If you search YouTube for V60 brewing videos and guides you’ll find about three billion different ones. Some with agitation, some without; pouring fast, in the middle, making circles; 40-60 or 30-70 or whatnot.
I always think to myself that they’re mostly just fluff.
It all depends on grind size and temperature. Doesn’t matter how you pour (well, within limits I would think) as long as you get your temps and grind right for the pouring technique you’ve chosen.
Admittedly, I haven’t tried a ton of different ones, maybe three or four. But this is the feeling what I’ve got.
Maybe there are some edge cases, like Ethiopian coffees being more prone to clogging the filter so less agitation might be a good idea.
I think there’s a lot of fluff for sure. I do think there is some real technique to it, though.
Pouring so that you keep a higher volume of water in the pourover will help to keep the temperature stable, which should help keep extraction up. The two extremes here would be if you dripped water through in like 20 additions, letting the bed settle each time vs. doing it all in one addition. The average temperature throughout would be higher in the latter case.
Bloom should also have an effect for freshly roasted coffee. If you dump a bunch of hot water on really fresh coffee, a decent amount of the grounds will just float on top of bubbles, insulated away from the actual water. It matters less and less as coffee ages/off gasses.
Agitation should also have an effect. Things dissolve better when agitated; that much is obvious. The only additional thing to consider is that no coffee grinder creates perfectly uniform grounds. One thing that any beer brewer can tell you is that the “filter” is not what actually filters a wort from the spent grains; the spent grains themselves form a filter to get rid of any fine particles. Similarly in coffee, a lot of the fines will actually get caught up on the larger particles, provided the larger particles are allowed to settle. If you keep the grounds agitated the whole time, the fines will get sucked into the filter paper itself. Some will probably make it through into the cup, which could affect taste and texture, while much will clog up the filter, slowing the whole brew down.
It ends up depending on how good your grinder is (and if your beans are especially prone to making fines), and what type of filter you use. If you theoretically had a perfect grinder and beans, maybe you’d want to keep the grounds agitated the whole time, but if you have a crappy grinder, maybe you want to have no agitation at all.
Personally, I have an okay grinder, and i always use fresh beans, so I try to bloom my grounds with maybe 20% of the water, and agitate as much as possible. Then I add basically as much water as my pourover will hold at once, and I’ll top it off gently as soon as room opens up.
Yes, good points. I really should’ve been more clear in the post that I do not mean that everything relating to technique is fluff and that nothing matters; blooming being one of the big ones. Merely that if you take a 10 common methods you find, you’ll get the same output after you optimize temps and grind.
I think most of the stuff online about coffee is fluff. It’s just one of those things people get really into. Like craft beer.
I’ve been in so many niche rabbit hole hobbies it’s embarrassing. Most of all of them is fluff. I’m each, there are a couple or three really important factors, a couple extra differences that come down to personal preference, and then a whole bunch of shit which are purely person preference that people imagine make a difference but really don’t.
In beer, you start to leave the realm of “makes a statistically measurable difference” when you start talking about serving glass shapes.
In wine, heck… whatever for into a more than $60 bottle, and glass shapes are in that realm too. The wine bottle can be made from thicker glass; the label made of quality paper with art designed by an artist of some repute - it makes it all feel more luxurious, but it has no effect on the taste of the wine.
Shaving starts getting silly with lather technique. Shaving is maybe the best example of this; you can get a perfectly good shave with the cheapest disposable razor and some dime-store shaving foam. A bunch of factors can make the shave more comfortable, Eco-friendly, or cheaper, but then most of it is just fluff.
Coffee, we have tamping and pour technique.
The gun community - heck, people still argue about 9mm vs .45 and the value of run & gun for civilians. George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin and I guarantee the it didn’t matter if it was 9mm or .45 APC, and whatever draw technique he used had no effect on that outcome, or the fact that Zimmerman is still wandering around free, in Texas somewhere.
Linux distributions, and OSes in general, are no different: there are some key differences that matter, some more that affect the personal experience, and then a whole bunch of crap that really doesn’t affect the end result.
It’s the fluff that makes it a hobby; it’s the fluff that puts ritual into it, and makes it more enjoyable for the hobbyist. Fluff is great - it’s when we start imagining the fluff makes a quantifiable difference in the outcome and start proselytizing and arguing about which is better that it becomes absurd.
Come to think of it, religion is the same way. Each has a few main differences, but the holy wars are mostly fought over the fluff.
It’s all placebo effect. That James Hoffman guy is the worst. “In our taste tests…” Are your taste tests double blind? I highly doubt it.
“You gotta jiggle it three times after 36 seconds then add 13 drops of 210.3° water between the filter and the brewer. Equally spaced, of course.”
The worst part is the pseudoscientific rationalization about what each step does to the final product.
“This step balances the acidity and oxygenation.”
It’s hilariously ironic that the example you use is the one guy using actual science. The OG with a caffeine analyser, refractometer, particle size analyser and who will strap temperature and pressure probes to anything and everything to measure how they perform.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to try different coffees prepared different ways, then that’s unfortunate for you. If you have and you can’t taste the differences, maybe that’s on you? The only people I’ve ever met with so little ability to distinguish tastes were smokers.
Using some gadgets in a kitchen isn’t science. Science is a process through which you perform research in a way as to eliminate bias. Hoffman doesn’t do science. None of those things you listed determine how good the coffee will taste. And modifying any one of them might have no effect at all. The only way to know is by doing unbiased taste tests while controlling variables.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to try different coffees prepared different ways, then that’s unfortunate for you. If you have and you can’t taste the differences, maybe that’s on you? The only people I’ve ever met with so little ability to distinguish tastes were smokers.
What a shitload of stupid straw man arguments that don’t even deserve a reply. I said nothing about my personal ability to discerns flavor. I was commenting on pseudoscientific youtubers who don’t publish their taste testing methodology and are prone to bias. It’s well documented that when a person thinks something is special (including a preparation method) they rate it higher.
So anyway, do you find using three jiggles or four gives the optimal taste when using a plastic V60? I’m dying to know.
Oh no, I guess we have to tell all the scientists in the world that if their processes and procedures don’t conform to your standards and make complete sense to you that they wasted all their education because they aren’t doing real science. Lol, the scientific method and process if done right will work to eliminate bias, but eliminating bias isn’t the sole purpose. The main purpose is getting good reliable results that are repeatable, even if the result disproves their original hypothesis.
Using some gadgets in a kitchen isn’t science. Science is a process through which you perform research in a way as to eliminate bias. Hoffman doesn’t do science.
Yeah no shit. The point of those “gadgets” (infantilising the equipment doesn’t make it any less scientifically relevant) is to objectively measure whether changes in methodology are having an effect. That way you’re not relying on a person’s taste and inherent bias to tell you if it’s making a difference. How is that not science exactly? Honestly, do you even watch Hoffman’s content or did you just see a few tasting videos and conclude that it was all nonsense?
None of those things you listed determine how good the coffee will taste. And modifying any one of them might have no effect at all. The only way to know is by doing unbiased taste tests while controlling variables.
That’s right, none of the objective data can tell you how it tastes. A change to contact time might have increased extraction by 10%, but how do you know whether that actually tastes good? You have to either taste it yourself, or have someone else taste it and describe it to you. Which is what Hoffman does, with blind tastings, and often with the result of challenging his own preconceptions. I’m curious exactly how you propose to eliminate bias further than that?
So anyway, do you find using three jiggles or four gives the optimal taste when using a plastic V60? I’m dying to know.
Now who’s straw manning?
Absolutely agree. The temperature of the water on each pour is really the only thing I’ve found that can change the flavor, aside from the beans and grind.
My coffee brewing journey has been long and varied over the last 25-30 years. From drip to French press; moka pots to aeropress; percolators to espresso machines.
The last segment was me experimenting with pouring techniques and coming to the conclusion that as long as I have decent beens and a decent grinder, the nuance of the details beyond that aren’t actually that important to me. I might be able to tell the difference between one pouring method versus another but not without having both cups side by side, and as I get older, I just don’t have the capacity to process that much caffeine anymore. And if I’m not planning to drink to cups at a time, what difference could it make?
I’ve settled on an automatic drip (Moccamaster) machine for its simplicity of setup and cleanup of a multi cup pot of coffee.
It’s basically just a lazy pour over anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
