Somehow I landed on this Youtube video and the only thing I could see here were giant V60 beds:
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Micro changes. So like 5k. 5l. 5j etc.
Water is melbourne tap water. Has been working so far.
I tried brita filter yesterday on a couple of the terrible cups. I could taste a small difference, but something was clearly wrong independent of me changing the water.
Bags are all different. I have a specialty coffee subscription.
Ok probably not the water then. Definitely try larger grind adjustments and see how it fares. Iād try moving coarser by one whole macro adjustment as a start.
With the aeropress you can always steep longer to get more extraction from a bit too coarse of a grind, but you can certainly over extract by going too fine.
That ring has to come off in order to get to the burrs. Itās designed to turn clockwise for loosening so it doesnāt loosen while screwing the base on and off
Itās just frozen on. I donāt want to bang it too hard. I guess Iāll just need to find someone with a vice or the Incredible Hulk if heās available
Oh I see the problem now. Itās reverse threaded so the grinding motion will tighten it instead of loosen it. Try heating it up. Hairdryer, heat gun, sun bath, maybe even your oven on its lowest setting for a minute or so?
Weird. I thought heat too, but a friend said cold like maybe put it in the freezer. Iāll try heat first
That did it! Thanks
(was starting to feel like I need to hit the gym harder lol)
So moral of the story is donāt go too many uses without loosening it because it just keeps tightening with every use?
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Your water is too soft if this melbournewater.au.com link is accurate. TDS tops out at 75-86 range for one source which might be ok, but itās really low from a few other sources. Most importantly, the alkalinity is in the 10-20 range for most of them. Doubt that would suddenly make your coffee disgusting but itās not going to be optimal going forward.
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I canāt remember the exact number, but difference between each of these is something like 4 microns (!). That is essentially meaningless in the context of filter coffee. There are some other weird properties you need to know here too: the the differences near the top (A) are smaller than the difference toward the bottom (Z). So the changes might be closer to 3 microns toward the top of the fine range but 5 microns toward the bottom. Itās not really relevant for filter but just a weird design quirk of the adjustment rotating on a cam shaft cylinder. Also be aware that the grind adjustments overlap fairly significantly. Check this post:
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Thatās weird. I figured it was quite small. But was making a noticeable difference to the cup.
Maybe thatās only if its dialled in properly. Maybe Iām miles off and just drifting back and forth in completely the wrong range.
Man. Iāve been going down the water rabbit hole.
So my proposed starter plan is to buy some distilled or RO water (does it matter which?) And add some third wave coffee water sachets.
Does that seem a reasonable start?
Yes, do that. Get distilled not RO.
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Okay. Much better experience this morning.
Went all the way up to 6P and then started adjusting from there. Using jumps of 3 or 4 micro adjustments.
Still not quite right. So will try a few different things tomorrow. But least Iām in the right ballpark and finished with a drinkable cup.
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Bought the third wave stuff online. Itās one sachet per gallon on the box, but the australian website is selling it as a 4 liter sachet.
1 gallon is approx 3.8 liters. Iām guessing I should be more exact than treating them as if they were equivalent? Thatās almost 10%.
Nah I think itās fine. The TWW packets are on the high end of acceptable hardness, so diluting it slightly with 4L will be fine, perhaps even preferable.
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The dude from April likes 1 packet to 5L water
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bump on this
I do notice the clogging issue with the Hario brand tabbed filters (and I have the āmade in japanā tabbed version, FWIW), but as lawnmower mentioned, it only seems to be a big issue with some of the really dense kenyan/ethiopian beans.
A much bigger problem imo is that the tabbed filters areā¦ too small. I have a very noticable gap between the filter and the cone most of the time (after wetting). I never have this issue with the untabbed filters.
I have seen a light roast do this but it seems to be extremely correlated with how gassy the beans are in general.
Also when Iāve done this it has invariably left a crater in the middle of the bed.
Iām still not really 100% clear on why turbulence is bad, but anecdotally I think Iāve seen improvement in clarity since taking more steps to minimize it
Yeah, weird. Iāve certainly had filters that do this but not in a while. Iām currently using MIJ tabbed also and mine fit perfectly when rinsed:
I ran out of untabbed boxes and thought Iād try these for a while since I have hundreds of them. They drain rinse water much faster than the untabbed afaict. However, they do seem to be more susceptible to clogging and can slow down considerably. The problem I have with that isnāt the slowdown per se but the variance, because I struggle to get consistent times with these. Using the same coffee and grind size, Iām getting anywhere from 2:30 to 4:30. Some of that depends on technique, but some of it just appears to be random, which leads me toā¦
One part of my normal routine now with V60 filters is to run a full cone of hot tap water and check the flow rate, basically a pre-pre-rinse. Itās most noticeable when you get down to the final 1" to 1.5" of water height in the cone. These tabbed filters usually clear quickly, but not all of them do, and some even stall (maybe 5%?). I threw one out yesterday that stalled. Today I had an extremely fast one and came in 0:30 under my target of 3:00 to 3:30 for a sour cup. Just seems like another annoying source of variance thatās difficult to adjust to.
Afaik, the working theory is Brazil nut effect, but its relationship to filter coffee is theoretical and incomplete. Not 100% sure on this but I think the computer simulations even for the simplest models of this are computationally intensive, so ones more applicable to coffee may not even be possible.
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