• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The Coffee Compass

Your Guide for Craft Coffee

  • Home
  • About
  • Archive
  • Map
  • Contact
  • Shop

Archives for November 2020

How to Make Coffee with A Clever Dripper

November 25, 2020 By Michael Leave a Comment

The Clever Dripper might be the most underrated coffee brewer. The device is a sort of hybrid brewer that offers elements of both immersion and gravity drip methods. It’s easy to use, and most importantly, capable of making a really great cup of coffee.

Essentially, the device is a pour-over dripper with a sealable valve at the bottom. The valve allows you to steep the coffee as long as you desire. The resulting brew is somewhere between the body of a French press and the clarity of a Hario V60.

There are several practical reasons I love the Clever dripper:

1. It doesn’t need a gooseneck kettle like pour-over drippers.
2. İt uses Melitta #4 filters, easily the most ubiquitous coffee filter in the world.
3. The BPA-free plastic dripper and accompanying lid is very temperature-stable, which makes for easier extraction.

The only drawback, in my opinion, is that the draw-down can be hard to predict. If your grinder produces a lot of fines, it could easily take 2+ minutes for your brew to finish draining. Different coffees will drain at different rates, so when you’re brewing a new coffee there’s a decent amount of guesswork.

Without further ado, here is our Clever Dripper recipe.

1. Place 24 grams of medium ground coffee in the Clever Dripper.

2. Briskly pour 400 ml of 96° C water. Try to evenly saturate all of the grounds.

3. After 1:00 minute, gently stir the slurry, making sure all coffee grounds are immersed. Then place the lid on top of the dripper.

4. At 2:00 minutes, carefully place the Clever over the carafe, initiating drawdown.

5. Aim for 4:00 total brew time, plus or minus 30 seconds. If your brew takes much longer than that consider adjusting your grind size or shortening your steep time.

If you did steps 3 and 4 properly, the coffee bed should be perfectly flat at the end of brewing with little to no coffee grounds stuck on the sides of the filter. Be careful when placing the Clever dripper over your carafe— I’ve tipped more than one brew over at this step!

Have you experimented with a Clever Dripper? Feel free to share your go-to recipe in the comments section below.

Filed Under: How to's, Stories

Double Dutch: an interview with World Aeropress Champion Wendelien van Bunnik

November 16, 2020 By Michael Leave a Comment

Just over a year ago I traveled to Den Haag to take a course to become an authorized SCA trainer. Sitting across from me in the class was the reigning Dutch barista champion, Wendelien van Bunnik. Wendelien directs the education program at Single Estate Coffee, a coffee roaster in Maasdijk with a café in Den Haag. I recently caught up with Wendelien over email to hear about what it was like to win the World Aeropress Championship and why there’s more to the Dutch coffee scene than just Amsterdam.   

Before becoming a coffee educator you were an English teacher. Does that traditional educational background influence the way you approach coffee training?

I think so yes! There’s a big difference between having a certain skill yourself, and being able to transfer this skill to others. During my (short) time as an English teacher, I learned that you must never forget how long it takes to learn a new skill. Once you’ve mastered a skill, it’s very tempting to forget the work you put in to learn it. So when I was in front of a class as an English teacher, I already learned that it’s not about the teacher, but about the learner’s process. The difference in speed and way people learn in general is so different for everyone. It’s up to me as a trainer to figure out how people learn the best, and to remain patient and focused on their individual process. Especially in my early days, I stepped into the pitfall of thinking training was about me as a trainer, having to demonstrate my skill (and impress every one of course). Although obviously, you need to be able to demonstrate skill, it’s 100% not about the trainer, but about the learner and the goal they want to achieve….

Read More »

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: Aeropress, barista competitions, Wendelien van Bunnik

What Determines the Color of Brewed Coffee?

November 9, 2020 By Guest Leave a Comment

One of the most driven coffee professionals I’ve had the honor of meeting is Reza Kosar. In addition to being the first Iranian to become a licensed Q Grader, Reza is a talented coffee roaster with an insatiable curiosity in coffee science. He recently posed an interesting question on his Instagram account: what determines the color of brewed coffee? Which raises a second question, what effect does color have on flavor? We chimed in with what we thought was the right answer, but it turns out Reza had taken a deep dive into the subject and has graciously offered to share his research with us. 

Roast

The roasting process leads to the formation of the characteristic coffee aroma and dark-colored
compounds. …

Read More »

Filed Under: Coffee Science Tagged With: Coffee Roasting, coffee science

Primary Sidebar

Get Fresh Content

Sign up for Free Updates from
The Coffee Compass.

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2021