Update… The bag is gone and the winner is… [drum roll]… round 4, in the Chemex. Best results by far.
I picked up a bag of coffee from Sacramento’s Temple Coffee Roasters on a road trip back from Oregon last week. I have been aware of Temple Coffee Roasters for a few years and as I rarely ever get to Sacramento, I figured this may be my only chance (short of mail-order) for me to get my hands on one of their offerings.
Round 1
Round one was in the Hario V60 and threatened disappointment but actually turned out quite nice.
What I thought was too course turned out to be excellent. I had inadvertently left the grind where it was from the previous morning’s Aeropress brew — mid-way between “fine” and “course“ VS. on the first “fine” marking (my usual V60 grind). The water traveled through the grinds at a noticeably faster rate. It tasted great, though. Lucky.
Tasting notes were dried fruit (raisins or currents) and brown sugar.
Round 2
This morning’s brew was also in the V60 but I tried brewing a smaller amount than I normally brew in the V60 — 355g VS. 444g. Sort of disastrous. My ratios were way off. Not enough coffee (18g), not ground finely enough (“fine” setting).
Tasting notes: highly diluted with a bitter aftertaste.
I dumped it and tried it again.
The second was better than the first. I switched to a lower water:coffee ratio of 13:1 which meant 27g of coffee for 355g of water. Much better. We’ll call it a slightly more diluted version of Round 1.
Tasting notes were dried fruit (raisins or currents) with a subdued sweetness.
The take-away was that for my next 355g batch in the V60, I’m going to keep the ratio and tighten the grind.
Round 3
Round three was in the Chemex. It was also a brew of the same low 13:1 water to coffee ratio I used in the previous 355g V60; 444g:34g. Normal grind for this prep: between “fine” and “course” on the Capresso Infiniti.
And it was a wee bit too strong. Overpowering, really. No delicacy, with flavors that were so concentrated that I felt that all I was tasting was the concentration and not the flavor. Like eating spoonfuls of concentrated orange juice out of the tube instead of making a jug.
So 13:1 in the Chemex with this Kenya isn’t the way to go. Of course it could have been the grind. But I’m guessing that, if anything, it was a combination of the two, with issues of concentration taking precedence.
So now I have both a 444g Chemex and a 355 V60 to perfect with this coffee before it runs out. Wish me luck.
Tasting notes for this one, as I mentioned before highly concentrated sugar, slightly tarry.
Round 4
The info: Chemex / 444g:30g (15:1) / btw. “coarse” and “fine” (Capresso Infiniti) / 2m:47s (incl. :45s per-infusion)
Now that’s more like it. Reducing the amount of coffee from the last 444g Chemex by a measly 4g produced something that didn’t bludgeon my taste buds over their heads (taste buds have heads, right?).
This might be the magic formula for this coffee, for this batch size in the Chemex.
Tasting notes for this much improved 444g Chemex were chocolate milk, raisins, brown sugar, cinnamon, toast1, with a full silky body.
DofAv3 