At this point you start to realize that repeatability, or consistency, is the illusive holy grail both at home and at the best cafes. It’s not easy to make a perfect cup every time, and even the best cafes, when held to the highest standards, are often far from consistent. That’s the nature of the bean, the knowledge of perfection and the quest to attain it is half the fun and makes those perfect cups all the more rewarding.

The two most basic tools to help you with consistency are a timer and a scale. Without them, you’re inviting chance and luck to take over the equation and you’ll be churning out more duds than deliciousness. You’ll use the scale to weigh the beans, and to measure how much water you’re using, keeping them in the right proportion (roughly 60g of coffee to 1L of water, keeping in mind that 1L of water = 1000g).

The Soehnle Kitchen Scale (and its discontents)

All that is just to introduce why I’d review a scale. They’re important, and if you’re serious about consistent quality you’ll use it almost every time you brew coffee.

I’m a sucker for nice design and I liked the minimalist look and bright color of the Soehnle digital scale, but I’ve found it has one major flaw – the surface is made of glass.

Glass expands and contracts. Coffee is hot.
This makes the glass expand and has the effect of reducing the reported weight by 1 gram every 5~10 seconds. Not very helpful if you’re doing a pour-over and trying to be precise with your extraction.

The only way to get around this is to put something on the scale that blocks the heat, but that gets cumbersome and doesn’t always work. The aeropress works nicely (pictured above), but after measuring once you know roughly how much water it holds; the real issue occurs with pour-over and other methods that require a hot pot of coffee sitting on the scale.

One other complaint – it doesn’t give you decimals; if you want to get 15g on the dot, you need to get it to the point where the readout keeps flashing between 14 and 15, which is effectively 14.999.

Verdict: If you’re thinking of buying the Soehnle glass-topped scale for coffee, save yourself some trouble  and look for something else!

If you’re in the market now, here’s what to look for:

• Gram units, and accuracy to at least 0.1 gram
• A tare button
• No glass surface
• Ability to disable or program the auto-shutoff (so that it doesn’t turn off when your coffee is blooming [i.e. during the initial small pour that allows gasses to escape].)
• A display that gives you decimals is nice but not strictly necessary

I make do with mine for now, but in the future I’ll be looking for something better and I’ll post what I find here on the blog. If you have a recommendation leave a note in the comments!

Dan from Solde was nice enough to have us over on a Monday morning. The roastery is literally on the wrong side of the tracks, out in the industrial port area of Malmö. We started with a cupping, and then set about the day’s task. Serious, but without any pretensions of scientific rigor, we tried a variety of tests aiming mostly to satisfy our own curiosity about what tastes good. Our main question was the effect of the metal filter on taste, compared to paper.

My personal opinion is that the paper filter tasted too bright and imbalanced compared to the same coffee prepared with the metal filter (using the same grind). With the Disk it tasted more developed, fuller in flavor, with more perceived sweetness.

That said, when the coffee was on the heavier, earthier side (i.e. a Sumatra) I thought the paper filter tasted very slightly better (but not by as big a margin as the lighter coffees prepared with a metal filter). Now, like I said this isn’t a test to end all tests and it really doesn’t prove much, so take it as just one small point of reference. I know that in the past I’ve been happy using paper on the Aeropress, so the next step would be to try comparing different grind settings optimized for each filter…

But I did come to one conclusion, and feel my taste buds somewhat vindicated — when I first arrived in Malmö I felt like the coffee I was brewing at home tasted muted. That set me off on a quest, first, for bottled water – none of which worked well. Then to find a water filter, which, after much searching, I eventually found at a health food store. I guess no one in Sweden buys them, because none of the big stores stock them. And the cashiers look at you funny if you ask about water filters. This is Sweden, only quacks (and coffee geeks) filter their tap water.

But at our little cupping, sure enough the difference was noticeable. Brewing with tap water is like tasting coffee with cottonballs in your mouth. So… buy a water filter if you brew coffee at home.

Full disclosure: We paid for the Disk filters, international shipping and all. And I have no financial interest in the Swedish water filter industry. This is not a conspiracy. Though, if I could secretly make a fortune by recommending filtered water to Swedes, that’d be awesome.

The Aerobie Aeropress ($26), coupled with the Hario Slim hand mill ($33), is my favorite coffee kit for traveling, and home use. (To save a couple bucks on both, buy them together here for $54, thanks to Steve in the comments).

They’re both light weight, easy to keep clean, relatively self-contained, and cheap. Sure, if you’re traveling you could bring a trendy pour-over filter, like the Hario V60, but then you need to bring a kettle which adds weight and bulk.

The Aeropress is particularly nice because you can play with so many brewing variables. I’m not committed to any particular method (yet), but I usually go for the upside-down Aeropress brewing style. You can see what I mean in these two videos. However, I do it a bit differently, here’s how I like it:

1. Start heating your water. By the time it’s boiling you’ll have everything else set.
2. Rinse the paper-filter in the filter-holder under warm water to minimize any paper taste.
3. Grind your coffee and put it in the upside-down Aeropress. I use ~16-17 grams, ground the same as I’d use for the V60 pour-over. If you have the Hario Slim, then I have mine set between 8-10 clicks from the finest setting. Grind size is difficult to describe, so you’ll need to taste and adjust until you get this right. (In this case, if it’s too strong, and verging on bitterness, you’re probably too fine; and if it’s a bit watery, light, or sour, you’re probably too coarse).
4. Take the water off the heat and let it sit for 20 seconds when it’s reached a high boil (large bubbles). If you like, you can check the temp on a thermometer. I’ve found that this brings the water temperature down to about 195F with the pan I use to boil water. When poured into the Aeropress, the brew temperature drops to about 180-175F. Some people prefer a lower temperature of 176F to start with, but I haven’t tested this enough to have an opinion.
5. Pour the water in. I generally pour about 200-215ml of water, which takes me up to the top of the Aeropress chamber. Be careful not to overfill, and be mindful of bloom (released CO2) that will occur with very fresh coffee and might cause overflow. You can use the remaining hot water to pre-heat your cup.
6. Stir, wait 2 minutes, and stir again. I stir once for ~5 seconds right after I’ve filled the chamber, wait 2 minutes, then quickly stir again, place the filter on, put the mug over top to prevent anything from leaking, and flip the whole deal over so that I can start pressing. I don’t press hard, it usually takes ~20-30seconds for it to fill the cup.
7. Stop before the hissing sound. Some people argue that you should press until the bitter end, but, if you move the Aeropress to another cup and taste the last bits of the brew, I’m pretty sure you’d rather not have that going into your cup. It’s thin and bitter by that point.

After you’ve done it a couple times it’s actually pretty simple. There are quite a number of different techniques detailed over at Brewmethods.com, but this combination of styles is the one that’s gotten me the most consistent, full potential of the coffee.

There’re many different methods, though. If you have a favorite, or a suggestion, post it in the comments!

In the photos you can see a few shots of coffee prepared on the Aeropress. It’s an essential piece of luggage any time I travel. I’ve even taken it with me to brunch at the Seoul Grand Hyatt for some guerrilla brewing (shown above, with more info here).

The Aeropress makes enough coffee to share, if you’re happy with quality over quantity. Seen here during my trip to Tokyo.

Here’s a shot at my apartment in Sweden, going the extra mile with scale and thermometer. I was playing with some sample roasts from Solde Kafferosteri, watch out for a review soon, these guys run an up-and-coming cafe & roastery based in Malmö, Sweden.

In the last image, you can also see the Hario Slim mill. I also have a Kalita hand mill, which works similar to the Hario Skerton, but I perfer the Hario Slim because it has an easy to adjust grind setting on the bottom. I’ll do a more in depth review of that in the future!

From what I gather, they roast in the shop (and have been doing so for almost 90 years?!), though I didn’t get to see what they’re roasting with. I’ll try to follow up on this, just for curiosity’s sake.

Our friends Seung Jin and Diane are blogging their way through a gastronomic exploration of Seoul’s culinary landscape, which led Claire and me to a nice Sunday brunch at the Grand Hyatt last weekend. The food and setting was very nice, and perhaps it was just the company influencing my perception, but I’d say the food and price at the grand Hyatt were the best overall of the three pricey hotel brunches I’ve tried in Seoul (Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, W Hotel). Everything tasted fresh and most of the items were well executed. But I’ll leave the food blogging to those more capable.

My first thought when we set the brunch date was that the food would be awesome. Second thought was that the coffee was going to suck. There’s always this mismatch between the food and the coffee preparation at nice restaurants. So, rather than enjoy an awesome meal and then finish it off with nasty coffee, I looked at my bag of Guatemala Finca Isnul (2009 Cup of Excellence) roasted by Republic of Coffee, and started thinking about how I could bring it with me.

The Aeropress stood out as the best tool for the job – light, self-contained, and easy to deal with the mess. Pre-ground coffee* stored inside with the plunger down, then just extend it and remove the filter, pour in water, steep, stir, flip, press. I asked for tea to get some hot water to brew with, and it was probably way off in temperature by the time I got it, but the coffee still tasted much better than the other options available.

The Finca Isnul 2009 COE is a really rich coffee, it tastes like a blend of what I’d thought were characteristics from Central America and South East Asia; sweet red wine-like acidity and chocolate notes very nicely integrated with prominent earthy, smokey, tobacco-ish flavor. Is this complexity characteristic of the hybrid Pacamara varietal? I don’t know; still got much to learn about the agricultural side of coffee. Regardless, it’s an interesting flavor, I enjoyed it a lot.

It was a bit of a risk trying to improvise and do an upside down Aeropress at the table; I was half expecting to spray hot coffee on everyone. But it worked perfectly, and filled two tea cups with great coffee to share with each side of the table!

*Looking at the spent coffee puck, my Kalita hand mill obviously produces a lot of fines. Maybe I should sieve it. Also, I think the grind was a tiny bit too coarse, but whatever!