Everything on this site is brewed as filter coffee. Here is what that means, how to make one, and how to read the words on a bag of beans.
A pour-over is coffee made by pouring hot water by hand over ground coffee in a paper filter. Gravity pulls the water through, and the filter holds back the grounds and most of the oils.
The result is a clean, light-bodied cup where you can taste what makes one coffee different from another. That is why it suits beans with fruity or floral character.
Grind the beans fresh, about as fine as coarse sand. Too fine and the cup turns bitter; too coarse and it tastes thin and sour.
15 g coffeeWet the grounds with a little water and wait. The coffee swells and releases gas, which helps the rest of the water flow through evenly.
45 g water · 40 secondsPour the rest slowly in small circles, in two or three stages. Aim to finish dripping at around three minutes.
250 g total · 93 °CLet it cool for a few minutes. Flavours open up as the cup cools, and a good coffee tastes different at every temperature.
Then repeatI make most of my cups on an xBloom, a machine that brews pour-overs automatically. It grinds the beans and pours the water in stages, so every cup follows the recipe. If you don't have the time to master pouring by hand, this wonderful machine does the work for you.
Visit xbloom.comNot sponsored. I just like it.Roasted the shortest, so the bean's own character stays in front: bright, fruity, floral, with a tea-like body.
A balance of bean and roast: caramel, chocolate and nuts, with some fruit left and a rounder body.
The roast takes over: bittersweet, smoky, dark chocolate, with a heavy body and little acidity.
Coffee beans are the seeds of a fruit called a coffee cherry. The process is how that fruit is taken off and the seed dried, and it changes the taste as much as the roast does. The colours match the tiles across this journal.
The fruit is washed off the bean before it dries. Clean, crisp and bright, letting the origin and variety show.
The whole cherry is dried with the seed inside. Sweeter and fruitier, with a heavier body.
The skin comes off but some sticky fruit stays on while drying. It sits between washed and natural.
Fermented in sealed tanks without oxygen before drying. Intense and unusual.
Fermented together with fruit, yeast or other ingredients. Bold, and it divides opinion.
Whole cherries ferment in a tank filled with carbon dioxide, a method borrowed from winemaking.