I primarily brew either v60 or Aeropress. Extractions are typically decent to good. Occasionally I will absolutely nail an extraction, and it is always a complete departure from even the best of my good extractions.

Today I was tweaking my v60 recipe, following Perger's extraction flow chart, getting used to the Feldgrind, and brewed the best cup of coffee I've ever tasted. It was outrageously sweet. I really couldn't believe it. I recorded all the parameters and such, but was unsuccessful in repeating the results.

Just wondering how many folks out there are consistently thrilled with their brews.

I can't afford a refractometer, but if I thought it would get me into mind-blowing territory a lot more consistently, I would totally consider selling stuff in order to finance one.

A coffee refractometer won't make you infallible, but it will help with consistency.

You recorded all the parameters you could, except for the most important one - what landed in your cup. Almost everything else can appear identical from one day to the next, but the taste can change. Knowing what your extraction yield is helps you make the necessary adjustments to everything else, in order to keep cups consistent.

Buy the best one you can afford & the necessary software (without which, the refractometer will be next to useless - the VST is the only model with the necessary accuracy). Yes, it's expensive, but every cup of coffee you drink thinking, "this could have been so much better" is a waste of time & money...it'll still happen of course, but less often & you'll have the means to fix it.

Continue to watch the other parameters & log them too...these are still the skills you need to shift the refractometer readings & implement the necessary corrections to maintain your preference. Brewing from cup to cup can make it hard to keep track of your last 'happy place', so a cold hard look at previous data can help get you back to square one if you get a little lost.

Do the VSTs ever come up on the used market? Last time I checked they were like $700 new..

I've been attempting to hone my skills for the past couple of years now, and it's coming to the point where, if I can't figure out how to brew borderline phenomenal cups consistently (which I'm pretty sure is possible), then single origin coffee brewed manually isn't worth the time/effort/expense, and I'd be better served just buying bulk beans from the grocery and brewing them in the Aeropress, which although completely unremarkable, at least yields something rich, palatable, and without such great potential for disappointment, if any at all.

Keep an eye on all the coffee forum's buy & sell boards, I have seen a couple go used, you may have to deal with international shipping though.

What about French press, or a cupping style extraction in a straight sided glass beaker (you can pick them up cheap, a spout for pouring is good & a watch glass for a lid), you can filter through a permanent filter, or the Aeropress (pour off the scum & discard, hold back the grinds in the beaker)? Immersions are quite consistent, but take a bit more time to hit maximum sweetness.

I've been using a hybrid paper-filtered immersion method with good results.Its a super easy brew method to try, if you are interested, and it sounds like you have everything needed to do so:

http://www.coffeebos.com/paper-filtered ... n-brewing/

Besides the simplicity of the routine, I like the fact that this cupping-based brew method provides a relatively reliable and repeatable way to compare different brewing waters, coffees, grind settings or doses. You can more or less isolate single variables while keeping everything else the same.

I also enjoy switching to different brewers after I have established a frame of reference for a coffee via this cupping-based brew method. Brewing the same coffee with a V60 or a Kalita Wave or a siphon will result in different cups. Rather than being disappointed by the variability, I feel like I am learning more about what different brewers bring to the cup.

Definitely trying hybrid immersion. Thank you guys for your input.

Still interested in hearing from other H-B members about how consistently mind-blowing extractions are achieved. Is there a poll function?

It's utilizing both immersion extraction and filter/percolation extraction. The common example is the Clever Coffee Dripper. In other forms, you can use a press pot for the immersion portion and the pour the results into a filter cone, which can clarify the brew and remove some solids and "clean up" the cup a bit. Problem is (in some cases, not all) it's very easy to have those paper filters clog. The microfine particles suspended in the the presspot (silt and other particles) immediately clog up against the paper during drawdown and you get stuck brews.

I'm in agreement with others here that immersion brewing provides the easiest method for consistency. I've been doing immersion brews exclusively for the last couple weeks with in Impress/Bobble brewer (mostly the pull method), and having a good bit of fun with it. It's really easy to control variables and adjust only one at a time to see the difference in the cup.

My limited experience so far leads me to believe that the two most influential factors in immersion brewing are bean/water ratio and grind size, followed by agitation, water temp, and brew time (assuming that you're brewing for at least 3 minutes). Once I got the ratio and grind size basically dialed in for the Impress brewer, I started playing with the other three factors to tweak each coffee to try to bring out it's best.

Problem is (in some cases, not all) it's very easy to have those paper filters clog.

That is an accurate description. The last of the decanted coffee can be slow to leave the filter, especially if the filter is cone-shaped. (As a rule I don't use Kalita Wave filters for this method-just because they cost more-but I have done so in a pinch and didn't notice any delay in drawdown.) While I've tried using a sieve to eliminate microfines as a taste experiment, this step didn't improve the cup, to my palate, or noticeably improve drawdown at the point of a V60 filter. The shape of the filter just concentrates the microfines at the tip of the cone.

Here's the solution: If you don't have something to do while the last of the coffee leaves the filter, pull your cup and walk. That's one of the nice things about the method. Brewing takes place outside the filter. You basically stop the brewing process when you break the crust, and the last of the grinds settle. Since brewing is finished before you decant, the brew ratio of any coffee in your cup is identical, for all intents an purposes, to that of any coffee left in the cone. In other words, the brew ratio doesn't change if you don't wait for the last of the liquid to exit the filter.

Eastsideloco wrote: You basically stop the brewing process when you break the crust, and the last of the grinds settle.

Is that really true? I usually break the crust and submerge the floating grinds after about 30 seconds on my immersion brews and don't do any further agitation after that until plunging/pulling. Is this not good practice? My cups seem to be coming out fairly well, by my taste.