Revisiting the Delter Coffee Press

Coffee preparation techniques besides espresso like pourover.
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Shenrei
Posts: 268
Joined: 10 years ago

#1: Post by Shenrei »

I currently have a friend who is interested in coffee, and, while thinking about what I don't use much these days, I decided to give him my Delter Press.

I remember when I first got this device, the quality of my brews were haphazard and watered down. The instructions you hear from other people mostly call for a medium grind and 30 seconds pre-infusion. Some suggestions even included varying pressure and very short multiple infusions. I got some few good cups out of it but overall not to my standard of consistency. It was shelved for a good long while.

Digging it out today so that I can prepare to teach my friend how to brew with it, I winged my own recipe to try and find a good dial in point. Found a pack of unused Delter fitlers (which fit a tiny bit better than Aeropress filters...not sure how they comapre in taste yet though), and set everything up. I had my P100 set to 3 (for reference, my 12g-15g V60 range is from 3.2 to 3.4 with respect to my personal locking point; IOW, these values are for reference only) and ground some recent Sightglass coffee that I use as commodity coffee. YOLO'd the process and found a watery brew with some notes in it. Hmmm. Okay, let's try 2.5. YOLO'd again and....waaaait a minute. This brew is pretty good. Hmm again. Let's try a different coffee. This time, an ultra light roast Ethio (very very light, quite a bit lighter than TW). Hey, this tastes damn good. Let's try a different coffee. Great results again! This is actually tasting better than any Aeropress cup I've ever done. Now I'm reluctant to give it to my friend but I will anyway.

I believe the trick is to get a good enough FINE grind and have much longer water infusion pulls.

Here's what I did:

15g coffee
97c water
Water is maybe 220mL or something, I don't know, I just used the volume lines.

1. Fill up to the max fill line (the line right below the top)
2. Pull the plunger until the water level hits 75
3. Wait one minute.
4. Gently push down until complete stop.
5. Pull the plunger again, this time getting all of the water.
6. Wait one minute.
7. Gently push down until complete stop.
8. Swirl and enjoy.

- Tim

zefkir
Posts: 269
Joined: 4 years ago

#2: Post by zefkir »

It's a manual sprover machine :mrgreen:

Or filter 2.0, or pressure-assisted triculate.

Basically, any kind of low agitation no bypass brew.

samuellaw178
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#3: Post by samuellaw178 »

Thanks for sharing and glad to hear you're getting good results! I've got a Delter Press myself and was hoping to make it work. But for the life of me just couldn't get it to extract reliably (even with fine grind I find it often underextracts, often less than 16%). Did you by any chance measure the extraction?

In my case (an older model), I suspect with the rubber jet seal I am shooting water through the coffee chamber (even with gentle push) and causing a lot of bypass. Otherwise it wouldn't make sense I am getting such low extraction with fine grind). I ended up modding it to take a 51mm basket to achieve a truly no bypass brew (eg. filter 2.0 style) :lol:


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Shenrei (original poster)
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#4: Post by Shenrei (original poster) »

No, I did not measure, but I did a side by side with the Fellow Prismo + Aeropress. What recipe are you using? I suspect perhaps try doing a 3min steep or even more if it is not tasting good, and see if you can increase extraction by increasing steep time.
- Tim

samuellaw178
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#5: Post by samuellaw178 »

It was a while ago and I tried a few different recipes (wish I had started a discussion or get some more tips before I irreversibly modded my Delter :oops: ). But I am pretty sure for the most part I tried a pretty 'standard' recipe. ~14g coffee, inject water until I get some drip through. Infuse for 2 min. Then gently inject more water (about 240-250ml total brew water weight).

erik82
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Joined: 12 years ago

#6: Post by erik82 »

I also still use it from time to time and it has always given me pretty good results. I do agree that you need to grind pretty fine to make it work. My setting with the Delter is around 9 which is in the middle between 18/300 V60 and espresso. I just press 50gr through and wait 40s and then do 2 pulls of 100ml and done in around 2:30min.