GoodShave's Coffee Journal

Hey Good Shaves! I worked the last couple of days and so used my Bonavita Enthusiast auto drip machine. It does a great job for making a up to 8 cups in under 10 minutes. I usually make 6 cups, which in my world translates to two travel mugs of coffee. (I believe Bonavita uses 5 oz as a cup, and my "cups" at home are 300 mL to 350 mL). I just now watched the Hendrick video as I wasn't sure what kind of pour I use. Turns out, I have only done the laminar pour, mostly in spirals. I will try out the turbulent tomorrow morning. I am enjoying trying the different 4:6 pours with my single roast and while I haven't had a bouquet of flavors explode on my tongue, I have enjoyed each cup and can distinguish nuances in mouth feel and brightness. Thanks for helping to "school" me!

You are very welcome!
I also was only doing laminar pours up until I watched these videos and started using turbulent pours and my V60 brews are more consistent than ever. I still have more filter screens to try out with my Varia FLO dripper, but I want to really get these pours down with the V60 before I jump back to other drippers.

Today's brew, I continued with the Lance Hedrick 2-Pour recipe, which is a bloom pour followed by a single pour.
I was using the glass Hario V60-01.

My first brew, I was late to swirling the brewer after the last pour. When I did swirl, I noticed that I had some 'high and dry' boulders stuck to the upper part of the filter. Looking through my notes from some of the videos I posted before, this means that the bloom time was too short. For this first brew, I did a one minute bloom. I did notice that I had a few gas bubbles during the bloom which should have been a clue to go for a longer bloom. I do think that the way I do the bloom pour influences how much gas is released from the grinds.  More forceful pour I think will push out more gas due to more agitation. The first brew was pretty weak/light body.

My second brew, the bloom did not produce any bubbles which may speak to variation in my bloom pours. I went for a two minute bloom and the swirl at the end did not have any 'high and dry' boulders. The brew had a little more body but the coffee did not have as much body/extraction as I hoped for.

I have had better brews with these beans and recipe from both of my opaque V60s (01 and 02) as well as the glass Hario Switch cone. I am wondering if I am dealing with slurry heat loss from the glass cone. Maybe the Switch cone, having more glass (larger cone), holds in more heat/loses heat slower than the V60-01 glass (which has less glass to hold in the heat). I may repeat this brew but incorporate wet WDT after the final pour (with a WDT tool or stirring with a chopstick/rod) to increase the extraction to make up for the heat loss (if this is indeed the cause). I could pull out the Melodrip if I really want to boost the extraction, but I really don't want to add that extra step as that would require using boiling water to make up the difference in heat loss to the Melodrip screen. I also think that maybe with the Switch cone being higher that it automatically makes the pours more turbulent do to the increase distance from the top of the cone to the brew bed. So maybe my pours with the glass V60-01 were not consistent turbulence wise. More to ponder.

I noticed last night the variation in hole sizes in my V60s and here was the order from smallest to largest hole: opaque plastic V60-01, glass V60-01 and Hario Switch glass cone (both about the same size), then the opaque plastic V60-02. I will keep that in mind as that will make the draw down times different depending on which brewer I use.

Today's brew, I continued with the Lance Hedrick 2-Pour recipe, but hedged my bets prepping to make two brews from the start.

Both brews were with the same settings: KU 7.4 @ 95C (203F) 13g 195ml (1:15)
Both brews were using the Happy Mug Coffee (Erie, PA) - Comforting Rwanda beans.
I used two minute blooms for both brews.
I used the timer on my scale to track overall brew time, but I started the timer on my kettle to track the bloom time to make things easier to track for the longer bloom.

One of the brews, I used the glass Hario V60-01 but instead of a swirl after the last pour, I did a Tales Coffee stir (vigorously stirring from outside in starting at the top working my way to the bottom of the cone) using a wooden chopstick. That was a successful brew and demonstrated that additional manual agitation can make up for temperature loss due to the glass cone.

The other brew was with the opaque plastic Hario V60-02. For this brew, I wanted to see if a 13g dose was still large enough to work with the large hole of this plastic dripper (the largest hole of any of my V60 drippers). This also worked. The chocolate flavor did not intensify for these beans until the coffee cooled way down. The V60-01 brew had that intensity much earlier in the cooling process.

Of the two, I preferred the mouth feel and overall quality of the V60-01 glass dripper  brew with the Tales Coffee stir.
So if I am not going to swirl the brewer, then I may put  the glass cone back onto the Hario Switch base so I can close the switch and fill the glass with hot water for more efficient initial heating of the cone.

I may try the Hario Switch glass cone with the Tales Coffee stir next.

Ran out of Lavazza Crema & Gusto espresso grind 




so used a "artisan" drip/pour over grind coffee in my trusty Moka Pot




It was drinkable but man, was it weak. I have had better coffee in restaurants. The grind is just far too coarse for the Moka Pot to do a proper extraction.

I ran across the video below about sorting your dose and removing chaff/silver skin to improve the flavor of your coffee.
I think I will try removing the chaff as yesterday's brew had quite a bit of it. Since that step alone is supposed to increase sweetness, that would be an extra clue to pinning down what sweetness is.

Here were my notes from the video (see the video for more details):

Sorting your dose: Just quickly look over your dose for obvious outliers and remove them.
Don't spend a lot of time on it. Don't try to only have perfect beans as that is wasteful.

Grind beans, then pour the grinds into a dosing cup and blow on them to remove the chaff. Others commented on filtering the grinds through a mesh strainer (to remove clumps) also removes the chaff.
The chaff tastes like paper or tobacco. You coffee will taste sweeter without it.

Remove burnt beans before grinding. They will make you coffee taste bitter.

Remove the beans that did not get roasted (way too light). They are undeveloped beans. These 'quakers' especially happen with natural Ethiopian beans no matter how good the roaster may be in sorting by color.
They taste like oats or bread according to Lance. One commenter said that it removes some of the wild fruit flavor if you do that.

Remove beans that have big craters in the middle of them/hollow. Remove Partial beans. Remove ones with scorch marks (those will give a charred taste to your cup). Remove ones that are much darker than the rest of the beans

Remove beans that just don't look right. Leave in pea berries as they are a lot sweeter.

In the comments, someone mentioned looking for small holes in the beans (insect damage) which can cause the coffee to taste off and roast unevenly. Easier to do with green beans if you are roasting them yourself.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8kb80dvxKs

For today's brew I used the Hario Switch with the Lance Hedrick Two-Pour recipe substituting a Tales Coffee stir after final pour, instead of a swirl.

I also removed the chaff from my ground coffee using the method in the video I previously posted.
Blowing the chaff out requires a gently blowing or you will blow some grinds out too. I weighed the grinds and found that I had lost 0.5g in this process (including blowing too hard and sending good grinds flying), so I weighed and ground more beans to make up the difference. Maybe next time I will add an extra 0.5g of beans ahead of time.

I also removed a few 'quaker' beans before grinding.

The coffee was very smooth and had a more rounded taste. It had a very nice quality to it.
I would definitely recommend trying a brew with removing the chaff and see if you like the flavor.

Today's brew, I returned to the Varia FLO dripper with the Kurasu basic recipe.

There is not much information out there on this dripper and maybe two recipes for it so far.

The FLO comes with these screens: Kurasu logo/fast 2 (default screen), medium 1 and slow 1.
You can buy these additional screens: fast 1, medium 2, slow 2 and slow 3.

Today I tried the slow 1 screen. From a video I watched, I knew it was going to be a really slow draw down (making sure that the filter was transparently touching the filter plate before starting). I used a fast Timemore filter. Same video said they had to go 20 clicks coarser not to get a 5+ minute draw down. Of course, different grinders have different number of microns per click, so you have to figure out your own grind size.

First brew I went with the stock recipe of 50g pour every 30 seconds. That did not overrun the short Timemore filter thankfully. The draw down was 3:36 for my initial grind size. The body was a little thin.

Second brew, I ground finer and with with 50g every 45 seconds to make sure I did not overrun the Timemore filter. That draw down was 4:06. Initially, this brew tasted identical to the previous brew. Both had a slightly metallic taste when hot. As both brews cooled down, the chocolate flavor of my beans intensified and this second brew had more body. It eventually became a decent cup with a nice mouth feel. I would like to see those properties happen earlier in the cooling phases so I may try again with a Kalita 185 filter (which will drain slower but I won't have to worry about filter overrun). I think I will try that setting next and evaluate where to go from there. I still have 4 other screens to try.

Here are a few more notes of mine about the Varia FLO dripper.

I see no need to disassemble the FLO dripper after each brew for cleaning. I saw one video where the reviewer complained about coffee being trapped between the parts of the dripper.  If you rinse the brewer from the top AND bottom after each brew, only a little water remains in the dripper, not coffee (from my experience). In the video below, Yozo Otsuki from Kurasu (co-creator of the dripper) said that he did not disassemble the brewer except to change screens. Once  you find the screen you like, you probably will not disassemble the brewer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLpGJhAuqUM

The FLO dripper has a food-safe silicone ring preinstalled to protect the upper cone and base from being damaged.  I am also thinking it helps seal the two main parts and prevent leaking. In the same video above, Yozo mentioned that they wound up making the FLO out of stainless steel since all the other prototypes in plastic (and maybe other materials) leaked. I am thinking that the less the dripper is disassembled, the longer the silicone will last.

An extra silicone ring comes with the dripper. I contacted Varia Brewing to ask what the expected life would be for these rings.  I was told that each one would last 8-12 months with regular use and that they plan to sell them on their website in the future.

Another video pointed out that with at least two of the 'slow' filter screens that you have to lift the filter to get the last of the coffee/bypass water to drain into your server. I did find that there was a little coffee that was released when I picked up the filter in preparation to throw it away using the slow 1 filter screen. So I do pull the filter before removing the brewer form the server to get that last bit of coffee. That said, in a video and again on another website, I saw mention that at least one screen can be used without a filter. The holes on the slow 1 filter screen are too big to use without a filter as coffee grinds would fall through but I think the slow 2 filter screen with its small holes might work without a filter. Then you would not have to deal with releasing the extra coffee/water by pulling the filter when using a slow filter screen. That would also keep the oils in the brew like a French Press.

On a different topic, I have come to the conclusion that removing the chaff from your ground coffee before brewing is only worthwhile after you have dialed in the beans for a particular scenario. Otherwise, the effect will be lost on under extracted or over extracted coffee. It will have been a waste of time and effort in my opinion.

Also, I picked up an Origami wooden dripper holder for use with my glass Hario V60 cones. The holder does work with the glass V60-01 and the glass Hario Switch cones but they have a slight wobble (though that would not prevent brewing). Also the circular wooden lip under the holder has a large diameter and prevents swirling on the small Hario V60 Range server (360ml version). It will allow swirling on large coffee mugs. I think I will stick to using the plastic holder that came with the glass V60-01 cone when using that server with recipes that require swirling. Otherwise, I will have to pick up the server to swirl the V60 dripper and that will cancel the auto timer feature of my scale (if I choose to use that feature).

Today's brew, I repeated yesterday's second brew setup but used the Kalita 185 filter instead of the Timemore filter.

Traditionally, the Timemore filter is faster than the Kalita 155 filter so I expected the draw down to be longer using the Kalita 185 filter.
With the Timemore filter, yesterday's second brew had a draw down of 4:06. Today with the Kalita 185 filter, the draw down was 3:30 for a dry bed (it did continue to drip for the following two minutes but I usually time for the bed to go dry). I don't think my pouring was too different but I could be wrong as I was focused on hitting the dark floating grinds and poured circles where ever I saw them. I did put the kettle on the base to reheat since I was pausing 45 seconds per pour.

There was a papery taste to the brew which I don't know if that was the Kalita filter (even though I rinsed the filter before brewing) that was causing the papery taste or not. I may repeat this brew but remove the chaff using the technique referenced in my previous post.

https://damnfineshave.com/thread-goodsha...#pid552612

Some great reads and definitely you are a coffee scientist! My thinks it is my chemistry/lab background that has me measuring and timing and jotting down notes, but she may ask me to become a barista at a reputable coffee roasters, if she didn't dislike coffee so much! Odd, right?! More in my Journal soon on that. But GoodShave, I think what you do is amazing and no doubt you are an enthusiast. And an influencer, as I know subscribe to Hendrick, have become enamored with the 4:6 method, and have purchased a new kettle to get my pour on!!