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 🤓
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
