If Harrar Coffee is the one in NW DC on Georgia Ave, I’ve been to the shop a few times and it might be the best coffee I’ve ever had. Can’t speak to their beans for an at home setup though.
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yes, same one.
ah the familiar sinking feeling of thinking I maybe know something about something but then running into people who actually know things and realizing I need to stfu. I’ve enjoyed pvn’s coffee talk for years but lawnmower is a genuine sicko and it’s good to see. So far the main effect of this thread on my coffee routine has been sending me back to the drawing board with the grind. (Btw if anybody here is using a breville smart grinder and looking for more consistency with coarser grinds then you can physically change the original factory setting on the upper burr from #6 to #10 [for example] which will shift the grinder’s range towards the coarser side but it’ll still be fine enough for espresso if that’s your thing—even with the upper burr increased my espresso machine still gets choked out on the finest settings).
it’s been a couple years since I was back on the coffee golf swing merrygoround of “change one thing then revisit four other things” but I’m glad, I was in a rut. I’ve been worrying about dumb stuff (“hmm if I do fewer pours then will the added weight of the upper water on the lower water increase flow rate / decrease extraction?”) at the expense of stuff that actually matters (“the less consistent the grind the more blurry the flavors”)
I’ve been buying beans from Chromatic for a couple of years but I should probably experiment more there too. I drink way more coffee than espresso but Chromatic’s main espresso bean (Gamut) is super tasty once dialed in. I’ve also been drinking a lot of tea lately and I recently bought a couple dozen kinds of biscuits/crackers/cookies to have an immense biscuit thunderdome; once the timtams get here then my roster will be complete and the carb drenched bloodbath can begin; I’ll report back if anything earthshaking happens
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Heart and Parlor are supposedly two of the best. Not familiar with the others.
Nah we need your input. Third wave / specialty is still very young and I don’t feel like we actually know that much for certain yet, at least with respect to the very top end that coffee offers. I’m mostly into extracting these super exotic cups with clear flavors and perfect balance which is a bit like tossing the coin into the jukebox in the Smooth Criminal video. In reality, the V60 is a coffee slot machine that pays out an insane cup just often enough to keep me pumping more money in for another chance.
It will definitely increase your flow rate but the extraction part isn’t extremely clear to me. I feel like keeping the water low gives me better chance at great extraction but much more variability, but I could simply be wrong about that. This is a good piece to read though:
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sweet article thanks, and it also inspired me to give a couple of those Hoffman videos a closer watch, green jolly rancher notes or bust imo
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I’m beginning to suspect that cold brew takes a really long time to steep, right? The grounds normally float at the top when I try to make iced Vietnamese coffee but mix through with hot coffee.
Side note: I’m not gonna add ice cubes to hot coffee. Great way to get lukewarm Vietnamese coffee.
I suspect it’s not the method with the highest ceiling but it seems to have more repeatability for V60. IME the methods with large columns of water tend to produce brighter cups that are more acid-forward with less balance and sweetness by default which I associate with under-extraction. I’m not entirely sure why this happens but I speculated before that it could be more like an immersion / percolation hybrid with all of the water sitting in the cone for a few minutes. Other possibilities are slurry cooling, high water bypassing the grounds, or some linear combination of all three.
I’ll note that the machine brewers I’ve researched tend to have well-insulated brew baskets that maintain slurry temperature quite well. The SCA certification requires this, and my recent reading about Technivorm units revealed that removing the plastic lid causes the temp to drop dramatically, so it’s another variable I’m currently trying to isolate. Maybe it’s as simple as capping the V60 between pours with an insulator.
Probably 16 to 18 hours depending on the coffee. How long were you steeping?
One of my favorites is Black & White Coffee for the quality:price ratio. Unfortunately I haven’t seen any of the bargain geshas on there recently.
I guess it depends on what you’re looking for in a light roast though. I like a more-developed roast where the sweetness and sugars tend to come out. If you’re talking about a super light Nordic roast then I’m not sure.
I should add that George Howell is often rated as the best but their roasts are like sneaker drops that you have to plan for in advance and it really annoys me.
yeah I’m not interested in that game, fuck that shit.
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I changed from a glass V60 to a plastic one. pour times seem longer for the same grind which doesn’t make sense to me but maybe there is less water slipping between the cone and the filter? anyway, I’ve gone with a coarser grind to shorten the brew time, and I’m getting close to dialing it in (still a little too fine) but I definitely have a lot fewer high and dries.
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ordered a couple of bags from Heart as well. Heard some really good things about them.
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I’m getting a plastic one too, playing around with Hoffman method = higher water levels = using the 02 size instead of the 01 and the only 02 I have is copper for some dumb reason, which I recently realized was dumb when I tried the hoffman swirl and it seared a raiders of the lost ark staff of ra scar on my hand, which was when I thought hang on, if the heat is there in my mangled hand then it’s not in my slurry, when I thought hang on, hario markets the copper as having “excellent thermal conductivity” and I’m not a metallurgist but doesn’t that mean it’s excellent at conducting the heat away from where I want it to other places like for example the air? So I’m getting a plastic one. I’m definitely not going to ask my dad about this because he actually is a metallurgist and I think he’d just coldcock me, god knows I already disappoint him enough when I can’t name the component parts of the eight most common alloys in seven seconds. (I always think bronze has zinc because of the Zs but no, and btw to a metallurgist bronze : brass :: rolex : sundial coated in bird shit glued to a leather belt.)
edit: maybe I’m ok after all, graph of hario heat retention by material
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The copper one would probably take well to a scalding hot water bath before brew but damn that’s a lot of work. I’ve currently working on some type of insulating contraption for my V60.
I may have finally found some explanation behind the recommended max temperature of 205 F. It seems to come from some espresso papers that found shots were more bitter and acidic at temps higher than 96 C (204.8 F). Part of the theory is that chlorogenic acid isn’t heat stable and converts into caffeic and other acids at high temps. I’m not really sure how this translates to brew coffee though because keeping your slurry above 190 F is difficult even with boiling water. Maybe short contact times are enough to do it if those temperature sensitive compounds come off first or are quickly degraded, but I can’t imagine anything is hotter than 205 F in a V60 slurry for more than a few seconds if ever.
I always order multiple bags because shipping. I would open one and freeze two but now I don’t think that’s necessary. Light roast coffees should be good for months if stored properly* at room temperature, and some may not even hit their peak until weeks off roast. An example is this Ethiopia that was boring when I cupped it a few weeks ago but has since opened up with a blueberry acidity.
*Only thing I worry about is breaking the seal on the bag if you don’t have a secondary container that allows for CO2 degassing while keeping O2 out. The bags that have an actual plastic lock/seal system should be fine but not everyone uses those. I have Airscape canisters for that purpose but there may be some better / cheaper alternatives available now.
Edit: Some people on HB seem to use these which are cheaper than Airscape and have more size options:
wow their website and product naming really could use some serious cleanup/organization