mkane wrote:15:1 vs 20:1. Heck, my wife likes 10:1

if you ever read Hario's instructions for the v60 they recommend 10:1. I myself have never tried that ratio.

culturesub wrote:Disagree- go finer and use more water! I go SUPER fine and am mostly doing 25/500 right now

I'm assuming you mean 25 grams of coffee for 500 ml of water. I'm curious about what your recipe is and how fast/slow is the drawdown?. how fine do you go... are we taking espresso or a touch coarser? To you, what is the advantage taste-wise of going finer and dosing lower? It certainly makes your coffee last longer so it's more economical but does it make it taste better?

Hey Damian- based on our convos prior, I would HIGHLY recommend you get a refractometer. I go extremely fine- and luckily have as good a set up as you can get for filter grinds, but high EY coffees, just based on my own taste buds, taste significantly more vibrant. Your intensity goes down, but your sweetness goes up and its just a richer, more interesting cup. It's just flat out better IMHO.

Also- a high EY coffee is almost by default a well brewed, evenly extracted one. It's pretty damn impossible with any well roasted coffee(read: not dark roast) to get a really high EY and have significant channeling. I'm not saying a lower EY would mean you had channeling, but I am saying a 25% EY would mean you most likely did not experience any.

FWIW over extraction is a myth, as I believe we've discussed here, so since we find coffee tasty, extracting more of that coffee stuffs will only make tastier coffee right?

If you want I can show you some grind samples. I also use a Melo Drip, which really allows me to go finer, and then a recipe that allows me to control agitation and break up any channels to push EY.

culturesub wrote: Hey Damian- based on our convos prior, I would HIGHLY recommend you get a refractometer. I go extremely fine- and luckily have as good a set up as you can get for filter grinds, but high EY coffees, just based on my own taste buds, taste significantly more vibrant. Your intensity goes down, but your sweetness goes up and its just a richer, more interesting cup. It's just flat out better IMHO.

Also- a high EY coffee is almost by default a well brewed, evenly extracted one. It's pretty damn impossible with any well roasted coffee(read: not dark roast) to get a really high EY and have significant channeling. I'm not saying a lower EY would mean you had channeling, but I am saying a 25% EY would mean you most likely did not experience any.

FWIW over extraction is a myth, as I believe we've discussed here, so since we find coffee tasty, extracting more of that coffee stuffs will only make tastier coffee right?

If you want I can show you some grind samples. I also use a Melo Drip, which really allows me to go finer, and then a recipe that allows me to control agitation and break up any channels to push EY.

a VST is in the plans but it's not a casual purchase. SCA has it in their store for $900 USD and I actually can get it slightly cheaper where I live from what I can see with online listings but there's a chance there is no stock left from that seller at that price. Realistically I probably would have to pay about $1000 USD to get one. But, yes I would love one... that and a Scace 2 which probably is about the same price as the VST some excellent testing equipment.

I would like to see your steps of brewing, from how fine it is, dose, ratio, brew time even cone size and I would try reproduce it here. I'm right now using a method I'm testing that uses the largest brew cone and keeping it always full of water, then removing the cone when I've reached the desired yeild in the cup. In doing this the thermal mass is stable and there is always a constant slight agition from adding water and grinds sticking to the side or rao spins are meaningless. You've got to use a stand to do it so you're only weighing what's in the cup, however without a vst results are subjective at best.

For sure- you can also look at the Atago, although depending who you ask they have a bit more variance compared to the VST.

I will put together a video in the next day or two that shows a high EY brew and post it. I'm using a CafeC Flower dripper, but you can get similar results from a V60 02. I'm regularly getting 25% EY+ on 20:1 brews on a reasonably soluble coffee. I use a specific recipe for these brews that I don't use on my 17:1 brews, and this is what I'll highlight.

I'm not so sure the flower dripper and v60 would have any discernable differences in the cup. I'm sure Hario has their IP protected so if other players want to compete they need another design like a flower but in the end to accomplish the same thing. 20:1 is high water:coffee ratio, is this needed to get the higher extraction?. how does this impact TDS because there is a point of diminishing returns where although using more water gets you more coffee stuff its diluted and sometimes not all worth it. I tried a project once that split a dose into two brews and I used the brewed coffee of pour-over 'A' as the brewing water of pour-over 'B' which allowed me to use more water for both pour-overs and the point was to see if I could increase the extraction using more water but without diluted coffee. It sort of worked, tasted a bit like a syphon but it has some negative astringency with it as well.

Super fine as in espresso grind size fine for 20:1? I'll give it a shot when we return home. I came close on a refractometer buy but couldn't justify the cost for the hobbyist. It was hard enough springing for a couple of nice grinders.

I use a HM Digital RCM-1000BT refractometer. Not to expensive and gets very good results for the coffee hobbyist.

https://www.globaltestsupply.com/produc ... -53-0-brix

Something like this? The unit you use is NLA

Atago can't sell their PAL-COFFEE unit in the US. They can sell the PAL-TEA and the conversion from a Brix to coffee TDS is a simple 0.85 factor. There are numerous gray market sources for the US as well, including sellers on eBay and Amazon Marketplace.