I am doing some experiments with my neglected chemex trying to reproduce a look and a taste from a coffee shop in town a number of years ago. The taste was light and tea-like with lots of flowery and fruity high notes and not too much body weighing it down, so not much caramel or chocolate kind of notes, that sort of thing. The look - far less important - was also quite light and clear.
I tend to have light roasted beans in the house from one or two local roasters. What I have tried so far is increasing the grind size to be fairly coarse and increasing the dose of coffee a bit to compensate, and limiting the fussiness of the pours. The nice thing about chemex is the filters are nice and thick so I’m hoping the brew won’t just fly through coarser grinds and I should have more flexibility. Here is what I did today:
. 40g coarse ground coffee
. Made a little divit because that’s a lot for a flat bed
. kettle heated to 80C
. 80g pre-pour for the bloom
. 30s pour to 340g
. 3m 30s pour to 600g gently
. Brew finished at around the 6m mark
I got lovely notes but the brew was still really well extracted with plenty of body. Don’t get me wrong it was a really good cup of coffee but not what I was after. I possibly need different beans but I would like to see what I can do differently with what I have usually got. I’m going to try bringing the dose back down to something below 60g per litre next.
Is there anything different I could be doing with the brew itself? I’m talking about notes and stuff like that but I far from being an expert particularly when it comes to tasting! I kind of know where I want to get to but not how to get there.
The flavor you are describing is produced by naturally processed Ethiopian beans. You can usually find them in any serious coffee shop (and some local supermarkets if you’re really lucky).
“Naturally processed” is an important term here - it is the means by which coffee beans are extracted from the cherry. Most beans are “washed” because it is most economical - they remove the bean from the cherry and literally wash it. In contrast, the natural process lays the cherries out to dry in the sun. By doing this the coffee bean inside absorbs a lot of the sugar and fruit flavor. The beans are removed once the outer fruit has fully dried.
Brewing naturally processed Ethiopian beans by any method will get you much closer to what you’re looking for than going Breaking Bad with your brew setup.
Oh brill. I’ve found a place down the road that has some single origin medium roasted and I’ve ordered some to try. Thank you for the suggestion!
PS: bit late on the brew setup thing 🤓
Yea, what the commentator said is correct, what you’re looking for starts with the right bean. I’ve had a number of Ehiopian beans (and I didn’t really like them because of said flavour), but that’s where you should be starting with.
Please update once you try and let us know if it was what you were looking for
I don’t have anything to add but I just wanted to say these communities and discussions are exactly why I’m here. Informative, helpful, and just good vibes all around.
I totally agree. This community has been really lovely and the whole reddit blow up happened just at the time I had started noodling with different brewing methods again so it was a happy coincidence. Thanks everybody!
You never describe the origin of the beans beyond local light roast. The flavor you are chasing is something that is seen in Ethiopian and some Kenyan beans.
Regardless of the origin, I feel like 80C is way too low, going below 90C is bad idea since so much cooling occurs during the pour.
This exactly. Try Ethiopian beans. I find 93C is a temperature that has good extraction while being sippable and not too hot.
Edit: I also go with about 35g medium-coarse grounds for about 900ml of water.
That water to bean ratio is really high (25:1). The usual recommended starting point for pour over is 15:1. Are you sure about your numbers?
Don’t anybody say “drink tea” by the way.
That would be too obvious. 😂. I wonder, how light is your roast? You mention them being a light roast, and extracting at a lower temperature. Maybe the original taste was even lighter than what you have currently?
It’s possible. The local roaster I am getting my beans from is new to me. He has said that he prefers lighter roasts suitable for brewing but I don’t think he notes much on the delivery. The beans feel lighter roasted? Not dark and dessicated at least.
As far as I am concerned, light roasts should be brewed at max temperature eg. 100C boiling.
On the v60 I had some attempts with 85c but that’s more for darker roasts.
Try boiling water and an general recipie. https://youtu.be/K_r5kpXPRYo
Also don’t be afraid of the hotter temperature. I got much more sweetness and body on the higher and than on the lower end, masking unpleasant aromas.
I usually brew my light roasted beans with boiling water but I’m pretty sure JH himself says that 80C does a surprisingly good job with a light roast as an alternative - it’s just in-between that gets pretty dodgy. So I wanted to see if 80C would help but, yes, boiling is probably the best to default to when I am varying other things.
You’re gonna have to try different varieties of beans and roast level. The process you’re using is correct and you’ll get there with some more experiments.
Does this mean I’ll be getting some unroasted beans and one of those glass donut things? 😁
Since you’ve already decreased grind size, you could try colder water and decrease the amount of coffee you’re using.
Do you have a aero press? I have been able to get cups like you described by doing an upside down brew. I can’t remember the recipe that I used but I was experimenting with some of the world championship brew methods.
Might be worth picking one up since they are cheap and pretty fun to play with.
Yeah I have a trusty, well worn aeropress on the shelf. Usually reserved for first thing in the morning “emergency” coffee. I’ll see what I can find for recipes. My emergency aeropress technique tends to be non-inverted, fill, put the top bit on, wait and press.
The one thing I remember about the recipe was that it was inverted lol.
I’ve never understood the drama around inverted to be honest. I’ve done it and I’ve never had anything close to an accident. All of these stories about catastrophe. How? Just … put the cup upside down over the thing and rotate them both back?
The only real issue I have with inverted is I kind of like avoiding topping up my brew with water but its a totally minor thing if it gets the flavours. I suppose it allows you to try things out with much smaller doses of coffee too!
Almost sounds to me like you were getting some kind of specialty, experimental very-light-roast of a natural process something-or-another. Maybe a naturally fluffier, more extractable bean?
I don’t know how to do this with normal-er beans and traditional extraction methods, at any rate. Not and make it actually taste good. Because you’re extracting all the acids and the sugars, otherwise you wouldn’t have a balanced cup, yet you’re getting a tea-like profile with no body, without it being unpleasantly weak? This is illogical and short-circuits my coffee brain. I hypothesize it involves something I have never worked with, perhaps an ultra-light roast, where some body components have not been roasted into existence yet. Maybe anyway, I’m completely spit-balling here.
Possibly. My pal and I used to get a chemex between us at this place. We didn’t ask for anything special other than my preference for whatever fruity African beans they had. We were paying average prices so we were not accidentally ordering mountaintop god beans.
One serious possibility is that I am misremembering and my tolerance for “body” has lessened over the intervening years. It’s always the confirmation bias that gets you.
Also worth noting that I have a Fellow Ode v2 with the stainless steel burrs that I have just broken in and recalibrated, which I hope will give me a bit of clarity and less fines. It’s possible that the shop was using a really good grinder.
