Dialing in Expensive Coffees: A Very Good Guide, Maybe the Best

What's up everyone? Lance Hedrickk here and today's video I'm going to show you how to dial in a little pourover. It's the holiday time. You have cool people in your life that are like, "This person wants a really nice coffee." And they send you a really expensive coffee. Something like this geelot 45 from Substance in Paris. Or you get this from say, which is a lost origin washed gisha from Panama. You're like, "Oh my goodness, it's such a teeny tiny little box smaller than my palm. I'm terrified I'm going to ruin this and not get to have an enjoyable cup. Well, guess what? Now we have a video for you. We've got other videos doing it with different coffees, but today we're doing a light roast and an ultra light roast to help you get that good coffee before you run out of beans. First thing I like to do is to understand what this coffee is before I approach even brewing it. So, I'm going to read it. This is a a washed pan coffee. We have Oh, it's $26 a kilo for the green. that's delivered, duties paid. So that means um that's what it cost upon arrival. So that was their cost. So it's probably closer to like 300 or something bucks a kilo. Very expensive coffee. High elevation geisha underwent highly controlled and intentional processing at the lost origin lab in Panama. We find Jolly Rancher, jasmine, candied orange, and green apple. What this is telling me is even though it's washed, it says a highly controlled and intentional processing handpicked at peak ripess. Cherries were transported in a refrigerated truck to Panama City depuled immediately upon arrival fermented for 5 1/2 days at an average temperature of 14 C in a customuilt stainless steel tank using yeast strains. Okay, so it's yeast sync using yeast strains propagated by Lost Origin using cuscata as a growth medium dried over 16 days in temperature and humidity regulated drying rooms. What this tells me is it's not just a washed coffee. The pores essentially on the coffee are going, to, be, a, bit, bigger., It's, going to be more acceptable to extraction. So it's one that you're not going to want to absolutely blast extraction on because a lot of those aromomas, vol organic compounds that are kind of artificially imparted on the coffee itself will be pulled out and will evaporate. Like, we want to keep them in the cup because that's what makes the coffee special. So, right off the bat, I know I'm not wanting to just destroy this extraction, like really go hard loads of pores, really make it a massive extraction. I also know this is not ultra light. This is say they do a they do a a modern style light roast, Nordic style roast. There are two things kind of telling me I don't need to really push extraction that hard. It should extract relatively easy comparatively speaking, but it's a geisha, so it's going to, be, delicate., It's, going to, be easy to destroy if we're not too careful. Now, with these Nordic style coffees, I tend to brew around 90 91 Celsius. So you can convert that to Fahrenheit off the, top, of my, head., Maybe, around, 202, or something Fahrenheit. Uh I like to brew around there. Nothing too crazy. The fact that it's going to be a little heavier processed maybe actually just at 90. Um if it was maybe even 89. I'll probably start at 90 though. Um also give it a smell. If it smells kind of boozier and intense, you may want to lower the temperature even more. This does not. It smells relatively clean for having um the processing that it does. So we're going to stick at 90. I would imagine if you have one of these exclusive coffees that are coming in 50 100, g, sizes,, you're, going to, want, to, do smaller doses so you you can stretch it. Of course, you can go down to 12 grams. I'm not a huge fan of 12 gram doses in a V60. I think that's not enough uh depth and it forces you to do more pores. If you do less pores, it's going to do a ton of bypass. So, I'm not a fan of the five pore uh 12 to 200 g pore structure that they offer at Substance. But, in case you're interested in replicating that, just so you know, it is 12 g uh five 40 g pores uh spaced out pretty evenly. And if you watch Jokim in Substance in Paris, he's not really being super intense about the timing because he's teach he's talking teaching people, showing them what coffees they're getting, etc. Walking around, pouring., So,, it's, going to, be, a heavy flow, heavy agitation. For me, it mutes a lot of aroma, which can be helpful with lighter roasts if they tend to have a bit of vegetital. It can kind of remove some of that vegetital smell or taste. But, I'm not doing that today. We're going to do 15 g for all of these. Then, I live in the world of 15 to 230 240, or 250. So 230 is when I when I have a heavier processed coffee, just to make things easy, 230 gram, a smaller ratio. When it's a medium style processed coffee, kind of like this one is, I go to 240. Then 15 to 250 is for like washed, more dense, harder to extract coffees, I go all the way to 250, but always keeping the 15 g dose. I'm going to be grinding at about 600 microns. So let's get that ground. With these coffees, I do like to do a two bloom style recipe. you'll see in a second. And that's because I do like to air on the side of more coarse than less coarse when it comes to something that has a bit of the processed flavor imparted on it. This allows it to maintain a bit longer, giving me that juicy that juicy fullbodied experience without muting any of the aromomas or any of that good stuff that we're trying to get out of the coffee. Now personally, when I have these lighter roasted coffees with a lot of chaff might as well blow the chaff out because these are going to be more dainty coffees. You want the nuance. you know you want that intense uh florality and whatnot and chaff can kind of mute some of that but also give you a papery taste. So, whenever I have these ch I do blow it out. Now, I will say before we get into this, before I show you this recipe, I highly recommend when you have an expensive coffee, not to go and just change up your recipe completely, even if that means conforming to mine. Don't do that. You want to figure out the variables and how they are changing for your preferences whenever you're brewing your normal coffees. and you want to impart that brewing structure onto a more expensive coffee because you have a better framework of how to manipulate that recipe in order to bring out what you want in that coffee. I know that this coffee is going to be pretty easy to extract. I don't want to push it too hard because I want some of that uh kind of artificial flavor. It's not really artificial flavoring. It's it's like they've added yeast strands to it. So there's going to be something extra. But, it's Anyway, we won't get too far into that. We won't get into like, you know, yeast inoculation versus, you know, infusion versus koferment, all these different things. We've done that in a video with Chris Fran. With this I've gone a little lower on the temperature than I normally do with lighter roasted. So, I'm at 90. Uh, and I'm going to allow for two blooms and then, a, full, pour., I'm, not, going to, be crazy with agitation. I don't want a long contact time. The longer the contact time, the more that aroma that we're trying to get in the cup is going to be muted. So, let's get this going. I'm going to start with a 45 g bloom. I'm not pouring super aggressively. Around seven or so grams a second. We're at 45. So, it took about 7 seconds. So about seven grams a second. Right at it. Uh, and I'm just going to let that bloom. I'm going to let it bloom for about 30 seconds. You can let it go a lot longer, but again, we're trying to not allow for this to have too too long of a brew time. So, at 30 seconds, I'll do what what I like to call a second bloom. So, it's another 45 g pour. And the idea here is to break up that crust release as much CO2 as we can from it because CO2 is going to be inhibiting

diffusion, which is how we're going to be extracting properly. In addition to that though, the more CO2 we can release, the le the less the carbonic acid can be created. When water and carbon dioxide come into contact, you get carbonic acid. So, we're just we're releasing this. Carbonic acid is supposedly sour, but uh there's a lot of evidence online that we actually receive it as bitter because we uh even though it is technically an acid, we have kind of a confusion that goes on where we kind of taste it as bitter. Kind of like a lot of people find carbonated water bitter when in reality it's acidic. Now I'm, going to, pour, all, the, way, to, 240, g. In this one, I'm going a little higher with my pour to add some turbulence to it. I do want a decent amount of agitation, but we're going straight to 240. Now, we're just going to let this kind of run down. What I like to do is watch it. And if I see the draw down is going really quick, I'll give it a swirl in order to slow it down. It is going a little quicker than I would like. So I'm going to give it a little swirl just to slow it down a bit. I just don't really want it to run under 2 minutes. Okay. So, we're at about a minute 35 right now, but 2 minutes or a little bit over is going to be my goal for this. Uh, and it should give us a nice in between tealike and kind of normal body. I I tend to go with tealight, but with this I think it'll give us it'll bolster the body a bit due to the processing. So, we're going to let this sit drain out. We're at about a minute 50. It's almost done. But that is a a powerful tool is the little swirl. That will slow down your draw down. So, if you're ever brewing and it seems too fast, if you give it a swirl, it slows it down. The more you swirl it, the more it slows down. In addition to that though, it can force some of the smaller particles into the walls on the side, removing it from the extraction can be a nice thing to have. But anyway, we have a 2 minute and 10 second brew here. And this should be lovely. With these coffees, I do like to be on the lower side of extraction, not super under extracted, but we know from really the only studies that we have on it that the more you push extraction even over 20%. The concentrations flip from the things that are more floral more sweet, more fruity, they become less concentrated because they stop extracting as much. and the concentrations of the more bitter compounds, the more rubbery compounds the roasty compounds, those become higher in concentration past that 19 to 20% extraction. So whereas sometimes those might be able to bring balance and they won't be offensive, I have found that largely under that 20% extraction we're getting probably the best cups we can get when it comes to really lightly roasted coffees where we're trying to maintain that teroir, those florals, the fruiness, the sweetness, etc. We've definitely maintained aroma on the nose. I get some rose hips. I get some of that like sticky sweet candy they call Jolly Rancher, but it's kind of like a Turkish delight almost. My Salvador Dolly cup.

That's perfect. It's like has some pink lemonade in there as well, but I get some of that that sweetness of like a candy-like sweetness like I say a Turkish delight. Lots of rose hips. Rose is, one, of my, favorite, Damascanone., I love I love Beta Damascanone in my coffee. That's the vault organic compound that can be described as rose. What What else do they have on here? I'm curious what they put on the box. I don't remember what tasting notes they said. Jolly Rancher, jasmine, candied orange, and green apple. I do get some green apple. Candied orange, not as much but I definitely get some jasmine. No,, I, can, get, a, little bit, of, like clementine in there. That's actually a really nice coffee. Here's the issue with this, though. I can see a little bit of bitterness kind of creeping in from the roast. I probably would have even gotten a better brew had I gone down to like 88° C, which I know sounds crazy to some of you. And honestly, this is probably sitting only at an 18% extraction. And so I'm not really looking to lower the extraction necessarily, but to lower the temperature, maintain the extraction maybe by increasing agitation or going slightly finer on the grind size. But with lower temperature, it should lessen that kind of roastiness, that bitterness from roastiness that could be coming in. But in the end, it's actually a really pleasant cup. And I'll let you know from our on-site coffee pro, Ugo, what he thinks of it. You get a baby cup, cuz the rest is for me.

from zero to 10. >> Mhm. >> I, think, it's, a, 10., I, don't, taste, the roastiness but >> look, at, that., Right, off, the, bat,, my harshest critic gave me a 10. Let's say you have a King Grinder K6, $100 grinder, very capable of filter coffee. You will have a better sipping experience if you bought a nice coffee. Not necessarily a $100 coffee or whatever, but a nicer coffee than what you might be brewing instead of upgrading your grinder to a Zerno. My favorite coffee of the year though, I'm just going to tell you right now was this Kenya from the picky chemist. I bought around 2 kilos of this roasted this year. That's like 4 and a2 pounds that I drank this year. And it's not necessarily it's the highest scoring coffee or the most insane coffee of the year. It also wasn't that cheap, but it wasn't gisha expensive. if it's a washed Kenya, but it gave me what I wanted every time I sipped it. Really nice acidity, really nice sweetness, good enough body. Uh, it was fantastic. So also look for the coffees that just treat you right. And buy them in bulk if you need to. That's what I did. You can do more pores, but again, you're going to slow down the brew. You're going to cause a little stalling and it's going to lose some aromomas. The longer the coffee sits there, the more the aroma is going to leak out. The longer the water's in contact with the coffee, the more it's like immersion. the more aroma is going to be muted. So this is a reason I'm not a big fan of four, five six pour types of recipes is the more you pour, the more it's going to sit there, the more it's like immersion, the less clean, the less tealike, the less aromatic your cup is going to be. But again, if you're doing a 12 g pour, it's going to be kind of necessary to do four or five pores. 15 g I've decided is a bit too little to do just straight up two pores. I've been doing largely double bloom and a pore. Sometimes I'll do too poor depending on the coffee, but regardless, let's move on. Next, we have an ultra light roast coffee. This is from Ethiopia, Gisha 1931. The variety altitude around 2,000 m. It is a honey processed. Honeys are pretty tame in comparison to naturals or these alternative processes and even in comparison to this quote unquote washed coffee. So, this will be a much more tame one and substance roast quite a bit lighter. So, let's go and open this. take a look at it and also have a little smell. The smell also kind of tells me where I need to be brewing this. You get a coffee from Substance or from Picky Chemist or someone where they roast lightly and you're like, "Oh, wow. They're the color of the beans are all way different." That happens the lighter you go. If you want to drink light roast coffee, you have to be okay with heterogeneity in color on the whole bean. That's going to happen. Of course excessive Quakers maybe not ideal, but a few Quakers is not a big deal. So anyway, an Ethiopia is going to have Quakers. I'm looking at this smelling it, and there's a little bit of a like you can tell this is really light on the on the nose. There's a little bit of a grass hay type of smell

but once I grind it up, it should release a lot more of that really nice flavor. And there's a Quaker right there. See, not a big deal. Quakers, not that big of a deal. You can always remove them or you can keep them. It doesn't super matter. Anyway,, I'm, going to, go, ahead, and, assume I need a slightly finer grind for this one only because it is quite a bit lighter than say. But here's something to know. If you have a coffee that is super light, it can also stall because how insoluble the coffee might be. I've had coffees that were so underroasted that I could grind really coarsely and it would still stall because the coffee was so insoluble the water just didn't want to go through the coffee. So, keep that in mind. And I'm going to do the same thing, 15 grams, but I'll do 250 g of yield. Now on this one, I will allow the saturation phase to be a little bit longer just to ensure that we are going to have full saturation. The lighter you roast, the lighter the processing is, the harder it is for that water to fully saturate. Now, even if the bed dries out, the water is still getting deeper and deeper into those pores and opening it up for diffusion, which is our main way of getting extraction. Now, again, boiling chat's always good. This one doesn't have, much, though., All right., Now,, we grab our water heated to 93. I start my timer and I'm going to pour. Again, I'm not going super aggressive in the bloom. I want to I want all that water, as much as possible, to stay in the bed. If I pour really aggressively, it'll shoot to the bottom faster and come into the decanter faster. I want as much to be absorbed into the bed of coffee as possible., Now,, I'm, going to, let, this, sit for 45 seconds. Of course, the kettle is going to, be, getting, cooler, this, time, but in all seriousness, it might drop maybe half a degree between pores. It's not that big of a deal. But with this gelot, it is an Ethiopia. I only went a little finer instead of you might go a bit even more fine than what I did. But you have to remember with Ethiopia's which this is, they produce more fines off the bat. You should know that every time you grind in Ethiopia, you will have a slower draw down than another origin. It's because they produce more fines during grinding. All right, so here we go. We're at 45 seconds. pouring to 90, releasing more CO2, furthering the saturation of those grounds ensuring that we're going to have a really effective diffusion. So, the big differences here, higher temperature slightly finer grinds, and then I'm allowing it to have a longer saturation time in the beginning with these double blooms, going to a minute and a half until I pour the rest of the water which I will pour quite aggressively with more turbulence to ensure a bit higher of an extraction. Now, the goal here is not necessarily to have a higher extraction than what I got with the SE which is a a little darker roast, but to have roughly the same extraction. So, in order to have the same, we kind of need to go a bit finer. We kind of need to go a bit hotter. We kind of need to go a bit more with the saturation because these are harder to extract in general. So, now we're up. We're we're introducing a bit of turbulence, not letting the stream break above the water, but after it enters, or right at entrance, I should say. And we're going all the way to 250. There we go. So now I'm watching it to see if it's going to be too fast. If I need to, I'll swirl it. If not, we'll just let it be. And it looks like we may just let it be. Now this one I want to be done drawing down below 3 minutes. I the final pour started at a minute and a half. So that would mean the pour and the draw down happened within a minute and a half, which is good for me. Now again, don't be obsessive about time. Your grinder may be different, etc. etc., etc. So don't necessarily replicate exactly what I'm doing because you have different grinders. The idea is more so the approach. So looking at what's on the bag and understanding that you need to tailor your recipe to these to these types of brews. So if you're someone that likes to do my style of brewing, then you can kind of replicate this. If you do a fivepour type of situation, well then I can't help you. Hopefully you have a really low fines grinder. Uh but finished at 255, so just below 3 minutes, this should be good. You thought that was my only Salvador Dolly cup? Well, you were mistaken.

So on the nose you do have some like there's a sweet green type of thing. Um I guess like a sugarcane kind of thing going on. So it is it is definitely a very light I mean it's a very light roast. That's that's obvious. So you get some sugarcane on it. There's some sugarcane sweetness but you get a lot of other green some some green fruits some some other green kind of vegetital smells. But let's give it a taste.

Honestly, it's like sugarcane juice when you retro hail. It is a very intense green tea. Genuinely, it's like it's a green tea on the exhale. This is uh there's a little green apple. I mean, this is a very green coffee in general. It's very thematically green. So, but very balanced, sweet. It actually has a quite silky body. And interestingly, there's a bit of like umami that's going on in here. Anyway, we'll give Ugo the this a try. Tell me how the brew is. But I'm also curious your thoughts on the coffee. The coffee is very peculiar. I mean, it is it's it's a fully green themed coffee. Normally, when you look at Ethiopians you think florals and you think citric acidity, more oranges, more reds. But this one is very and for me green themed. >> Wow. >> It's, interesting,, right? >> Yes. >> Wes,, how's, the, brew?, Zero, to, 10. >> Damn., Awesome. >> Look, at, that., Oh, man,, we've, crushed, it on this one. So, I'm not a big fan of people just copy pasting recipes unless it's something they're already doing. I think copyping recipes is not super helpful. What is helpful is helping to increase your artillery. So when you approach the coffee with your recipe you know what kind of changes to make. With Nordic roasts, I never go over 91°. That's kind of what I found to be the ceiling. I don't like going above that unless it's a lighter washed uh Nordic style roast. With this one, I probably if I were to go back, I would do, which I will go back, I'll do probably 88 or 89°, maybe 88, uh just to ensure that we're able to accentuate that sticky sweetness a little bit more, the acidity a little bit more. But in general, I thought it was a fantastic brew. maintained though the recipe that I'm comfortable with and only made tweaks based off of what was on the box. So not being intimidated, just understanding there should be more florals. There should be that kind of artificial type of aroma on it that we need to preserve. So, not pushing extraction. If I did typically do four or five pores, lessening the pore count is is actually an important aspect. Otherwise, you'll just get kind of a bland tasting coffee. Even if it smells crazy, you can brew it out of it on accident by being too agitative, too long of a contact, etc. There's a reason a lot of these competitive brewers when using these coffees aim for such low times. If you go watch barista championships, they're brewing at 16 17, 18 seconds. And they started doing that not because they were trying to do turbo shots, but because that's how they could retain all of these aromomas. Same thing in Brewers Cup. You have really low extractions that have been practiced because they're using heavily processed coffees. And that's where you're able to allow the process to kind of stand forward. Same thing with this Lost Origin. When it came to the substance, I knew it was a much lighter coffee. I increase the temperature to where I'm comfortable pushing it. I never go past 93 Celsius. That's where my limit is. Above that, I tend to find it introduces roast notes. Even if it's an ultra light roast, it still was roasted at a very high temperature and it's still brown due to how hot it was. That brown can come off as roasty bitterness. So, 93 is my max. I also made sure that I went a little finer than I did with the the the say because it's a little lighter, a little harder to extract. Now, it is in Ethiopia, so I didn't go as much finer as I probably would have because it's producing more fines, which will slow the flow down. In addition to all that I wanted to ensure I gave it more time during that saturation phase because we we didn't have as delicate of aromomas that were kind of artificially put onto the coffee through the processing with this one. So, with the substance because it was kind of a more normal honey process, I was I let it go for a minute and a half during the saturation just to ensure that we had full openness to the diffusion. So we had a very very efficient extraction when it was in the extraction phase, the diffusion phase. I wanted to ensure that those cell walls had been fully penetrated by the water so that we were ready to carry out the goodies. I like to do a small brew just really try to ensure that we're taking care of the variables that we could control with the recipe that you are comfortable with that substance. They do five pour recipes that I'm just not a big fan of them. I think when you do such small doses like a 12 gram dose you're forced to do so much agitation to kind of again artificially hold back the water by clogging up the walls by doing lot lots of pores so that you don't get a ton of bypass. It it they just tend to seem a bit more hollow for me and muted an aroma. And so even just three extra grams due to a V60 being a cone, you get quite a bit more bed depth and I think it gives it a bit more sweetness, a bit better body. And that's that's my preference. I just want you to be aware of the issues when you do multiple pores over four or so. You're going to have a bit more issues with stalling especially depending on your grinder. So, keep that in mind. But anyway, I hope it was helpful. I hope that you can pick up some nice little hints here and there with this. I'm going to finish drinking this coffee cuz it's really unique. It's really It's really really unique., There's, actually, a, bit, of a, chai thing too, kind of that again there, but largely it's a green tea and um it's got that it's a really weird sweetness. It's It's making me coming back for more. And now that's cool. There is a heavy rose in there which is very fun cuz rose is my favorite flavor note. Anyway, that's it for me today. I hope that you all have a wonderful holiday season. If you're watching in the future, then have a wonderful day. Uh, and brew that expensive coffee the way you feel comfortable and uh, enjoy it. Thank you so much for watching. I hope that you brew something tasty today. And cheers.