Recipe.
The reality is that everyone who brews coffee or tea for a living; follows a recipe. If they don’t, it is a bit alarming! These recipes should be the bedrock of your brand. You might think this sounds overly dramatic, but if you were delivered a filthy 10-second, 7g single espresso shot on Monday, you probably wouldn’t return to see if it was better any other day of the week. In the same way that you need eggs, milk and flour to make Yorkshire Puddings; you also need the right proportions of each ingredient for the outcome, not to be pancakes. If you are happy to follow the analogy, coffee is not that different.
In the early 1970’s the SCAE (Speciality Coffee Association of Europe as was) founded the European Coffee Brewing Centre in Norway. Happily, I can say that they are still alive and kicking. Today the ECBC authorises and evaluates new coffee equipment coming into the market. Some years ago, one of the biggest activities of the ECBC was to evaluate coffee brewing. Before refractometers were the norm, you could work out so much with a TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) meter, a grinder and a set of scales. You could plot your theoretical brew on a chart and hope you were right. This sounds so old-fashioned now, but you could send a small vessel full of your brewed coffee to be sent off to Norway (via the UK chapter of the SCAE) to be condensed so they could analyse your brew. Is your coffee brewed to the gold standard?
It turns out that the “Gold Standard” is good to understand. But once you have understood the basic markers the important takeaway is always that 60g of coffee (as an average) can make a fantastic litre of filter coffee. If nothing else, it is a great starting point. Yes, I have saved you days of courses for no cost, and this is just the beginning. If we return to my lousy, filthy, single espresso where I started this post, you (or I) can still make a loveless cup of filter coffee using 60g of coffee to create that litre. But I used that 60 grams, I hear your frustration. But unlike espresso, we don’t have resistance in the same way. See where I am going here? I am going to touch on two different avenues.
Your coffee might be perfectly roasted.
Rested to perfection. Imagine!
Now we have to consider the other equally important 94-96%. You what? When we make a brew of coffee, we use something in the region of 6% coffee of which we extract 20-22% soluble. Also coffee wouldn’t be much of a drink without water eh? The quality of that water makes a big difference. Some people refer to our local water as “hollow” as it is very low in minerals. This is good for coffee-making equipment and (more importantly and to a degree) coffee flavour. If you are taking filter coffee making seriously, check your TDS and if it’s much over 150 PPM (parts per million, you have some choices to make). What is the most efficient way of getting great water to make my coffee or tea with? If it’s home, you could consider a filter jug with remineralising cartridges from BWT or Brita. One little thought here is to consider how much water are you going to need. If you are going to be making more coffee and tea than your jug
Next, we have to consider the all-important…
T H E G R IN D!
I hope you are keeping up here. If you grind your filter coffee, the chances are higher it is going to taste great. With a decent grinder, you can tune (or dial) your coffee in. In simple terms, a litre of coffee made with 60g of coffee can still taste thin and under-extracted or over-extracted which can be sour and dry. This can all be down to the grinder. Before we look into how we are actually brewing, I can’t stress the importance of a good filter grinder, that is (cleaned regularly) with sharp or decent burrs. Please don’t be that person who uses an old espresso grinder to get by with their filter coffee. Home grinders are more accessible than they ever have been. The likes of Fellow and Timemore can be fantastic.
The Brew
Finally, we are seeing a resurgence in exciting new filter brewers for home, like The Fellow Aiden and the XBloom. At the same time trade giants like Fetco are shrinking in the UK market again. Much of this is because the UK is afraid of brewing filter coffee well. As a financial proposition, training someone to brew filter well, could be expensive, if it was beyond grinding some coffee and pushing a button. This is another subject.
Where did we start?
Recipe, recipe recipe.
- A ratio of coffee to water. 1:16.5 is the classic.1g of coffee to every 16.5g of water. 60 x 16.5 =990ml or you could be pedantic and go 1:16665 to get even closer.
- How do we adjust flavour? Grinding coarser or finer. The amount of coffee versus water. The quality of the water. The quality of the grinder and the age of the burrs.
The next subjects to cover, we will be drilling down into:
What is the best coffee for filter brewing?
What’s best: Home Filter Coffee or Hospitality Brewed Filter Coffee?
Why should we serve filter coffee in Hospitality?
The effects of temperature on extraction in filter brewing.
What kinds of coffee work better in what type of filter brews?
The Gold standard versus what actually tastes delicious. Is there a difference?
Is Morten right? To rinse or not to rinse your filter paper before brewing. Who is Morten?
Bleached or brown filter papers
Roast colour versus flavour.
How old can my filter coffee beans really be?
We have so much more to discover together.
Whilst I am surfing this filter journey, shout if there are other areas that you think I should dive into.
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