People ask for the recipe more than for anything else, so here it is, as we do it at the bench every morning. It is not the only good one. It is the one we can defend cup after cup, with the dripper we sell and the coffees on the shelf.
The numbers
- 15 grams of coffee, ground medium, for 250 grams of water.
- Water at 94 degrees for a washed coffee, 92 for a natural.
- Total time between 2:45 and 3:15, from the first pour to the last drop.
Rinse the paper with hot water first. It takes ten seconds and removes the taste of the paper, which is real and which you will notice in the cup once you have tasted it side by side.
The pours
- 50 grams to wet everything, then wait 40 seconds. The bed swells: that is the gas leaving, and it needs to leave before the real extraction starts.
- Pour to 150 grams in slow circles, from the centre out, never on the paper.
- Pour to 250 grams the same way once the bed has dropped to about a centimetre from the surface.
- Let it drain. Do not stir, do not tap the dripper.
The two mistakes that account for most bad cups
The grind is too fine, or the water is not hot enough. Almost everything else is noise by comparison.
A grind that is too fine shows up as a brew that takes four minutes and tastes bitter and dry at the end. Go one step coarser and change nothing else. Water that is not hot enough shows up as a cup that is sour and thin, and it happens more often than people think: a kettle taken off the boil and left on the counter for a minute is already under 90 degrees.
What to change first
Change one thing at a time, and change the grind before anything else. If the cup is bitter, go coarser. If it is sour, go finer. If it is both, which happens with a very fresh coffee, wait two days and brew it again.