#3 The Bloom.

A defining moment for me when I was young was the day my Dad gave me my first super-basic manual camera.  Now I wasn't exceptional at photography, my compositional skills and visual imagination weren't up to much, but I loved the process of creating a photograph.  At every step I was in control whether I wanted to be or not, it was all down to me.  You can't replace the joy of creating something when you've been so closely involved in its production on an physical, mechanical level.  Even if the results are not so good, there's a pride and a sense of ownership that all of the iPhone filters and on-board editing software in the world just can't give you.  And when it's good, when everything combines with a bit of luck and it all just works, well you can't beat that.

Of course, you don't have to take that level of control on, automate any process and the results will always be ok, they might even be better than when you do things yourself and get it wrong, but they'll never be great. 

This isn't about ok though, this is about great. It's about learning what makes great, about getting it wrong and being ok with it, then trying again. 

Today, it's about the pour over.

This is the method that first sparked my interest, the one that seems the most involved and the most temperamental.  The one that gives me the best chance of making something really great, something different. 

In truth, the basic kit is pretty easily accessible and doesn't have to be expensive.  The only strictly necessary part is the filter, the one that's most commonly associated with the pour over is the V60, so that's where I started. I ordered mine with my whole bean postal subscription, but they can be easily sourced elsewhere online.  I also went ahead and bought a load of other kit, a swan-necked pouring kettle, scales and a load of Hario glassware, but that's because I was over-excited.  You don't need that stuff, just the filter and either a decent grinder or access to good fresh ground coffee.

So this is how it goes:

Use 25g of beans, ground to medium cou....

Ok, a little confession at this point.  In the original piece I'd written most of a whole recipe and method for the pour over as I do it at the moment, but I couldn't finish it.  I wasn't adding anything new and I was trying to speak with an authority that I have no right to. So I gave up.  I still wanted to write about the pour over though, but what could I do? How could I put across my love for the pomp of it all, for the difference it makes? 

And there it was:  The story I wanted to tell in the first place, the difference. What's the point in a great long method with numerous variables and precise measurements if they don't change or improve anything in the end? I resolved to find out.

I made 3 brews, all using the same beans and the same grind: A decent but not outstanding Columbian bean, ground to medium-course.  In order to set a (low) benchmark, the first brew was made using an old electric filter machine.  For the second (the strict one) I followed James Hoffmann's recipe as closely as my temperature gauge and scales would allow.  For the third (the lazy one) I approximated everything that I had measured and timed previously. About a small handful of beans, around a mug full of water, three to four minutes-ish and so on. The strict brew took around twenty minutes from first boiling the kettle to settling down with a coffee at the perfect drinking temperature and demanded my attention for pretty much the whole time.  The lazy brew took under half of that and could easily be left for a bit on a busy morning.

This is how they stack up:

Both the strict and the lazy brews were really good compared to the benchmark.  That might seem obvious, but it's the first box ticked. Against the others, the benchmark was murky and bitter, with a flat flavour, crying out for sugar to bring some sort of balance to it.  

On the nose all three were very similar and looking at the two pour overs together they appeared to be very close, a deep red colour as opposed to the unappetising brown of the benchmark and both were beautifully clear.  It was only on the tasting that the larger differences between the strict and the lazy brews became more apparent. The lazy had a lovely rounded flavour and a crisp, clean mouthfeel.  It's a simple flavour that certainly doesn't cry out for sugar; it's obviously black coffee, but it's great black coffee. 

At first, I didn't find the strict brew as pleasant on the palate.  This  was probably the fault of my brewing skills, but there was a tiny hint of bitterness in the beginning. However, it quickly opened up and allowed notes to come through that just weren't there in the lazy brew. There was a rising sweetness followed by a cherry-like hit of fruit.  Overall, there seemed to be a feeling of space between flavours, with them taking more time to develop and shine, as opposed to delivering everything in one big hit. It really felt as if the extra care and time that I had put in translated into the final taste. 

Of course, without doing blind testing, it's impossible for me not to be biased because I knew which brew was which.  My test was only ever a blunt tool, but I think it worked.  Rather than proving one over the other, I have to conclude that both pour over brews were worth it.  The lazy brew was such a huge improvement over the benchmark for so little extra time and effort that you're winning if you go that far and leave it there.  The strict brew though, if you are willing to take things that bit further (and we're talking about double the time and easily five or six times the initial outlay in kit) will pay you back with a proportionally refined and complex flavour. 

#2 the why.

A while back, my wife (who shall be referred to from now on as Bones, because she's a doctor dammit, not a featuring character in a blog) and I were away in Norwich. Coincidentally, we were both looking to learn more about our favourite hot drinks: her tea, me coffee.  We were on holiday and in a spending mood so we figured it was a good time to start and ducked into the nearest posh looking tea merchants.  I don't remember who they were, and I probably wouldn't mention them if I did as the whole experience was pretty negative and that's not what this is about. But it went down a bit like this:

Bones: "Hi, I'm looking to learn about tea."

Merchant:  "Humph."

B: " Um, I've tried some white teas and I liked those so I thought that might be a good place to start."

M: "..."

B: "Er, and I've had some toasted rice tea before and liked that too, do you..."

M: "This white tea is the expensive one."

And so on.  We left with some small bags of expensive tea and a sense of disappointment, non the wiser.  

More walking and more shopping later, it's coffee time and we decide to search out a nice looking independent place for a treat, maybe one of those pour-over things I've heard about.  The place we find happens to be Strangers on Pottergate, it's busy but not packed out, in we go.

Me: "Hi, I'm looking to learn about coffee."

Barista: "Oh great, what do you want to know. Here, try this one. Come look at all this cool kit."

And so on. Ok, so that's not verbatim, but that was the gist and that's how excited they were when someone keen to learn came in with questions. A bit of a difference right? I still have the little bit of paper with 'James Hoffman cafetière' that they gave me to remind me of what to look up so I could start making better coffee at home.  Now I have an increasingly well thumbed copy of J.H's excellent book and I'm embarking upon this blog.

And Strangers is not an isolated example, back home in Sheffield, I've had a mini Aeropress tutorial from the guys at Tamper and a really memorable coffee flight from Upshot after I came in asking for something I clearly didn't understand.  The commonality here is that universally, the coffee community are welcoming and happy to share, even when there's no incentive for them to do so, other than the love of the stuff. 

So here I am, buzzed with enthusiasm and a fair bit of caffeine. I've a half decent palate and I think I can line words up together in ways that are pleasing. I'm going to get things wrong, I'm probably going to talk with absolute confidence about things that are total nonsense, but bear with me.  I might get a few things right, hopefully more and more as I go on, I'm going to learn new things and if I'm lucky, you might too.  

#1 The What.

When we ask "How do you take your coffee?" what are we really asking? 

More often than not, the true question is "How can I best homogenise the flavour of your drink so that it conforms to what you expect and are most comfortable with?"  Now it's snobbish to suggest that there's anything fundamentally wrong with just liking something a certain way and sticking with it; there isn't, it's comfortable and that's ok. But what if we're drifting past something truly special and we're missing out? 

There are worlds behind everyday things, worlds of processes and paraphernalia waiting for us if we care to look.  Often these worlds can go unnoticed to us as we take things for granted (they're called everyday for a reason) and that's ok, we can't know everything about everything, there just isn't time.  But our favourite everyday things?  What if we took them back to first principles, took them apart and tinkered with them, learned the whats and whys?  Ditched the milk and two sugars and started from the beginning?  Maybe we'll find that there isn't a great deal to know, maybe we'll find that actually we just don't care that much. If we're lucky though, we might find a world of exotic stories and flavours, of near-mystical methods and downright cool machines. We might find communities ranging from international to local brimming with passion and expertise. We might find that even if we wanted to return to our comfortable drifting, that our first fruit-laden scent of recently roasted, freshly ground Guatemalan Red Bourbon whispers seductively to us that no, we're never going back. 

So how do I take my coffee? I don't know yet, but I'm gonna find out.