I don't think "fines are more than fine"

Q&A
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Hi WesG

I stir to eliminate air pockets and distribute the water in the bloom. This is a required step otherwise, there is an imbalance in flavors extracted.

Unless… there is an aggressive pour for bloom. But in that case, the water tends to drain through quickly during the bloom vs. saturation of the grounds. But… if your Todd G. then skills for dialing in trump these issues.

Brew recipes are a funny thing. Common rule of thumb is to change one element (grind size), but in reality this has been insufficient. I change everything though tend to stay with 28g. Smaller dosage means finer grind, lower extract times but also will change brew ratio. I also use Gino filters sometimes for coffee with drawdowns that are too quick, 20% slower drawdowns allows me to grind more coarse and lower the brew ratio even to 12:1. Not to mention playing with water type/temp plus agitation on and on and on.

If I had a wish list… Guidelines for brewing the optimal cup given the above discussion that are applicable across all brewing methods and not “biased” by cafe efficiency considerations. These guidelines would also not assume a single brew ratio for that optimal cup but would also allow for multiple brew recipes that highlight flavor profiles that target the specific compounds extraction “envelope” curve(s).

Brew times of 3-4.5 minutes for 14g, is way beyond what I have done but this is so grinder dependent. Those brew times are Sette like (huge number of fines and superfines). Preciso much less fines, draws down much more quickly usually I target 2:30s at a similar dose (12g - 200g typical). Sette at 175g because of excessive superfines.

Scott Rao’s one pour works well, but not optimally well IMO( unjustifiable hubris on my part :D). It hits 80% of what the brew should be which is much better than a typical cafe approach. Plus, cafe efficiency means pour and run, do something else till draw down complete.

I tend to do multiple pours with a slight swirl/bump for each to resettle bed.

TDS is a great “ballpark” measure but sometimes, I think we want something to be “knowable”, measurable, and reality is that a high TDS of unpleasant extracted flavors can be created. We need to know more about “what”, “when”, “why”, “how” to more properly interpret TDS and how it relates to the extraction process. For example, TDS extraction measurements at intervals throughout the brewing process can measure those compounds point in time, giving us guidance on adjusting brew technique. Summary TDS measurements at the end, is like… caveman club technique when only used at the end.

Only provides useful information with massive assumptions about the overall brew process. Went far afield there…

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Funny! We posted the same time about “The Hoff” :smiley:

French Press and a perfectly clean cup, difficult to do. The issue with French Press for me, is that I enjoy a cup of coffee over at least an hour through complete cool down.

The particles in French Press do not… like this very much. I have to consume much more quickly even though time is extended somewhat with Hoff approach.

I have the Kruve sifter, but when I brew seems like I lose overall complexity in the cup with removing fines less than 250u. I am still working through that potentially, invented bias though I don’t think so.

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Hi @homecafe,

I’m not really interested in TDS, it’s just the number that lets you back calculate EY, which in turn is a value you correlate to a generally good zone of flavour balance (not through assumptions, but your sensory experience - it’s pointless reading off numbers unless you taste too & look at the big picture, rather than snapshots). Taking EY measurements throughout the brew would mean abandoning brews at various stages, or leaving inordinately long periods between pulse pours. It wouldn’t tell you much either because EY doesn’t tell you anything about the compounds extracted, just how much in cumulative total. Sure you could decide to stop a brew at a low extraction because that’s where you like it, but if your goal is higher than that point, all intermediate reading will tell you is that you have say 15% of your total 20% extracted, so pour more water.

Taking readings of a few drips at a time will just show a gradient in concentration, dropping as a drip brew progresses…it won’t mean much unless you segment the brew into known portion weights and EY each segment & tot up cumulative EY (done this myself a few times, not easy).

Once a recipe is dialled in, hitting unreasonably high EYs should be pretty rare (one or two coffees out of 100), but more soluble coffees (say Rwandans & Kenyans) might be perfectly happy there…Brazils & Costa Ricans might not hit high EYs without bizarrely large deviations in recipe & taste perfectly fine at the lower end (which you are more likely to slip into).

A broad insight into how much CGAs, caffeine, trigonelline & tannin was carried out by MIT years ago (long story short, they extracted pretty much proportionally compared to EY over 10mins of immersion brewing), as you can achieve pretty comparable flavour balance via various methods, I’m not sure that there is any reason to believe that you can easily get your target components to ‘queue jump’ as it were? Maybe one day we’ll have the tool that will give us this info (specific compounds & proportions making up each cup), but still, it’s hard to see how it could be affordably & practically used to steer the brew, rather than tell us what we have at the end. For now, we don’t have it anyway.

Anyhow, this thread & OP is more concerned with the role/effect of smaller particles in brewing (do we have any data that they are biased towards a different proportional make up of compounds?) & the video that kicked it off seemed to imply EY as being a useful measure, so maybe we can stay on track for now…I’m sure there will be other threads dealing with the "we don’t care how much, we want to know precisely what " of extraction :slight_smile:

How have you determined the Sette has superfines, or more than the Preciso? Perhaps dial in both for the same recipe & brew time and see what you get left with at 400 & the largest sieve you have (just for calibration, I’m not suggesting removing anything from the dose)? I’ve had brew times of 6:00 (5:00 average +/- 1:00) with one flat bottomed brewer 14.5g to 250g, these didn’t extract differently to 3min brews with other brewers…you can add a minute or more to a v60 brew time just by switching manufacturers of paper filter.

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Hi Mark,

I would disagree a bit on taking TDS measurements as having value given that we all do not have access to mass spectrometers. Measuring TDS at 10s intervals and then compare to a “standard” coffee extraction model of compounds over time could yield a relationship between TDS and effectives of extracting a particular compound correlating over time. Then pour method could be adjusted to emphasize particular compounds at different points.

I do not use the same pour velocity throughout my pulse brews. I am more aggressive in the beginning and very little agitation middle and toward the end to extend my “runway” before I run into bitter notes. My own way of “managing” flavor compounds in the brew.

So, here is a kickstarter, Create a tds IoT meter device that has a probe into dripper, then send telematics to data lake for big data analysis! :smiley:

Ah the magic of superfines… Sette generates a very significant amount of fines when grinding for pourover. It is a known behavior of the Sette, many back and forth emails with support. What is a little different, is that even sifting < 250u does not remove super fines. Hypothesis is that these are statically attached to the larger grinds.

So what happens, is that after sifting, the brew still will not drawdown in a reasonable time. The paper filter clogs almost immediately even after sifting. You can see a thin super fine silt around the paper that very surprising restricts water flow. Fines less than <250u are roughly 10% of the grind weight. The actual superfines are not measurable, so I don’t know what their percentage is of weight, likely a very, very small amount.

So, the Sette is not usable for brewing with most methods even with the coarse burr replacement. You CAN use it, just us e a V60, with small dose like the usual 12g but with less water maybe 175-180. 200g of water takes to long and brew goes bitter. Doesn’t matter the grind size so much, superfines will be there along with the fines. Nature of the design.

Works great for Espresso!

Preciso never has this issue, longest brew time was 4minutes and that was with a particularly difficult Ethiopian. Sette at times would never finish, just pool up into mud.

Paper filter, I used standard Hario for v60 though there was this fake brand where brew times were greatly extended. I threw those away. I use Gino filters sometimes for Kalita to extend brew times for dark roasts. Extends about 20% in time and then I drop coffee:water ratio very low. It’s magic for dark roasts.

Target brew times for me generally are 2:45 to 3:10 for V60 and 3:10 to 3:45 for Kalita with standard filters. All depending on coffee beans as you describe. I do not have good luck with longer pours than that timewise.

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Hi @homecafe,

From sifting the output of 8 different conical grinders for V60 brews of between 225g & 250g brew water & ~60g/L, hitting a mid box extraction, I have seen 10.6% to 16.7% at the 400 sieve on a Kruve, so I’d think that sub 250 particles are rather less than this (10%). If the superfines are not measurable, how can you be confident of their effect (they’re definitely are sub 250 particles there…any grinder makes them at any setting)?

Using genuine white papers,I found 44x Kalita Wave brews of 13.5g to 225g came in at 2:59 +/-16sec. 56x V60 brews, same weights were 3:09 +/-10sec, both brewers averaged between 19 & 21%EY. Of course, yes, you can see a 45sec difference between brews, but all else being equal (with no significant periods of no water above the bed) I wouldn’t expect a big difference between the 2.

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Yes, I did see the spreadsheet, awesome work!

The Sette 270w has a known design constraint which generates a large number of fines, but problematically, the superfines.

The confidence comes from direct observation compared to the Preciso. There is a very, very thin layer of sediment on the paper filter(after brew) for Sette grind after sifting <250u. These superfines were statically attached to the the larger grinds and no amount of sifting will remove them. In fact, I would say the act of sifting might actually increase the amount of superfines but that is conjecture. Brewing Sette without sifting leaves mud on the filter and drawdown in practical terms does not complete. Extended drawdowns very problematic.

When I sift Preciso grinds, the drawdown races through the grinds. With the sifted Sette grind, the drawdown does measurably speed up but is still very, very restricted.

This is why Baratza support gives very specific guidelines on brewing coffee with the Sette, general methods will not work except in very specific situations. Sette is a very, very different beast compared to all other grinders. Great for espresso.

Regarding Lido3 and Preciso, the differences between Kalita and V60 are measurable. V60 brews typically 20s faster, but that is kind of apples/oranges comparison. I have different techniques for both plus different grind sizes due to the enhanced flow rate of V60s.

I do not have comparisons to your brew ratios, since I only brew 20g to 28g dose which means coarser grind and longer brew times(bed depth changes everything). The few times when I brew at much smaller doses, I typically am aiming for 2:30 or so, but with a light roast, dense bean could definitely see 3min.

Back to the Sette experience, makes me wonder about the superfines in grinders that sifting can’t measure. Do other grinders have this issue though none to the degree that the Sette does?

A perfectly uniform grinder, fines are not needed. For all else, they are necessary(grinder specific at the right percentage) to help find the sweetspot to balance over/under extractions that every non-ideal size grind particle experiences.

Superfines are never fine. Ever.

Oh, in case I wasn’t clear on my perspective, superfines will not sift with <250u screens. A bit counter intuitive, but the static attraction is too strong to the “boulders” to be overcome. And in fact, the sifting likely increases static attraction and generates more superfines.

Complete hypothesis only, but some indicators that this happening.

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I now brew coffee with a different twist in my Bodum. I call it “Static” brewing. I have found after many years of experimentation that the coffee grinds extract well if left alone (static). This removes the unwanted over extraction of the finer grinds.

I’ve added a few larger holes in the screen with an ice pick, but not too large. This allows me to plunge the fresh 'soaked" grounds down to the bottom of the Bodum. I use a spatula to get the grinds soaked. When the pre-measured boiled water is put into the Bodum,it cools to 96C almost immediately which is perfect. When the plunger reaches the bottom, I start the timer for 10 minutes. Yes that’s correct, 10 minutes.

The grinds then begin the extraction process undisturbed. After 10 minutes, I raise the plunger to the top and slowly plunge back down to complete the process. All other methods except for cold brewing, has some form of a non-static process. Pour over & auto drip disturbs the process with the simple act of the water dropping onto the grinds. Static is the way to go and I love the results.