Posted Thu May 17, 2012, 1:39pm Subject: Calling All VST Refractometer Owners - A Brewing Challenge:
You also need a press pot.
Here's the challenge:
Use any coffee you want, any grind level and any steep time you want. Water temperature anything you want.
Set up a brew with 18% brew ratio. This means the coffee should be 18% of the mass of the brew water.
Example: If your press pot is 600g capacity, then you need to use 108g of coffee - make sure the combined mass of the coffee and brew water is 708g (in other words, add only 600g of water). (I hope that's clear).
After you have terminated the brew, check the strength using the VST coffee refractometer.
The challenge is do a press pot brew that achieves 5.2% strength or higher using 18% brew ratio.
If you choose to accept the mission, please, by all means, post your recipe (even if you can't get to the target strength) and the resulting strength - it's all decent data.
Please be accurate in your masses. Water needs to be done by mass, not volume.
Good luck and thanks in advance!
------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- Le café doit être noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, et doux comme l'amour.
"There is no right answer with coffee. There is only the elixir in your cup at the moment you partake."
"...I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind;..." - Lord Kelvin RECIPES thread => http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/coffee/machines/585708
Typical third wave coffees are lightly roasted and harder to extract. It the roast was a little off, it will be even harder to extract (this happens often, unfortunately).
Have you tried a dark roast? Starbucks might have just what you need. I think it is fairly easy to get extraction numbers much higher with a dark roast compared to your typical bleeding edge light roast.
LOL, no, I'm not. I am not asking for how it tastes.
------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- Le café doit être noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, et doux comme l'amour.
"There is no right answer with coffee. There is only the elixir in your cup at the moment you partake."
"...I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind;..." - Lord Kelvin RECIPES thread => http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/coffee/machines/585708
Posted Fri May 18, 2012, 4:48am Subject: Re: Calling All VST Refractometer Owners - A Brewing Challenge:
andys Said:
Typical third wave coffees are lightly roasted and harder to extract. It the roast was a little off, it will be even harder to extract (this happens often, unfortunately).
Have you tried a dark roast? Starbucks might have just what you need. I think it is fairly easy to get extraction numbers much higher with a dark roast compared to your typical bleeding edge light roast.
Yes, I have. Tried their (*$s) espresso blend - still unable to achieve the strengths even with fine grind and 8 min contact in a press pot. Darn oiling smoky stuff had me cleaning out my grinder and grumbling... LOL
You and Vince are prolly right, I can get a bit more strength with the with darker roasts (or a bit lighter strength with lighter roasts, depending on your perspective).
The EoC 100% Colombia acts like the bulk of my own roasts, which I trend to onset of 2C to 2C plus up to 45 seconds, depending on my mood)
Just scanning similar/same brew parameters, City+ vs FC+ or end 1C+15-20 seconds vs 2C+20 sec, the lighter roasts are on the order of 0.05 to 0.08 %TDS lower, but still seems upper limit is not as high as what I'm proposing for the challenge.
------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- Le café doit être noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, et doux comme l'amour.
"There is no right answer with coffee. There is only the elixir in your cup at the moment you partake."
"...I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind;..." - Lord Kelvin RECIPES thread => http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/coffee/machines/585708
Posted Fri May 18, 2012, 7:32am Subject: Re: Calling All VST Refractometer Owners - A Brewing Challenge:
For clarification, yes, please note I'm not asking for an assessment for taste - this is an assessment based solely on measured values with a scale, an (optional) thermometer, and a VST Coffee Refractometer using a given method of brewing.
Not asking for any subjective evals of the results (tho please feel free to provide if you wish). That might come in a (much) later request.
------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- Le café doit être noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, et doux comme l'amour.
"There is no right answer with coffee. There is only the elixir in your cup at the moment you partake."
"...I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind;..." - Lord Kelvin RECIPES thread => http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/coffee/machines/585708
jpender Senior Member Joined: 11 Jul 2011 Posts: 404 Location: California Expertise: I like coffee
Grinder: Kyocera CM-50 Vac Pot: S/S Moka Pot Drip: Aeropress
Posted Fri May 18, 2012, 9:14am Subject: Re: Calling All VST Refractometer Owners - A Brewing Challenge:
I don't have a VST refractometer (or a press pot for that matter) so I'm technically disqualified. I also suspect that Netphilosopher has tried this at least half a dozen times in his Coffee Research Utility Kitchen, so it's probably near to impossible if not impossible.
But I made a half-hearted attempt anyways. I bought some pre-ground coffee while traveling last month that I don't like at all. It's sitting in the freezer for just this sort of thing.
I added 36.0g (it's a drip grind) to 175g of hot water. Simmered and stirred in a saucepan for 8 min. Poured into inverted Aeropress. Used enough additional hot water to rinse coffee from pan and utensil into AP and top up to 236g total slurry weight (18% brew ratio). Pressed.
148g beverage, 87g wet grounds (1g went missing).
Dried the grounds in the oven for a little over 2 hours until weight stablized. Cooled: 29.8g That's a yield of 17.2% and a beverage strength of 4.2% (including some undissolved solids).
Not even close.
By Netphilosopher's theory the effective extraction was only 24%, less than what I'd have guessed I'd get by boiling grounds for 8 minutes.
Now the really weird thing is that although the coffee was way too bitter, it was also delicious. I drank it.
that's the weird and kool thing - I've had some strongly extracted and slightly bitter coffee that had amazing body and other flavors I hadn't noticed before. I'm really glad I decided to push and explore the boundaries.
------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- Le café doit être noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, et doux comme l'amour.
"There is no right answer with coffee. There is only the elixir in your cup at the moment you partake."
"...I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind;..." - Lord Kelvin RECIPES thread => http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/coffee/machines/585708
Posted Sun Jun 3, 2012, 11:01am Subject: Re: Calling All VST Refractometer Owners - A Brewing Challenge:
No takers on the "challenge"? LOL!
------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- Le café doit être noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, et doux comme l'amour.
"There is no right answer with coffee. There is only the elixir in your cup at the moment you partake."
"...I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind;..." - Lord Kelvin RECIPES thread => http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/coffee/machines/585708
GlennV Senior Member Joined: 27 Oct 2011 Posts: 28 Location: UK Expertise: I love coffee
Posted Sun Jun 3, 2012, 2:51pm Subject: Re: Calling All VST Refractometer Owners - A Brewing Challenge:
I did had a go, with a criminally over roasted sidamo, espresso grind, 8 mins in a bain-marie to keep the temperature up, and it only got to 4.6%. Underextracted by all the usual formulae using a 2g/g water lost or retained ratio - I didn't dare taste it! I do find the argument for using all the brew water for extraction yield calculations, for immersion methods, pretty compelling. What I don't understand, though, is how this squares with the fact that those with far more tasting experience than me are recommending 19-20% yields for both drip and immersion methods, with the usual formulae. For example, the Nick Cho video on youtube showing his clever dripper technique would come out at about 22% yield using all the brew water for the calculation ("Gold + Paper + Clever", which is certainly a full immersion technique as he pulls the grinds out of the brew in a Gold filter before the drawdown).
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