Today, for most of us, filter methods offer
a reasonably priced opportunity to brew and taste exceptional coffees at home; by comparison, incredible espresso coffee is an off-putting thing, requiring a vast investment of time, learning and cash, with professional espresso machines costing several thousand pounds. Not, is has to be said, that brilliant filter
coffee won’t require a reasonable time investment, as well as a willingness to learn. The Clever Dripper is a great example of home brewing, but my focus would always be on adjusting the variables to achieve a desirable extraction. Each coffee will require its own recipe,
and may well demand adjustment in the exact method you use to take advantage of the roast. (Remember: you should try to use a coffee within four weeks of roast.) The more you understand what’s happening, the better your coffee will be…
COLONNA AND SMALL'S 6 Chapel Row, Bath, BA1 1HN; 07766 808067;
www.colonnaandsmalls.co.uk
Adjusting this brew according to taste PROBLEM
Dose
The coffee tastes sour, thin, astringent, and furry in the roof of your mouth – and with not too much going on in the middle- to-rear of your palate. This means that the brew is under- extracted
The coffee tastes flat, ashy, bitter, and hangs around the back of your palate. This means the brew is over-extracted
→ →
Try taking the amount of coffee used down by 1g
→ or
Try taking the amount of coffee used up by 1g
→ or Grind
Try going a tiny bit finer on the grind
→ or
Try going a little coarser with the grind
→ or
SOLUTIONS Time Try adding
10 seconds to the brew time
→ or
Try shaving 10 seconds from
the brew time
→ or
Of course, all this becomes fairly pointless if you don’t start with the best ingredients. Buy freshly roasted beans with a roast date on them, one that has information about where the coffee was grown, how it was processed, etc. The fact that the roaster has gone to the trouble to source a coffee that’s traceable to one farm or co-op (and will therefore be of a higher and more consistent quality) will denote a much better bean. Yes, this can seem like a lot of work and effort, but I think that for the quality of the results this is actually a very small price to pay. Go on, give it go – I think you’ll be surprised, and very pleased.
41
Temperature Check
water temp hasn’t
dropped too low at the point of brewing
Check that your water is not too hot when
starting the brew
Equipment: Clever dripper, £20
Filtropa unbleached papers, £5
Porlex hand grinder, £35.95
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