I would not recommend the Kalita Wave at this time if you’re looking for a low learning curve. I’ve read a lot of chatter about it being easier and more consistent than a V60, but that’s not my experience at all so far. For instance, I’ve yet to achieve a flat bed, and one problem with this ridged paper is that the coffee wants to deform the ridges and ride into the grooves. Wetting the paper significantly decreases its ability to hold form so I stopped rinsing the filter. If one of the ridges loses its shape and flattens out, then the coffee just shifts and builds up in that area which gives a lopsided bed. The only symmetrical bed I’ve been able to achieve so far looks like this:
It’s like a donut around the edges with a crater in the middle. In theory, there could be some advantages to a bed like this, namely that the coffee is acting as an additional filter layer. In practice, it has not produced an excellent cup for me.
To be clear, I’m not saying that it’s inferior. I’m sure it makes a fine cup if you know how to use it, but it seems to have just as much of a learning curve as a V60, and honestly I’d say probably more idiosyncrasies than a V60.
After further research and experimentation, I was able to achieve a flat bed by pouring in spirals all the way out to the edge into the ridges. It’s tricky because you don’t have a ton of space to work with, and you don’t want to pour outside of the paper because the water will completely bypass. Result so far is balanced cups on this pink bourbon from S&W, but I need more time to see how consistent this is going to be.
There are specific problems with the standard stainless steel version design, so unless you are into modding / hacking I wouldn’t recommend those. The glass and ceramics have better designs, but I’d never consider them given how easy they break. The specific problem with the steel version is that the ribs separating the filter from the bottom of the cone aren’t tall enough, and the holes are not only smaller but also placed in a worse location.
That leaves the handmade Tsubame version which costs around $60 for stainless but doesn’t have the flaw of the standard stainless. In hindsight, I think it would have been better to just pay up for that one, except $60 is a ridiculous price for a pour over brewer and maybe I’d have just skipped it entirely. As far as dosing goes, I do think the smaller 155 is the correct size for doses of 20g or less given bed depth.
I can tell the grind quality has improved immensely on these new Fuji burrs after naturally getting a few kilos through (didn’t season). The uniformity is pretty god damn incredible, and I suspect they aren’t fully broken in yet. Before I was getting a fair amount of fines but those seem to be mostly gone, and my cups seem to be getting progressively more balanced. The other advantage of having a shop grinder is that when I needed to grind a few hundred grams at once for a holiday party, it took like 15 seconds.
People are raving about this 1Zpresso grinder on coffee discord. I think it’s the limited release one that Lance talked up, so they re-released it and apparently it’s great for brew. If you’re in the market for a hand grinder I suppose it’s intriguing but at $199 it’s still a 48mm conical and I can’t imagine it competes with large flat burrs or ghost tooth.
Ok now this is weird. Apparently there are two versions of the regular stainless model. The “old” version has little stainless bars on bottom for the ribs, which looks like this:
The “new” version is just punched up or embossed, and they aren’t as tall which apparently creates this suction / clogging problem.
It’s not clear to me how or where you can get the “old” style though. The image above is from a coffee gear site based out of UAE called Brewing Gadgets, but I’m not certain if that’s the actual model they’re selling or if it’s just an old image.
I decided to get an Ember mug on a whim and I’m really liking it. Rather than getting only a bit of my coffee at preferred temp, getting it all there has been nice and also seems to be making for better flavor.
This probably gives a more effective bloom while keeping close to normal v60.
I’ve gone back to using my switch the last week and it’s been really nice. I’m brewing 20g coffee and 300g water. So I’ll close it, pour ~40g water and swirl to get everything wet, then I let it sit at least 45 seconds or however long it takes me to do whatever else I’m doing, open it and let it drain, close it again and then slowly pour the rest of the water, stir with a spoon, let it sit for at least a couple minutes, then open it up, when the water has drained a centimeter or so I swirl and then just let it finish draining.
It’s been making good cups for me with minimal fuss. It’s also nice for when I’m cooking breakfast because none of the steps are really time sensitive. It takes like 6-10 minutes when coffee isn’t the only thing I’m doing and I haven’t noticed any significant differences between cups.
I really want to rub all the chaff off before grinding but ain’t nobody got time for that. Luckily most of the chaff sticks to the sides of my grind catch bin and doesn’t end up in the cone.
First couple of cups are ok, slightly over extracted, and I need to make a lot of adjustments. It’s soaking up a lot of water and draining very slow.
Final thoughts on getting a Kalita that gives you a chance. First, the smaller 155 size is correct if you’re brewing 1-2 cups of coffee, so if you’re dosing under 24g then I think it’s the one to get. It’s pretty tiny and requires lots of pulses which may be a reason to eliminate it right off the bat.
My top recommendation for most people is to buy the Tsubame steel version (Model WDS-155) and just pay the extra money. You should be able to find it for about $60. The drain holes are larger and the bottom is domed to keep the filter from sealing them. No modding required there. One potential pitfall is that it doesn’t have an air escape hole in the base, so it can make a perfect seal and create problems if you’re brewing into a cup and not a decanter.
However, since I already had the standard steel version, I wasn’t thrilled about having a $35 paper weight and decided to mod it. The toughest part is drilling out the drain holes to a larger diameter. I used a drill press for this and a 1/8" cobalt drill bit, then cleaned it up with a round file. If that doesn’t sound easy then this isn’t the mod for you.
The other part is getting a screen that keeps the filter off the holes. The diameter is the same on both 155 and 185 versions which is just about 46 mm. Some people recommend this Flair PRO dispersion screen since it’s a perfect fit and I’m assuming well made. That seems like an elegant solution, but it’s $13 + $4.50 shipping. Instead, I found this 1-7/8th" drain screen from Home Depot for $3.27 w/ free shipping. It’s a thin piece but it fits just right and gets the job done:
I’m not sure drilling is necessary if you get the screen because I think clogging is the bigger issue. The annoying part is having a two-piece brewer which is why I’d get the Tsubame if I had to do it again, although I’m not sure I’d buy any of them again. I’ll try to brew with this daily for a while and see if I can find the consistency people are talking about.
I’m mostly through the Conga which was extremely chaffy like that. I scraped it off a few times but yeah it’s too much work. I struggled to get a great cup out of it though, felt like I was just barely missing on both sides every time I made an adjustment. The interesting part is it being a washed Ethiopian. Normally I’d grind pretty coarse (medium to medium-coarse) for an Eth natural and maybe only pour 15:1, but for washed coffees I generally grind medium-fine to medium range and pour 16+.
Have you considered getting into espresso now that you have an elite espresso grinder? I’m not into adding milk to my coffee at all, so my personal use case is limited to straight shots / Americanos and that’s not something I really want to invest a ton of time and money in.
I’ve had my eye on some vintage lever machines for that reason, but ones that are actually in great condition aren’t common given that most of them are 50+ years old, and yet the prices seem to keep going higher and higher. I almost pulled the trigger on a minty La Peppina that popped on HB recently for $325, and I mean this thing looked almost brand new with tons of extras (portafilters, tampers, screens, gaskets). It sold and my first thought was “I’ll never see one that good or that complete ever again for that price.”
Thanks to Lawnmower_Man’s recommendations I joined a coffee discord and perused my way into 7 100g bags of single origin light roasts to try. Using a v60 and encore burr grinder. I’d been using basically the first hoffman v60 method (attempted the second a few times but went back to the first) for a while, but on a whim tried a method recommended by Tetsu Kasuya and the founder of the Coffee with April Youtube channel.
25g coffee finely ground, 300g water, single pour over in the v60 all the water in the bed 15 seconds in. Extraction done by 1:30
SW coffee roasters Colombian Pink Bourbon light roast beans. It was the sweetest coffee i’d ever tasted and I was very surprised I was drinking a cup of coffee. I’m used to darker more bitter coffees than this and I was taken aback… in a good way! Going to try a few more Guatemalan and Kenyan roasts before taking another spin with the Colombian pink bourbon.
Thanks so much for keeping this thread alive over the years Lawnmower_Man, pvn, and whoever else has been active in here.
I really like the hoffman second method. Theres a lot for agitation so I think you get more extraction at the same grind. So you may need to put it a bit more course.
this is probably good for just seeing if you’re actually interested enough to really go down the rabbit hole but as you get your technique down you’ll want to buy 250g bags at a minimum, because it will often take more than 100g to dial in a pour over. Especially if you’re going to do 25g at a time (I brew 15g usually).
Re: v60 techniques, I am pretty sure none of them are particularly better than another, it’s more about just finding one that feels comfortable and being consistent with it, while varying grind/water ratio/etc when dialing in your brew. I’ve been using Hoffman’s newer technique and it feels right to me, but I don’t think it’s inherently improving my brews.
ok after messing with the switch a bit I think I really like it and I’m probably going to keep using it. it would be nice if the cone itself were plastic, BUT it’s so much easier to really get the cone up to temp by just flooding it and leaving boiling water in there for a bit. Just for this alone it’s almost worth it. The design is pretty simple and seems very unlikely to break or need any adjustments, just seems like a great item all around.
I’m only leaving the valve closed for the bloom, and just doing the rest of the pour like a normal v60 for now.
