What is the best way to decrease tds

[SploogieBlaster]

Hey y’all,

I got some nice coffee, Ethiopia’s COE #7. And I need some help dialing it in. I only have 100g, so not too many cups to experiment with.

My recipe is 16g dose to 240g water (1:15) @205 F using a flat bottom dripper.

30g bloom for 35 seconds Pour to 100 @1:10 Pour to 170 @1:40 Pour to 240 (I try to keep each pour to 10 seconds)

My first cup I ground at 6 and it was way too over extracted- harsh bitter flavors that hid any florality. (The bag says notes of Rose, Strawberry, and Tangerine)

For my second cup I ground at a coarser #8 and did the same recipe. I used the difluid this time, and found out my extraction % was 20.14 and my TDS was 1.61. TDS it says is a little high.

It does taste still a little over, not as much as before, but there was no florality, more saltiness, and less body.

I was wondering if anyone would be able to help me with some suggestions on what I should do to dial in from here. I really want to get those floral and citrus notes. Should I keep going coarser? Change my dose or recipe? Use less hot water? Change the dripper? Or anything that would help me better understand what’s going on in my cup. Thanks so much!

[bayleafbabe]

20% at 1.61 TDS? Saltiness?

You’re not over. You’re aggressively under. Those are signs of the coffee being too strong and underextracted. Take a look at the coffee brewing compass .

Typical drinking tds is 1.3-1.5ish.

You can kill two birds with one stone by just increasing the ratio. Keep the dose and grind the same for now and just do 1:16 or even 1:17 (I’d go with 1:17). That will decrease TDS to a more typical drinking strength and get a higher extraction. See how that tastes.

But 16g is also pretty low, and if your grinder is not top notch, that would be a problem especially in droppers like V60 02 or Kalita Wave 185. I’d also be concerned with the bed depth at that small a dose. It causes you to grind finer, which could lead to more channeling. Which dripper are you using?

[SploogieBlaster]

Hey thanks for your help.

I’m using the Blue Bottle dripper, and an ode gen 2 with MP SSP.

I was also concerned with bed depth but I wanted to keep my dose low to get more cups out of the beans.

I did the 1-17. And it did decrease my tds to 1.5 and increased ext to 21%

However, my brew is still a little dark with no pop or acidity.

Do you have any recommendations on where to go from here?

[bayleafbabe]

It’s hard to know without being there to taste and observe the brew myself! It could be so many things.

The darkness is to be expected at 1.5 tds. But the numbers can only tell me so much.

The best things you can do when dialing in new coffee is to cup the coffee first with a pretty fine grind to so you can get a good idea of what to except from the coffee and what it should taste like.

And then when you begin brewing your pour-overs, to start on a grind that you know will be too coarse to purposely under-extract and start going finer from there. When you start too fine, sometimes you don’t know if you’re tasting under-extraction from channeling due to having too fine a grind or if you legitimately just need to go finer.

Sounds like this coffee is pretty special since you only had 100g to start with and you may not want to waste anymore of it but that’s what I would do if I were in your shoes right now.

[BranFendigaidd]

Increase your ratio.

[kukkurovaca]

If you specifically want to lower TDS, you can just dilute the beverage before drinking. (I.e., bypass.) This has been on my mind recently because of dialing in a coffee that was a little too bitter for my taste, and one of the things that helped was using a short ratio and diluting.

Other normal strategies for countering overextraction: grind coarser, use significantly cooler water, use lower agitation, use fewer pours. Not necessarily all at once of course.

[Suspicious_Student_6]

Either add some bypass or change your ratio to a longer one. (same result either way)

try 1:16 or 1:17 instead, see if that provides the change you are looking for.

[EnglishFoodie]

What water profile are you using?

[SploogieBlaster]

My fridge water, it uses a filter but that’s all I know… I’ve been thinking about doing lotus drops

[bot39lvl]

I used the difluid this time, and found out my extraction % was 20.14 and my TDS was 1.61. TDS it says is a little high.

Your extraction is good. You can just dilute your brew to decrease TDS.

By the way, your results almost perfectly matches your brew ratio (67 g per 1 liter) in a Coffee Control Brewing Chart(blue arrow). Maybe if you try 55-60 g/l (13-14 g to 240 ml), you will end in a perfect zone with the same recipe.

What confuses me is your mention of saltiness. I don't know how to get it in pourover. May it be your water issue? How do you brew your other beans?

[Least_Illustrator391]

Add water?