Michael

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.

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….

A Farewell to Fresh Cup

October 22, 2020 By Michael Leave a Comment

I remember realizing this spring that coffee shops I knew and loved would not survive the pandemic. It especially hit home when Quills Coffee shuttered their U of L café— a shop where I had logged thousands of hours on bar.

With cafés around the country closing their doors or switching to takeaway-only, perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised me when Fresh Cup Magazine notified me that my upcoming article about Turkish Coffee would be in their last issue. After all, who could imagine picking up a communal magazine off a random café table in the COVID-19 era?

My relationship with Fresh Cup started in 2014. I had seen the magazine …

Science Says Brew Temperature Doesn’t Matter — Sort Of

October 8, 2020 By Michael Leave a Comment

Time to re-write that Brewers Cup competition routine. According to a new study, coffees brewed at different water temperatures are indistinguishable at the same extraction percentage and concentration. The paper, a collaboration between the Coffee Science Foundation and the UC Davis Coffee Center, was published in the academic journal Scientific Reports under the rather catchy title “Brew temperature, at fixed brew strength and extraction, has little impact on the sensory profile of drip brew coffee.”

Researchers at UC Davis used a Curtis C4 batch brewer to brew a washed Honduras at 87°, 90°, and 93° celsius. Other brewing parameters such as grind size and total contact time were adjusted to achieve the same extraction and strength with each brew. A trained panel of professional tasters were unable to significantly distinguish between the different brews….

Baratza Announces Acquisition by Breville Group

October 2, 2020 By Michael Leave a Comment

For years, when it’s come to consumer coffee grinders and espresso machines, we’ve had one recommendation in both categories: Baratza and Breville respectively. Perhaps it’s fitting that Baratza has announced its acquisition by Breville Group, a publically-traded Australian company that manufactures appliances like the Breville Precision Brewer. In a blog post, Baratza CEO and cofounder Kyra Kennedy announced Baratza will continue as its own brand with its existing West Coast-based team.

Baratza’s range of electric burr grinders have long filled a niche for specialty coffee lovers looking for café-quality coffee at home. Whether it’s their entry-level Encore or high-end Forté, we’ve used most of their grinders, bought them as presents, and tested them against their competitors. Does this new consolidation mean we’ll see an integrated Sette + BES870XL combo? A Precision Brewer that somehow synchronizes with the Baratza Vario’s grind-by-weight feature?

Time will only tell.

Should Coffee be Saved? An interview with Lucia Solis

August 27, 2020 By Michael Leave a Comment

Among the voices calling for change in the coffee industry, none ring clearer than Lucia Solis’s. As a trained oenologist who studied at UC Davis, Solis uses her expertise as a winemaker to help coffee farmers improve their fermentation techniques. In reality, the better part of a decade spent traveling to coffee mills has made Solis one of the industry’s leading coffee processing experts.

As someone who has spent most of my time in coffee on the consumer-facing side, I’ve learned a lot from Solis’s newsletter and podcast, Making Coffee with Lucia Solis. I’m grateful that Lucia made time for a call over WhatsApp, where we discussed her podcast, the devastating effects of COVID-19 for coffee farmers, and whether or not coffee should be saved.

We’ve really been enjoying, and learning a lot from your podcast. What inspired you to start it?

It was an idea I had for a few years before I got the courage to do it. In 2016 I even sketched out a few episode ideas and was trying to come up with a podcast title. When I gave my 2017 ReCo presentation I thought I had made a basic argument, I didn’t understand why people didn’t understand what I was talking about. It took me the better part of a year to understand where people’s deficiencies were. I didn’t understand why people didn’t understand me.

Eventually I realized that because I was coming from a different industry, we had very different references.

I wondered “Why are we talking about this and not that”? Consequently being an outsider gave a fresh perspective on many things the coffee industry took for granted….

Why Latte Art is Still Important

July 31, 2020 By Michael 1 Comment

Latte art used to be overrated.

When I first got into coffee culture, circa 2007, latte art was my sole metric for determining a good coffee shop.

Of course, at the time my favorite drink was a caramel latte in a serving size that would make European heads swim. (I had only recently been converted from iced mochas with extra chocolate, a drink I enjoyed because “it tastes like chocolate milk.”) I’m not sure what other metric I might have used to determine what constituted a good cup of coffee.

But my approach also reflected the values of the barista community at large.

At the time, netting the top prize at CoffeeFest’s World Latte Art Open Championship could actually lead to an endorsement deal. Even a top-three finish would earn a barista fame and recognition in the coffee community.

But pendulum swings are inevitable, and it’s never been less cool to care about latte art….

Iced Coffee: A User Guide

July 1, 2020 By Michael Leave a Comment

Every day for the last six years, the majority of traffic to this humble coffee website has come from a simple Google search: “how to make cold brew with a French press.” The data reveals a simple truth: people love iced coffee. But there’s perhaps never been more confusion surrounding a beverage.

Cold brew. Cold press. Slow drip. Flash chilled. The list goes on. But what do any of these terms even mean? Lucky for you we’ve compiled a handy guide to drinking iced coffee….

Coffee in a Time of Corona Virus: Cup of Joy Opens New Istanbul Café

June 11, 2020 By Michael Leave a Comment

Cup of Joy

Istanbul, like much of the world, has spent the last three months locked down due to COVID-19. Coffee shops, along with bars and gyms, were some of the first businesses to be shut down by the government. As such, I went the longest stint I’ve gone in my coffee-drinking life without having an espresso or cappuccino.

Of course, it’s hard to complain about missing such luxuries when so many have truly been forced to go without. Besides, if I’m being honest, it hasn’t been coffee I’ve missed as much as coffee shops. The human interaction. A space to be creative. Bumping into old friends and make new ones. Corona Virus might have called the economic viability of coffee shops into question, but we’ve never been in greater need of the holistic services a good coffee shop provides….

A Basic Guide to Coffee Varieties

May 19, 2020 By Michael Leave a Comment

Coffee drinkers have long selected their beans of choice based on roast degree or country of origin. Increasingly, some specialty coffee consumers are searching for certain processing methods. But the subject of coffee varieties, or cultivars, has yet to trickle down to a consumer level– which is a shame. Different coffee varieties have different cup characteristics, and identifying a coffee’s varietal characteristics can add to your appreciation of that morning cup.

What is a Cultivar?

You likely already know something about grape varieties, or in the very least apples. Even if you can’t tell the difference between Pinot noir or Syrah, you probably know Granny smith apples are tart and Red Delicious apples are anything but delicious. (I, for one, usually go for Fuji apples at the supermarket.) But what is a variety anyway?…

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