Hustling With A Clever Coffee Dripper
The quest for a better cup. Making filter coffee is so simple, isn't it? using that french press or Clever Dripper should be elementary, but what if you change a few simple things up?
Simple Question: what if you wet the coffee before brewing? If so how wet? for how long, at what temperature?
Geeky ask: The question that we asked ourselves, was essentially, if blooming (see below) coffee grinds makes coffee taste better, what is the optimum bloom (or is this really pre-infusion)?
Quickly this became an exercise in cold water pre-infusion.
The idea was to wet coffee grinds with various water qualities for various times.
Blooming def: to wet coffee grinds in order to dissolve and release trapped CO²
The shortcut & spoiler (not an alert) Infuse your fresh grinds for 5 minutes with 50ºC water before making your Abid the usual way. May we suggest a total of 60-70g of coffee per litre of water as a starting point? Final brew water at 100ºC
pre-infusion before brewing with mildly warmed water for a few minutes improves the extraction quality.
Too much heat causes weird extraction. Too cool, does not fully utilise the benefits of pre-infusion, and shortish (5 minute) pre-brews work best.
So to the pre infusion test 1:
infuse for:
16 hours
1 hour
5 minutes
immediate
each of those was brewed with three protocols
12g of coffee
“Mud”: liquid emulsion, mud-like consistency 30g cool water
“Wet” : wet coffee, visible liquid 50g cool water
“Visible”: watery, looks like small brew 80g cool water
we made the final “brew” topping up to 200g water
3 minutes infusion
Same packet grinder, settings and brew used, grinder unused in-between
Outcomes in order of ranking best cups overall and by method:
16 hour wet was the sensory preference unanimously.
5 minutes it was mud
these two were head and shoulders best
then:
immediate was mud
1 hour was the visible
So, all over the place really.
Then we did round two:
Then we decided to compare 18 hour pre-infusion and 16 hour.
we also added 1 hour and 5 minute for reference. 18 & 16 hour were both “wet”(50g) 1 hour “visible” (80g) 5 minutes “mud“ (30g)
We added the one hour as we had an anomaly. When hot 1 hour tasted crap, but great when cool
results: 5 minute won! sweet with good body
18 hour next, lacked body,
1 hour came in next with sweetness, no body
16 hour was now fourth.
Third Round
retest 16 hour and 18 and a new 12 hour all one “wet” (50g) we also did the 5 minute mud (30g) as reference
5 minute was again the winner with the 16 hour second best. there, bad cup round two?
Then we did a final Round
10min/5/3/1 comparison all “mud“ (30g)
Results:
Winner 5 min
10 minutes in second with HUGE sweetness, lacked body relatively
3 & 1 very similar. In comparison, like sex in a canoe (fucking close to water)
TDS on 10 and 5 min: 1.47% and 5 min 1.62%
Curious, we then took Salami slices of a 5-minute brew:
1st cut, the “coffee below the filter” only - watery and tasteless as expected. TDS 1.18%
2nd, half the main brew- well balanced great body, sweetness, and overall best
3rd , second the other half, surprisingly similar, 5% “worse”
we mixed these tow “cuts” 2 & 3 and had a great result TDS 1.77%
4th was the dregs, that which was slow to drip out - heavy body, surprisingly sweet TDS 1.53
So what did we learn?
long (multi hour) pre infusions produce sweetness, but are probably not worth the effort. Timing matters, more study required.
For a great filter, 5 minutes of pre-infusion is supremely worth it. We wonder if drip machines should be tested for this? easily done
Q&A from Barista Hustle:
Q: why is the bloom with cold water?
A: we needed a protocol that was maintainable. Further testing would seem worthwhile.
Q: how much water?
A: see test one
Q: Are you stirring?
A: yes, aeropress paddle used, one swipe forward through initial “mud” one swipe back, we have not tested for other methods yet. Next test @alyssa?
Q 1.) Does blooming -as usually practiced- make a difference?; and if so 2.) what is the optimal blooming time? Having answered those two basic questions, many other sub-questions concerning details can be considered: 1.) hot or cold water? more or less water? etc.
A 1.) yes blooming makes a difference 2.) 5 minutes, with a (weight still to be narrowed down) ~ 3 x coffee weight of warm water
The water, thank you (Thomas) that we pre infused with was 14ºC and room temperature was Cape Town winter, probably 18ºC (get a life)
Water added after was 100ºC before it left the kettle.
Detailed Details
To detail it up…
| 1 | COFFEE | VENGEANCE BLEND |
| 2 | GRIND SIZE | A LITTLE FINER THAN MEDIUM |
| 3 | AMOUNT OF COFFEE | 12g |
| 4 | AMOUNT OF TOTAL WATER | 200g |
| 5 | AMOUNT OF BLOOMING WATER |
30g - MUD 50g - WET 80g - VISIBLE |
| 6 | AMOUNT OF ADDED WATER |
170g - MUD 150g - WET 120g - VISIBLE |
| 7 | TEMPERATURE OF PRE-INFUSION WATER | 14 DEGREES CELSIUS |
| 8 | TEMPERATURE OF ADDED WATER | 100 DEGREES |
| 9 | TIME OF PRE-INFUSION | VARIES PER GROUP |
| 10 | STIRS | 2 STROKES |
| 11 | TIME OF EXTRACTION | 3 MINUTES |
We came across a few snags on the way.
- With two instances throughout the experiment, we noticed that because of the filter paper that naturally folded in a strange way during pouring (I’m assuming) they look a little longer to filter through. Hence a slight over-extraction in Round 4.
ROUND 1
| 16 HOURS | ||
| WET | MUD | VISIBLE |
|
GREAT BODY GREAT FLAVOUR |
MODERATE BODY SOME FLAVOUR |
LOW IN BODY LOW IN FLAVOUR |
| 1 HOUR | ||
| WET | MUD | VISIBLE |
|
FLAVOUR SOME BODY |
BODY SOME FLAVOUR |
LACKING IN BODY SOME FLAVOUR |
| 5 MINUTES | ||
| WET | MUD | VISIBLE |
|
NO BODY FLAVOUR SWEET |
BODY FRUITY FLAVOUR SOME SWEETNESS |
NO BODY DRY, ASHY |
| GO! | ||
| WET | MUD | VISIBLE |
|
SWEETNESS NO BODY LACKING FLAVOUR |
BODY FLAVOUR |
NO BODY JUST FLAVOUR |
THE CONCLUSION :
ROUND 2
| 18 HOURS | 16 HOURS | 1 HOUR | 5 MINUTES |
| WET | WET | VISIBLE | MUD |
|
SWEET LACKING BODY WINE GUMMY FLAVOURS |
LACKING SWEETNESS MODERATE BODY |
SUPER SWEET LACKING BODY |
SWEET MODERATE BODY GOOD FLAVOUR |
ROUND 3
| 10 MINUTES | 5 MINUTES | 3 MINUTES | 1 MINUTE |
| MUD | MUD | MUD | MUD |
|
SWEET GOOD BODY |
SWEET BUT NOT AS SWEET MORE BODY |
WATERY THE LEAST FLAVOUR LACK OF BODY SOME ACIDITY |
CLOSE TO WATER NO FLAVOUR LOW BODY |
Out of curiosity, we decided to take the TDS reading for the two leading cups in this round.
10 minutes = 1.47%
5 minutes = 1.62%
With Round 4 we compared the following
- 18 Hours (wet) - comparing to 16 & 12
- 16 Hours (wet) - I still had hope for this one
- 12 Hours (wet) - comparing to 16 & 18
- 5 Minute (mud) - because it has done so well so far
- 5 Minute (mud) Salami Slice into 3 parts - To see how the taste develops as the coffee filters through.
ROUND 4
| 18 HOURS | 16 HOURS | 12 HOURS | 5 MINUTES |
| WET | WET | WET | MUD |
|
QUITE SWEET MODERATE BODY |
LOWER IN SWEETNESS THAN 18 HOUR BUT STILL GOOD SWEETNESS WITH A GOOD BODY |
SLIGHTLY OVER EXTRACTED A WEIRD FINISH TO TASTE GOOD BODY SWEET |
THIS WAS STILL A WINNER TO 3 OF THE 4 TASTERS. GOOD BODY GOOD FLAVOURS MODERATE SWEETNESS |
TDS reading for the two leading cups in this round.
16 HOURS = 1.55%
5 MINUTES = 1.47%
5 MINUTE SALAMI SLICES
| PART 1 | PART2 | PART 3 |
| MUD | MUD | MUD |
| ALMOST NO FLAVOUR OR BODY TO IT. |
BALANCED GOOD BODY GOOD SWEETNESS OVERALL BEST PART |
SWEET GOOD BODY |
Out of curiosity we decided to take the TDS reading for each stage
PART 1 = 1.18%
PART 2 = 1.77%
PART 3 = 1.53%
PS Alyssa @ Truth Coffee did all of the hard work!
Further Testing UPDATES:
For this next test, we tried pre-infusing with 4 different temperatures of water. 30g of water used each pre-infusion and final weight of water 200g total. Added water 100ºC. Pre infusion for 5 minutes and final brew 3 minutes 12g of coffee.
Pre-infusion at 100ºC left weird flavours, lacked sweetness body is ok-ish
Pre-infusion with a 50/50 blend of 50ºC water and 100ºC water approximating 75ºC a lot more body, our second favourite. Sweetness was good, overall flavour complex and interesting
50ºC water, clear winner. Really good body, great sweetness. Most complexity, really let the flavours shine through
room temp water ~18ºC lacked body, mildly sweet.
Our conclusions:
pre-infusion before brewing with mildly warmed water improves extraction quality.
Too much heat causes weird extraction. Too cool, does not fully utilise the benefits of pre-infusion, and shortish (5 minute) pre-brews work best.