dfinn wrote:ok, that is super helpful! I will readjust and get as close to that as I can. Does everything else I'm doing look about right? At least as a starting point?

Hey, your description sounds like your doing things correctly. I agree though, your picture looks like a grind for french press. I have been doing pour over at home for years. I have had a few brewers and I actually prefer the Hario v60 but that's me. I have gone pretty fine but I don't have a picture saved. Some coffees do better going finer, brings out more flavor in some lighter roasts. Also you can experiment with going finer and doing say a 16.5:1 instead of a 16:1. I have a comandante c40 and have been happy with the consistency it gives. There are many things to play around with. I hope you start enjoying your results. Have fun!

Shenrei wrote: If you're going off the boil, I would probably wait 1 minute before pouring depending on how full your kettle is.

Normally, that's solid advice. But Salt Lake City has an elevation of about 4,200 feet. So your water boils at 203-204 F (95 C). Especially in the winter, you're more worried about retaining as much of that heat as possible than about brewing with water that is too hot.

I would suggest a much stronger coffee to water ratio for light roasted coffees like Bird Rock and Heart produce. Bird Rock recommends 27g coffee to 350g water which works out to about 1:12.9ish. That might help you to get some of the suggested tasting notes. I also tend to have my best cups from the Kalita with 3:00 to 3:30 brew times.

If nothing else, this stronger ratio will give you an idea of what the opposite end of the taste spectrum is

Definitely worth a shot. So far I've been trying to change as little as possible but maybe I need to experiment more.

As someone new to coffee this has been kind of overwhelming. There's so many recipes out there and they vary widely.

My Lido bottoms out at -4ish, so perhaps not so similar after all, although I doubt that means all that much - same ball park grind size going of some of the images in this thread.

I haven't checked precisely, but I think the water in Norway is pretty soft, at least compared to many places, and I still stir after bloom. I'm no feinschmecker, but I am pretty sure I am not over-extracting. There seems to be 'schools of thought' regarding perfecting the pourover method. I bought into a lot of what Scott Rao wrote on his blog about pourover last year (the comments to that specific post is golden as well), but your mileage might naturally vary.

I just read through that blog post and all the comments. Some really good info in there, I made some notes on things to try.

I just rolled the dice and got a pour over at a coffee shop in JFK airport. I think if you saw this persons techniques most of your jaws would hit the floor. No filter rinse, a huge filter that looked like it was from some giant commercial brewer, pouring heavy and random amounts of water from one of the jugs they use to steam milk, pulling the filter up and out of the kalita to squeeze it and then put it back and add more water and keep brewing...

Even with all that going on, it's still better than most of mine I've been making at home. Something with my stuff has to be drastically off and I think it's my water. Im headed out of town for 2 weeks but am going to try gerber water when I get back. Hoping that's what is going on because if it's not that I really don't see how I can be making such horrible coffee using quality gear and quality beans.

cimarronEric wrote:...I found that, especially with very fresh coffee, it benefits from a double bloom and a drawn out pulse finishing 3:45-4:00
...
Slow pulses, very careful not to disturb the bed of grounds...

Agreed. I like brew times between 3:30-4 on the 155, and gentle pulses with the spout as close to the coffee bed as possible.

A few other things you might try:
1. After the first 150g or so of water go in, I always get grounds collecting in each wave/ripple of the filter that are essentially left out of the extraction. At this point I direct the water to reintegrate those grounds back in with the rest. Nick Cho demonstrates this in his you tube video from some time ago. It's probably a trace amount of coffee grams that I'm working back in (if it even amounts to one gram), but it's more of a mental thing for me

2. Coffee Collective described a slow continuous pour method in a Facebook post in late December. I've tried it and don't find a ton of difference in the cup, but I'm no supertaster. And I didn't brew true to their recipe's shorter brew time (under 3:00)

3. Recently I've started discarding the last ~20-50g of water from my cup. A barista/roasted friend of mine suggested this, but I don't know the science behind it. The idea throughout your pulses is that you always keep the level of water between half and 3/4 full, relative to the volume capacity of your pour over device's filter/chamber. So if I want to pour 320 g of water into my 20g of coffee, I actually aim to pour at least 340g of water, but then remove the brewer from the cup/decanter either between 3:30-4 minutes, or when the water bed reaches the half-full mark of the 155 filter (whichever comes first). I discard that leftover coffee. Had a hard time letting go of that during the LA drought, but if you actually let that draw down into a separate cup and taste it, I often find it tastes like garbage and nothing like the rest of my brew. For me this holds true across chemex, kone, walkure, and woodneck, so I do it all the time now without having researched why.

I've had very good & repeatable results with a flow restrictor and a very slow continuous pour, agitating the bed as little as possible. 15g coffee, 30g 30sec bloom and then pour the rest over roughly over 1 minute. This is still doable without a flow restrictor, but the restrictor makes it so much easier.

Still struggling here although I think I may be getting closer. I have switched to using Gerber Pure for the time being until I can get things dialed in. I have also recently switched (back) to a v60 02 and have been getting "better" results than I was with the kalita. I've had cups that are drinkable but have yet to get much in terms of sweetness or flavors that I'm hoping for.

I'm wondering 2 things.

1) Is there a known brand/roast of coffee that is considered easy and reliable for pour over? I've been enjoying purchasing from places like stumptown, bird rock, heart and verve but I've also been going with a different bean and roaster every 2 weeks. I think I probably need to pick one and stick with it until I get things figured out.

2) Would I notice much difference between Gerber Pure and say Matt Perger's water recipe?

I've never used Gerber Pure, but I use Perger's recipe a lot for pourovers and immersion brews. I've had good luck with it. If you try it, make sure that when you add the base formula to distilled water that the base formula is well mixed. It settles quickly.