This week I was perusing Instagram and came upon a surprising coffee recommendation from author and consultant Scott Rao. According to Rao, when making coffee with manual-fill batch brewers, such as our favorite, the Bonavita 1901, filling the tank with cold water can help slow the brew cycles, increasing extraction (i.e. more delicious coffee flavor).
This tip is surprising because water temperature is one of the key variables that affects coffee extraction. Overwhelmingly, most manual-fill batch brewers struggle to get the water hot enough. (And don’t get us started with baristas brewing your $5 pour-over with too cool water.) In fact, we’ve long heard coffee experts recommend the opposite: preheat your brew water to help the machine get it to temperature.
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