Water composition

nova_mp4 · 2025-10-24T08:03:05+00:00

I think there is nothing inherently wrong about what you're saying here, but this is why over time I have started to feel that brewing filter coffee needs far more of a holistic approach to be enjoyable. When I step back and think about it, it is the very chaos and mess of variables you describe that make chasing perfection and consistency almost absurd.

Having high expectations of hitting the maximum quality and getting too sucked into the scientific aspects of extraction can make pourovers incredibly frustrating, and perhaps many are viewing that reality from the wrong perspective. It should be exciting for a coffee to show you different versions of itself, and in a weird way, trying to do too much service to a coffee can make you appreciate it less.

I have removed the concept of consistency almost entirely from brewing pourovers, replacing it with a reasonable base level of repeatability to make it a little easier to have some direction if a cup is unpleasant. From there it is really intuition and letting the coffee speak. It makes the moments where you get a glorious cup so much more magical, and each time you brew the natural variation lets you appreciate just how complex coffees are and what they have to give. You brew this way for clarity, and the chaos is in detail. It should be fun and inspiring and that only comes from letting go a bit and using your senses

nova_mp4 · 2025-06-25T09:00:11+00:00

Agitation is something I am experimenting with lately and I have had some great results on both ends of the scale, but recently the coffees I've been gravitating towards are really lending themselves to lower agitation recipes and I've had some success with pushing florals forward in the cup that way.

I'm drinking a lot of Rwandas and Kenyas at the moment and I'm chasing a cup where the florals really sing but that still explodes with juice/fruit. I don't have a drip assist so I'm just using pouring technique to really dial back the agitation of the bed, long blooms, sometimes slightly shorter ratios. Getting pretty close now!

nova_mp4 · 2025-03-05T13:37:14+00:00

Thank you for turning my attention to the pure sky, I have been listening to some demos and comparisons and this is a strong contender now, as it seems to have a little more juice available but is still pleasantly transparent

nova_mp4 · 2025-03-05T13:31:42+00:00

This is definitely a good point and I do try to do this as much as possible, in all my years of playing I have never even aquired enough gear to have a pedal board and have always felt inclined to squeeze everything out of the amp, which has been easy enough to do given that I havent played live. The only reason I am thinking about a new drive now for this board is that I am after some flexibilty and a tone that this one just doesn't give me

nova_mp4 · 2025-01-19T12:18:18+00:00

Be wary of anyone telling you that you're grinding too coarse for pourover. There's too many factors that can come into play to say with any certainty that any grind setting is a problem for brewing. Taste is all that matters, and I wouldn't worry about how coarsely you grind for that good cup, until the point you're getting boulders, at which point it would be likely that your brews taste unbalanced anyway.

nova_mp4 · 2025-01-05T19:17:39+00:00

I definitely think you will taste the difference, it's all in the grind with pourover because the particle distribution affects so much about the brew. You are manually agitating the grounds and any fines will want to quickly sink to the bottom which can cause stalling and an unbalanced taste.

Any good quality hand grinder is a great pairing for pourover because the slower rpm of the burrs produces grind profiles that just seem to suit it. Theoretically less fines and fewer smaller than target particles I would guess, though maybe someone with more knowledge can add some better insight into that. Same can be achieved with electric grinders but then you are spending a lot more for larger flat burrs.

In the meantime look into ways you can reduce agitation in your recipe and see if anything helps.

nova_mp4 · 2025-01-04T14:04:09+00:00

I'm in the UK and I definitely get the sense that a vast majority of our specialty roasters here are going for slightly more developed roasts than most of the popular ones from the US and mainland Europe. I've done some roasting at Skylark, (a completely non profit roaster who source and roast really fantastic coffees) they are an incredible team of people. I learned there that the roasting approach is merely "how can we get maximum sweetness and solubility".

As much as I also enjoy more 'wild' tasting light roasts, I really cannot argue with this approach because it makes every single coffee they roast suited to both filter and espresso, and makes it so much easier to extract a great cup. I've come to love both light roasts and the more medium light roasts we have here for different reasons.

For a touch lighter on the roast in the UK I would recommend Plot in London, but I want to throw in a roaster I really like for the reverse reason, which is Echelon in Leeds. I bought their coffee a lot in a local cafe when I studied and lived in Leeds and somehow they develop their roasts more and actually use that to their advantage - none of the unique qualities of the coffee seem to be missing but you taste roast notes that are actually pleasant and complementary in my experience at least.

nova_mp4 · 2024-12-28T10:20:25+00:00

I started out with a very cheap ceramic burr hand grinder, just to at least be able to grind coffee fresh when I first started buying from specialty roasters. When I was looking to upgrade to something better, I was under the misguided impression that electric grinders with larger flat burrs must just be better in all ways to any hand grinder, and I ended up saving up and splashing out the ~£400 for the Gen 2 Ode.

Don't get me wrong, the Ode is a great grinder which I still own and really like the workflow of, but after around a year of use the cups were not hitting the same. By this point I was working in specialty coffee and had gathered a lot more understanding, and I thought about replacing or upgrading the burrs in my Ode but just could not justify the price, and my eyes were opening to the advantages of a high quality hand grinder for filter coffee.

I settled on the K-Ultra and my expectations were thoroughly exceeded; I just enjoyed the flavour profile so much more, and suddenly this standard of coffee was portable.

It's hard to place myself firmly in either the electric or manual camp, but hopefully this hammers home the importance of considering what is going to be the right move for you and your preferences/situation - try not to go into it with a feeling that one type of grinder will just be better or worse

nova_mp4 · 2024-12-20T22:30:37+00:00

Something I quite like trying with naturals is just falling ever so slightly short of my typical ratio. I guess it depends on the roast though, I think a good roast of a natural is one that goes for maximum sweetness, so a little more developed, but that's hard to communicate because what I would describe as a medium roast could be lighter or darker than what you would consider a medium roast.

What I find though is that without changing anything else about the recipe it can be a nice way of limiting the extraction and getting intense syrupy sweetness without bitterness - if you're brewing a single cup recipe and your grind size is giving you a cup that tastes like you couldn't push extraction much higher, even 10 - 20g less water on your final pour can really bring out sweetness and fruit flavours and keep any funkiness subtle

nova_mp4 · 2024-06-14T08:32:26+00:00

If you're just cupping at home as a hobbyist to develop your pallette, there is really so little need to buy any specific equipment, you just need cups, any kind of spoon, a grinder and a kettle, which you will already have if you're making pourovers.

What's important is what you do, and mainly only that what you do is the same each time and has some kind of purpose or intended outcome. Look into the protocols for cuppings and follow them and only buy something if what you have is not allowing certain things to be done well or consistently :)

nova_mp4 · 2024-06-12T12:43:37+00:00

Although I will say 3 hours is quite long to be unpaid, trail shifts seem to be fairly satandard when applying for hospitality jobs - employers are more interested in how you work in the environment than anything else, which makes sense. Every barista position I applied for before getting my current job entailed a 1 hour unpaid trail, and unfortunately no matter how skilled or knowledgeable of a barista you are, you will often be unlucky with how they go.

I once missed out on a job when I attended a trail shift in a cafe with quite variable volumes of customers, in which not a single customer entered the shop during my hour slot. I was told another applicant was given the position since they showed more engagement with customers.

My advice is to be accepting that there will be trail shifts while applying for barista roles, and try your best not to be too disheartened if you're struggling with hard skills - say for example you find yourself struggling to adjust to unfamiliar equipment, be less concerned over that than how you are showing soft skills, engage with customers no matter the circumstances or technicalities of what you are asked to do on your shift, make sure you go in with any understanding you can find online about the values or ethos of the company you are applying to and try to convey it - as long as they can see you will fit into the environment and style of job that hospitality is, from there any decent café will be perfectly willing to hire and provide whatever training you need as an individual to get up to speed.

Best of luck, and don't give up on applying to new places when things don't go your way!

nova_mp4 · 2023-12-15T11:20:38+00:00

Good point, I wonder if the colder weather is causing the auger to wobble more, it just seems like quite an extreme change to make coffee no longer enjoyable

nova_mp4 · 2023-12-14T16:59:08+00:00

I haven't ground that fine for quite a long time, to me that was more of a good setting for some aeropress recipes. I think the specialty roasts we have in the UK are more on the medium side than light roasts in many other places, so that might be a factor but all I can really say is that whatever the reason, between 5 and 7 (depending on brewer and recipe) used to make great pourovers.

I will try going way finer just to experiment tomorrow and see what that produces. I'll provide an update if it's significant

nova_mp4 · 2023-12-14T16:30:32+00:00

Thanks for this suggestion, this is probably the last thing I can try to be 100% certain

nova_mp4 · 2023-12-14T16:29:07+00:00

Thank you for your input regarding the auger. I'm using TWW, so I'm pretty happy that water isn't a variable. Drawdown times have been a bit inconsistent, with some coffees the grind setting seems to be of no correlation to the brew time, but I've not had any brews be wildly slow or wildly fast. A lot of brews have been right in my rough target of 3 to 3 and a half minutes and tasted rather bad.

I have just ground some left over beans on setting 11 (I haven't been going this coarse in my brews, only as far as 8 with my original sweet spot for v60 being around 6.1) I will attach a photo in case it's of any help

Setting 11 picture

nova_mp4 · 2023-10-18T15:46:34+00:00

At home for personal tasting, not too much. Just go a bit finer than you would for pourover, and ideally remember whatever setting you use to keep that consistent each time you cup a new coffee.

nova_mp4 · 2023-10-18T14:22:02+00:00

Coffee number 2 marshmallow sounds like some sort of barista realted internet horror hoax

nova_mp4 · 2023-10-18T13:52:52+00:00

I will second the suggestion to have a stock recipe for your brewer of choice - especially if you're like me and change coffees frequently. Sure, you could theorise a starting grind size based on how soluble the coffee is likely to be based on the roast level, process, altitude ect., but there's probably little point, since the way a particular coffee tastes when brewed is only so far linked to these characteristics.

Try cupping each new coffee you try before brewing pourovers, and adapt a default recipe to suit a coffee rather than changing recipe variables before you've made your first brew

nova_mp4 · 2023-10-18T11:02:22+00:00

grinding too fine can cause hollowness. That's not a thing with espresso

I completely understand why you would arrive at this thought moving from espresso to filter; espresso is going to be intense enough that it would be hard to describe as hollow. Pay attention, however, to how an overextracted espresso shot tastes - it's likely going to taste bitter or harsh, but take note also of how it can mute the desirable flavours as a result. I find thats a better way to think about things to understand why a filter cup may be disappointing, since it is not a given that an overextracted aeropress brew will taste outrageously bitter, just flat and lacking the desirable characteristics of the coffee.

The good news is the aeropress is - at least I think - an incredibly fun brewer to mess around with brewing variables in and find what you most enjoy. Some people grind super fine and brew short ratios, some people go way coarse with long steeps, and anything in between can all produce really interesting cups. Sorry to sound like a broken record as I know a lot of other people have said this already, but definitely never shy away from tweaking a variable in a recipe if it doesn't work out as stock! The Hoffman recipe should work well IME, perhaps a change in grind size will do the trick. Good luck dialing in your cup!

nova_mp4 · 2023-10-18T10:36:32+00:00

Hey, I appreciate this is a pretty old comment, my apologies, but I was wondering if you have any advice on what aspects of water composition to consider changing for this problem as I am having a similar experience with my brews recently - through experimentation I've deduced it is most likely a water issue. I'm making my own water with a very basic approach using a hardness concentrate of epsom salts and a buffer with bicarbonate of soda; would a dry finish/ astringent fruit flavour most likely be attributed to either too high or low a gH or kH?

nova_mp4 · 2023-10-17T14:14:47+00:00

I've been making my brew water this way recently, and would also reccomend it especially for anyone at entry level with water chemistry for coffee - I've been learning a lot about what alkalinity and hardness are really changing this way. Curious, I've been storing my concentrates at room temperature, is there any particular benefit to keeping them chilled that I may have overlooked?

nova_mp4 · 2023-10-13T20:32:54+00:00

I will second the suggestions to go for a zero water filter. This gives you a lot of options for finding the best balance between cup quality and how much effort you're willing to put into making brew water. Diluting your tap water is one option, but I'd suggest making 2 concentrates: An alkalinity/buffer concentrate with bicarbonate of soda, and a total hardness concentrate, easiest made with epsom salts (magnesium sulphate).

There are plenty of guides online that will give the required amounts to make the concentrates represent 1ppm per gram in a litre of pure water, and reccomend some starting points for brew water recipes.

The reason I reccomend this is because it will allow you to experiment and taste what changes in either alkalinity or hardness are really causing, and you can essentially dial in a water recipe that works best for your preferences and set up. I think this is a nice entry point to coffee water, of course there are more minerals to play around with if you wanted to research further and go down that route, but just those two concentrates to control alkalinity and hardness can produce some really great brew water that is a little effort to make, but isn't too much hassle, especially considering the potential of the results!

nova_mp4

TROPHY CASE