.

11/2: Used up the last of these today, exactly one month after roast date and a little over three weeks after I bought them. The last few cups were still good, but I think the beans were getting a little bit past their prime, as there was a small, but noticeable, drop-off in taste/complexity with the last few cups. I’ll definitely buy these again at some point, though. Just need to plan to use them up within a month of roast date.

• Beans: “Market Blend” (Ethiopia/Guatemala)
  • Medium roast (5/8)
  • Roaster: Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
  • Roast date: 10/2/2023
• 17g coffee / 250g water (1:14.7)
• JX: 2 rotations (20 on the grind chart / 60 total clicks)
• Water at 95°C
• Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique (see below)

1. Preheat V60, pre-moisten filter, add coffee, and tare scale
2. Make small indentation in center of coffee grounds
3. 0:00: Pour 50g to 60g of water to bloom, then return kettle to base
   • 16g coffee → 50-55g water; 17g coffee → 55-60g water
4. 0:10 – 0:15: Gently Swirl
5. 0:45 – 1:00: Pour up to 100g total (40% total weight)
   • Hold kettle for the remainder of the brewing process
6. 1:10 – 1:20: Pour up to 150g total (60% total weight)
7. 1:30 – 1:40: Pour up to 200g total (80% total weight)
8. 1:50 – 2:00: Pour up to 250g total (100% total weight)
9. 2:00 – 2:05: Gently swirl
10. Drawdown finished around 2:55

I picked this bag up last night at the grocery store, after using up the last of the beans I bought in Minneapolis. I brewed my first cup with what has become my go-to starting pourover recipe for medium roasts. It turned out pretty good. It probably helps that I really like dark chocolate, as that was the most prominent flavor I noticed. If the cups consistently turn out like this, I don’t think I need to spend much time tweaking the recipe. As the weather gets cooler, I might want to start thinking about preheating my mug (or switching to an insulated mug) when brewing with water below boiling, so the coffee stays hot a little longer, and I’m not tempted to drink it too quickly.

I noticed that the grocery store also carries beans from Rise Up Coffee Roasters, which is based on the Eastern Shore. I may try one of theirs after I finish my other bag of Zeke’s, which is getting pretty low.

10/12: The same recipe tasted a little bitter this morning. This afternoon, I made another cup using a coarser grind (JX setting 25, or 2.5 rotations), and it was better, but a little bit watery tasting. So, maybe the ideal grind setting is somewhere in between 20 and 25.

10/13: Brewed at grind setting 22 (2 rotations + 6 clicks). Maybe a little better than yesterday’s cup, but still a little bit under-extracted.

10/14: Brewed at grind setting 21 (2 rotations + 3 clicks) and also increased starting water temperature to 99°C. Not perfect yet, but moving in the right direction. Could be that medium roasts need a higher starting temperature with pourover than with immersion? I always preheat the dripper, but I’m sure the water still loses a fair amount of heat while sitting in there percolating. This will be even more noticeable when the air temperature in the room is cooler (e.g. winter).

Epilogue: I eventually figured out a recipe that produces consistently good cups. Synopsis: grind setting 23 (2 rotations + 9 clicks), ratio 1:13 to 1:14, 99°C water to bloom, and 81°C-85°C water to brew. So, my 10/14 hypothesis was wrong — cooler brew water, and a slightly stronger ratio, turned out to be the difference makers.

I’m back home from Minneapolis with a new 12-ounce bag of coffee beans. This was the first time I flew with a bag of beans in my carry-on, and when I unpacked, all of the air had been sucked out of the bag through the little plastic valve, almost like the beans had been vacuum packed. When I opened the bag, air rushed in and everything went back to “normal”. I was worried that this phenomenon might spoil the beans or otherwise negatively affect things, but it did not seem to. It did inspire me to do some reading and learn why the bags have those one-way valves. It’s to let the beans out-gas after roasting, while keeping air out so they stay fresh. I’m learning more every day!

This morning’s cup:

• Beans: “Brazil Yellow Bourbon” medium roast
  • Roaster: Vitality Roasting (Minneapolis, MN)
  • Roast date: 9/20/2023
• 18g coffee / 250g water (1:14)
• JX: 2 rotations (20 on the grind chart / 60 total clicks)
• Water at 95°C
• Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique (see below)

1. Preheat V60, pre-moisten filter, add coffee, and tare scale
2. Make small indentation in center of coffee grounds
3. 0:00: Pour 55g of water to bloom, then return kettle to base
4. 0:10 – 0:15: Gently Swirl
5. 0:45 – 1:00: Pour up to 100g total (40% total weight)
   • Hold kettle for the remainder of the brewing process
6. 1:10 – 1:20: Pour up to 150g total (60% total weight)
7. 1:30 – 1:40: Pour up to 200g total (80% total weight)
8. 1:50 – 2:00: Pour up to 250g total (100% total weight)
9. 2:00 – 2:05: Gently swirl
10. Drawdown finished around 2:45

The only brewing note is that (once again) I forgot the initial swirl at step 4. I remembered around the end of step 5, and gave it a half-hearted swirl then. I made sure to level the bed before I started pouring (I’m pretty good with that) and I ended up with a mostly-level bed of spent grounds at the end. I’m not sure how much the swirling actually matters in most cases, but I’ll keep doing it when I remember.

This cup tasted excellent. The beans are very fresh, which I’m sure didn’t hurt. I’d been drinking mediocre conference coffee for the past week, so the bar was admittedly low, but I’d rank this among the better cups I’ve had since I’ve been brewing with the V60.

9/24: Second cup today. Did the swirl at step 4. Overshot the final pour and ended up with 252-253 grams of water. It seemed like the water percolated more slowly than yesterday. The level in the V60 was higher than usual after steps 7 and 8. Drawdown took several seconds longer, finishing at roughly 3:00. Maybe I swirled a little too aggressively? The initial sips tasted slightly thin, but the rest of the cup was very good. If yesterday’s cup was a 10, I’d call this a 9.

9/26: Accidentally ground finer today (setting 18) and also used 17g coffee instead of 18g. Did not like the results. Body was OK, but flavor was bitter.

9/27: Tried a little bit coarser today at grind setting 22, and 18g coffee. The first thing I noticed was that the drawdown was faster, finishing at 2:40-2:45. Definitely a better cup than yesterday’s, with decent body and no bitterness, but room for improvement. I think I’ll keep this grind setting tomorrow and try nudging the water temperature a little closer to boiling. While (with the exception of yesterday) all of the cups I’ve brewed have been good, none of the subsequent cups have been quite as good as the first one, which tells me that bean freshness (and possibly how they are stored) makes a big difference.

9/28: Brewed exactly the same as yesterday, except I nudged the water from 95°C to 97°C. I did not notice any discernible difference from yesterday’s cup. Probably should have gone straight to 99 or boiling. Not sure if I’ll tweak further next time, or just keep brewing it like this.

9/29: Brewed at 99 and grind setting 22 today and the result was bitter and lacked flavor. This is definitely moving in the wrong direction, so I will adjust the temperature back downward next time.

I’m not sure why the first two pourovers I made were really good, but subsequent cups didn’t quite measure up. I wonder if it had something to do with bean freshness. I probably could have gotten it dialed back in, but ended up brewing the rest of the beans in the French press, which worked out pretty well.