Just a tidbit: brewing with an ibrik or a moka pot starts cold and is stopped when reaching target temperature. You emphasize caramels with these methods.

@ Chris, the moka pot method suggests a way of quickly cooling a stovetop kettle. You start with water off the boil, then dip the bottom in cold water to quickly reduce temperature.

James Hoffman's method assumes but doesn't mention that you're weighing the pourover so you don't need a measured amount after adding cold water to the kettle.

If I want to quickly and easily brew a dark roast I just use cooler water as mentioned earlier.

Jofari wrote:This reminds me of a home-barista thread from a few years ago, where folks were suggesting that a cold bloom was beneficial for dark roasts. I remember trying it at the time and thinking that it worked well at decreasing the roasty bitter notes. Here's the thread for anyone interested in reading: LINK

I thought of my thread when I first saw the title of this one. I think I'd just finished watching Hoffmann's video from a link on Facebook earlier, then saw it posted here. James has said in the past that he reads the Youtube comments, but now that he's so popular, I doubt he can comb thru the many hundreds of comments he gets on each video, but I did mention the cold start in a previous video about 2 years ago. I'd love to see him give it a try and compare blindly.

Like I mentioned in my original thread, I found that it wasn't just the cold start, but also a lower brew temp throughout that had the best results.

I just re-read the old thread and sadly note that Jen closed Scarlet City Roasters, which was badly impacted by the pandemic.

yakster wrote:I remember that cold bloom thread well. Next time I get my hands on a dark(er) roasted coffee that I want to try as pour-over I hope I remember to try brewing with a cold bloom, hot bloom, and a regular bloom.

I'll plan on trying this too. It's been a while since I had a dark roast, but now I'm tempted to seek one out.

TomC wrote:Like I mentioned in my original thread, I found that it wasn't just the cold start, but also a lower brew temp throughout that had the best results.

I remember trying this after reading that thread. I wasn't using an automated brewer and what doing everything with a kettle (i.e. bloom with cold water, then fill the kettle with hot water before brewing). I found that the lower brew temp was the key to getting good results. The cold bloom was beneficial, but not as impactful as just using a lower brew temp throughout (I think it was somewhere between 180 and 190 F).

drgary wrote:I just re-read the old thread and sadly note that Jen closed Scarlet City Roasters, which was badly impacted by the pandemic.

That's a shame. Back when I was living in the Bay Area, Scarlet City was the best place to go for a good dark roast.