Brewing Coffee Manually

Better coffee. One cup at a time.

Year: 2015 (Page 8 of 13)

An Introduction to Cold Brew Coffee

June 9, 2015 / / 2 Comments

It’s time to talk about cold brewed coffee. If you didn’t know or haven’t heard, it is pretty wonderful. It is a refreshing drink on a warm day, an easy hack for bypassing your horrid office coffee and actually a great way to get into manual coffee brewing with pretty much no specialized coffee equipment.

While I must admit, I typically prefer a hot brewed cup of coffee. It is a great brewing method and sometimes it just hits the spot. You owe it to yourself to try it if you never have and it never hurts to have a fool-proof cold brew recipe in your back pocket.

What is Cold Brew

Cold brew is an immersion brewing method where cold water is added to ground coffee and steeped for a long period of time, usually between 12 and 24 hours. The result is a cup of coffee that is less acidic, lacking in aromatics and has a slightly different chemical composition than a cup of coffee brewed with hot water.

Cold brew is often incorrectly used interchangeably with the more general term iced coffee. Iced coffee refers to cold brew as well as a few other brewing variants of coffee served over ice*.

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The Clever Coffee Dripper- A Review and Brew Guide

May 26, 2015 / / 4 Comments

The Clever Coffee Dripper was my first manual brewer and for a long time it was my only manual brewer. When I first started getting into specialty coffee, it was my go-to for a hand made cup of coffee.

Over the last few years, I have added quite a few brewers and brewing methods to my arsenal and the Clever has gotten pushed to the side.

A month or so ago, I was wandering around a store with my wife and saw the newer model on clearance. A wave of coffee nostalgia rushed over me and I decided to bring this brewing method back into my manual brew bar rotation.

What is the Clever Coffee Dripper

The Clever Coffee Dripper is a BPA-free plastic immersion brewer that can also double as a manual drip brewer. It has an interesting and, pardon the obvious, very clever design that gives simple but exceptional control over coffee steep time.

The Clever is basically a filter cone with a stopper built into the bottom. There are little feet on brewer to keep the stopper from being engaged unless it is set on a mug. This means you can release the coffee out of the brewer and into a mug whenever you are ready. Lifting the brewer off of the mug will instantly stop the flow of coffee.

Included with the brewer is a lid and plastic coaster for setting the brewer on.

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What’s the Deal with Decaf?- For the Curious, the Haters and the Over-Caffeinated

May 6, 2015 / / 5 Comments

There is an amusing credo circulating the internet the goes something like “There is a time and a place for decaf, never and in the trash.” (I’ve seen iterations using synonyms for trash or that simply stop the saying after a resounding NEVER.)

While this brash outlook on decaffeinated coffee makes me pause and smile, it is also a good example of the widespread prejudice held against decaf.

When people think of decaf, they think of poor quality and compromising.

Decaf processes

There is a lot of mystery surrounding decaffeinated coffee, which may explain some of the prejudices against it.

The decaffeinated process is always done when coffee is in it’s raw, green form. I am by no means a scientist and there are intricacies at play here that I don’t truly understand. Looking at the various processes, I wonder why decaf coffee can taste like anything at all.

There are two mainstream decaffeination methods that are used today:

Decaffeination with the use of solvents– This is the traditional method of decaffeinating coffee. It is the “easiest” to do. The process involves soaking the beans in a water and solvent mixture. The solvent binds to the caffeine and removes it from the beans. The solvent with the caffeine are removed and the fats and oils are reabsorbed by the beans.

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