I'm looking at brewmethods.com for some 'standard' brewing methods with my Aeropress, but I was curious on which brewing factor (coffee/water ratio, grind size, steep time, water temp) to adjust for taste first. What's your methodology for what to adjust in your coffee? For example, if it's bitter, do you coarsen up the grind or decrease the steep time first? Do you bother with the other factors once the first is good enough?

Good question.

My take on it is that I start with a 16:1 coffee / water ratio which sets the brew strength.

The grind size and steep time as well as stirring / agitation will control the extraction. Under-extracted coffee will taste weak and over-extracted coffee will taste bitter. These variables are coupled together so if you want a faster brew, you grind finer so that you don't over-extract the coffee for a given steep time. For pour-overs I'll aim for a certain target time, say 3:30 and adjust the grind based on my judgement of the extraction. Aeropress is going to work with shorter contact times.

I usually work with water temps around 203°F. Hotter temps can result in bitterness and cooler temps sourness and you can adjust the temps based on this. Beyond the bitter/sour, you can also emphasize the bright acids with hotter extractions or the chocolaty bass notes with cooler temps.

For an Aeorpress recipe, I like Brandon Weaver's inverted recipe:

15 g coffee.
220 g of water at 204 degrees Fahrenheit.
Inverted.
Filter: Able Disk.

Add 100 by 0:20seconds, stir, add remaining water (120g for total of 220) by 0:40seconds.
Cap and steep until 1:10. Flip and press for 45 seconds Until1:55.
Total brew time is 1:55.

I usually pour in a bit of the bloom water first and then drop the coffee in so that it wets fully and you don't get coffee stuck to the stopper. The recipe also seems built to use the AP as a measure, the 220 ml of water plus 15 grams of coffee usually fill up the inverted AeroPress so once you've done the recipe a few times, you don't necessarily need the scale.

Is there a reason why you'd adjust the grind rather than the steep time first? Although the grind/steep variables are linked, I'd say that a very short steep and fine grind will taste very different from a long steep and coarse grind.

I was trying to read more on the issue of adjusting brew variables, and although this thread helped, it dealt primarily with espresso, which has the advantage of visually verifying a sound shot (proper extraction). For brewing, there's really only training your palate.

I think in a cafe setting for consistency you want to keep the times consistent. You settle on a time that works well for extraction without being too overly long for serving customers and dial in the grind from there.

I think most V60s are in the 3 minute range. I don't actually have a V60, one of the few brewers I haven't tried out. Most agitative methods, Aeropress, Clover, Siphon, Trifecta, etc. have much shorter contact times due to the accelerated extraction due to agitation. I believe that this is desirable in a cafe to shorten the wait time. These methods are also pretty much full immersion methods so you don't have to factor in the pour-through time.

When doing pour-over, the grind size regulates the flow rate at the same time as the extraction so to some extent changing the grind size changes the contact time in these methods, unless you do short pours and even then with a coarse grind your going to end up with a dry bed if you don't keep up with the water pours.

Another factor is grinder performance. With a home grinder, you may start getting a higher percentage of fines when you coarsen up the grind so you may get better grind quality with a finer grind. That being the case, you may want to optimize your brew method around this.

Bottom line, how does it taste?

Good luck!