ducksredux Senior Member Joined: 1 Jul 2012 Posts: 6 Location: USA - Philadelphia Expertise: I love coffee
Grinder: Hario Mini Mill
Posted Sun Sep 2, 2012, 5:20am Subject: Hario V60 - 4gm/150ml - quick or slow pour?
Hiya! I'm extremely sensitive to caffeine, despite drinking 2 cups a day for years. Too much caffeine (even on a full stomach) gives me anxiety attacks and then I flip out on my family or my students. (That disclaimer is just so no one encourages me to do 12gm/150ml or a more "proper" ratio. I'm actually trying to switch my second cup to green tea even though coffee is meat and tea is tofu.) I gravitate toward strong flavors rather than subtle ones because of the weak ratio I use (4-6gm/150ml).
Anyway, I'm curious about pouring technique. Typically with my Hario Buono I wait 30 secs off the boil and then do a 30-40ml pour to wet the grounds, then wait 30 seconds and do a slow trickle with the other 110/120ml. If I pour slowly the water never gets higher than halfway up the cone and I end up with a thick layer of grounds around the edges. If I pour fast I get the water much farther up the cone and I get a thin layer of grounds around the edges. I'm curious which is considered better technique - the slow pour that might be over-extracting some grounds, or the quick pour that is probably under-extracting? Or is the question pretty academic since my Hario Mini-Mill can't do a proper medium grind anyway?
I've watched some baristas and they go all the way to the top of the cone, but they're using way more coffee - most recently was at Irving Farm Coffee Company in NY and they used 30gm/400ml (I haven't been that high since college).
BTW, I might be incorrect here, but not all green tea is caffeine free. In fact, some teas, oz for oz are higher in caffeine than the equivalent amount of drip brewed coffee. A 14 gram espresso shot, mixed in 7oz of hot water (an Americano) has about 30-40% less caffeine than a 9 oz mug of coffee. Just an alternative.
Sorry you're having trouble. I have several friends who ca't even drink decaf, as there are apparently other elements in the brew that they interact with badly.
Unless marked as decaffeinated, green tea will always contain caffeine. However, I've always been under the impression that tea contains SIGNIFICANTLY less caffeine than coffee.
I use this website a lot to find the caffeine content of certain drinks:
According to them, an 8oz drip coffee contains 145mg of caffeine, while 8oz of green tea contains 25mg.
OZ mg mg/fl oz Tea (Green) 8 25 3.1 Coffee (Drip) 8 145 18.1
Obviously these numbers will change based on bean type, roast level, brewing style. However, I think it's clear that green tea contains absolutely miniscule levels of caffeine when compared to coffee.
So, I started looking at caffeine and coffee a while ago.
Turns out that caffeine is very soluble in hot water, less soluble in cooler water (but still very soluble) and one of the first compounds to be dissolved - much of the caffeine is dissolved before the coffee has reached about 15% extraction.
What this means is the amount of coffee you use determines the concentration of caffiene in the final beverage - so long as you are extracting at least 16%.
There is a slight adjustment for the efficiency of caffeine solvation in espresso - per gram, espresso will dissolve less caffiene, but only 10% less or so for a properly extracted espresso.
Caffeine amount is roughly grams of coffee X 1.2%, or about 6% of the end TDS in the cup (if it was extracted at 20%).
A correct, 1.25% strength 8oz cup of coffee that was made from a proper 20% extraction with a drip method (8oz ~ 235g, 2.94g TDS which came from 14.7g of coffee allocated to that 8oz cup) would be estimated to have around 175mg of caffeine.
More likely, a sample of normal 8oz cup of coffee from a large urn was made with less coffee, and is probably closer to 1.0% strength (I've confirmed this with checks of McDonalds, local gas station coffee, office pot swill...) - and chances it was extracted a bit more. This means an estimated caffeine amount in 8oz of more typical coffee (not properly extracted, lower strength, made from less coffee) at around 140mg.
There's disagreement on what a typical espresso is, but my local measurements from two different Starbucks is about 28-35g of espresso around 5% strength per shot. This implies that (if properly extracted) it came from 7.5g of coffee, and would have around 90mg of caffeine, or maybe as low as 65mg-70mg if you account for the slightly lower amount of caffeine solvation efficiency.
HOWEVER - now that we know some more about immersion extraction, the amount of caffeine in an immersion brew lowers the strength for a given brew ratio (vs percolation/drip). At the end of percolation, there's almost no caffeine left in the grounds - but in immersion/steep, there's basically coffee left in the grounds - a decent amount (about 15%) and this has caffeine in it at the same concentration as the stuff in your cup.
So, get weaker coffee, about 15% less caffeine in the cup if you use a steep method (like a CCD) vs. auto drip.
Conversely, you could try cold brewed coffee - supposedly the solubility RATE is lower as well as the solubility itself. However, the solubility (think of it as saturation level) is so high and the contact time is so long that it's likely pretty much all of the caffeine is extracted.
However, the stronger (and cold brew tends to be stronger) the coffee is, the more coffee is trapped in the grounds - along with caffeine. So just because of the method (steep) and the stronger brew ratio the produced coffee may contain as much as 30% less caffeine for a comparatively produced cup of coffee.
------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- 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
Intrepid510 Senior Member Joined: 30 Dec 2010 Posts: 314 Location: California Expertise: I love coffee
Posted Sat Sep 8, 2012, 7:33pm Subject: Re: Hario V60 - 4gm/150ml - quick or slow pour?
Have you considered decaf? My wife like to drink it and I have to say its gotten much much better in recent years. The decaf Black Tie from Deep Cello is really good, you should order one of their samples. https://deepcello.com/samples or of course visit a good high end cafe in your city.
ducksredux Senior Member Joined: 1 Jul 2012 Posts: 6 Location: USA - Philadelphia Expertise: I love coffee
Grinder: Hario Mini Mill
Posted Sun Sep 9, 2012, 10:44am Subject: Re: Hario V60 - 4gm/150ml - quick or slow pour?
@Intrepid510 - I do drink decaf sometimes - but there's not enough caffeine in it. I have two great local roasters - Lynncbt.com and freshcoffeescoop.com - who both carry delicious decafs (current favorite is Komodo) - I'll typically use 12mg per 250ml in a pourover. I'd use more but that's 2 or 3 minutes of grinding with the Hario Mini Mill and I don't feel like I should be working that hard for decaf.
@Netphilosopher - thanks for the detailed reply. So if I'm drinking a 4oz cup of pourover that'd be about 7.5gm at 25% extraction, which is roughly two scoops. If I'm using between 4 and 6 grams (my scale is crap for small amounts) then I'm slightly under. And I guess more caffeine is extracted depending on the speed of the pour. My grinder at work - Spong No. 3 - is set too fine and my coffee comes out way stronger there. I can't imagine drinking cold-brewed coffee except during the summer. Do people microwave it?
@IMAWriter - that's interesting. I wonder if that's similar for Moka pot or Aeropress "espresso" as well. I'll do those some mornings, but the Moka pot feels much stronger to me than the same amount of grounds extracted with inverted Aeropress, drank undiluted. I would happily drink real espresso every morning but the expense of a good setup is a significant barrier.
@EvanOz85 - I love green tea, but I am not alert after drinking a cup. Last time I tried to go to work on green tea I backed into a parked car.
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