Shawnaks5 wrote:Sounds good. After you dial in the XF do you mind taking a pic of your grinds and telling me your setting? You said you have your Vario calibrated to 1A right?

Yep, Vario is calibrated at 1A. I'll hopefully have some time this weekend to break out the refractometer and see where I'm at in terms of EY.

Finally..an excellent cup from the XF!

I was brewing a new coffee (Counter Culture Santa Maria), ground at 4K and brewed using a modified version of 4-6.

The resulting cup tasted evenly extracted with a noticeable and pleasant acidity. I'd happily brew this cup again, so I'll be interested to see how easy it is to replicate with the XF.

Fantastic! I hope to get some first impressions within the next few days! How coarse/fine would you say your grind is. I'm going to be grinding with a Lido 3.

Sounds good, keep us posted!

I haven't tried the XF with my Lido, but I'd probably start at 0+8 and adjust from there.

tv79 wrote:Finally..an excellent cup from the XF!

I was brewing a new coffee (Counter Culture Santa Maria), ground at 4K and brewed using a modified version of 4-6.

The resulting cup tasted evenly extracted with a noticeable and pleasant acidity. I'd happily brew this cup again, so I'll be interested to see how easy it is to replicate with the XF.

What does "a modified version of 4-6" mean?

So I finally got to brew with the XF, and for the first time impression and first time making pour over ever myself. I was very thrilled with the results.

I did a +6 on my Lido 3 (6 tick marks away from zero) with 20g coffee and total of 280g water. Ended up being a ~2:50 brew time. I just started with a 40g bloom for 30 seconds and went with slow circles until reached target water weight. I then let it drip all the way through. It was pleasant to drink, a bit underextracted actually, had an acidity that shouldn't be there with this blend (Campfire Blend by Lofty Coffee) IMO. I'll grind a bit finer next time I guess.

I am excited to try to make an Ethiopian Guji in the afternoon once I get done from school.

Edit:
Made another small batch. 20g beans, 300g water, finished with 3:20 brew time with 30-sec bloom. The grind was a little bit finer this time and the cup was very very good. Very similar to the cups I've had in shops and they use a modbar for their water source and brew on Kalita Wave. Bright, juicy, hints of blueberry and red raspberry acidity.

How have your brews been going?

I got new filters and I'm having the opposite issue where the draw time is actually too quick. I did go one notch coarser on my Lido 3 from 6 to 7 and slowly filled up the vessel with 328ml of water for 22g of beans. It finished very quickly slightly under 2 minutes leading to under-extraction.

I've noticed that with small pours it drips slowly but if you fill it up then it drips very quickly as if there is extra pressure putting it down. I guess I just have to stick to one consistent method and adjust the grind for that. Have you guys had success with multiple small pours or just one big pour?

Pouring times/drawdown times have been tricky for me using the Stagg. Still playing around with it because when I get it right, it's noticeably better than Kalita/V-60's/Chemex etc.

My guess is that there occasionally can end up being a trapped section of outgassing somewhere near the bottom in the corner underneath those deeply pleated folds. This is likely what causes my bed to raise so high then just suddenly collapse and drain quickly.

I've mitigated this for the most part by stirring aggressively right at/during the bloom phase.

Sometimes, with coffee that's already well rested and not outgassing a ton, I don't have to bother, and it drains thru nice and quickly. But then I have to go back and tweak the grind. So there's a bit of dialing in for each brew/coffee the first time.

Tonight at work I'm having success with standard Kalita 185 filters, paired with my Ratio 8. I use the included metal funnel to make sure all the water goes where I want it. Since there's so little control on the Ratio 8, I'm left only with tightly controlling my dose and grind. I try not to tweak my grind much, so it ends up being the dose that I manipulate. Success comes more often at 20g, more failure at 22g or more.

I ended up returning the XF, mainly due to the filter issues discussed previously. To echo what Tom said, drawdown times varied pretty widely. And coupled with the fact that I'm brewing at a higher dose than most, getting a consistently good cup was a challenge (though a couple were very good).

If Fellow could improve on their filters, I think the XF has potential for those brewing smaller volumes. However, in my case with a 30g+ dose, achieving consistent results with this brewer seems to be an uphill battle.