N’Orleans Coffee Comfort in Seattle

One of the perks of launching a new product (cue: The Coffee Catcher) is anticipating the day when a stranger on the street starts telling you about “this handy new gadget” they discovered - and you wait a couple extra seconds to tell them that it’s your gadget and yes, you agree that it’s handy.

That day arrived recently for one of our Kaffeologie cohorts as she visited Seattle’s new Creole-style soul food truck,“Where Ya At Matt?”  Alongside their (delicious) Po’ Boy Sandwiches this mobile-eatery features made-to-order beignets doused with a healthy amount of confectioner’s sugar.  Of course, as a native of New Orleans owner Matt Lewis knows that beignets aren’t complete without the proper brew.  Enter Herkimer coffee.

Thanks to Scott Richardson at Herkimer, WYAM is brewing up a smooth yet fierce cup of coffee that, sitting next to a bag of beignets is enough to make you homesick for New Orleans - even if you’ve never been.  We tried sipping the coffee black and also doctored it up cafe au lait style - both ways it’s delicious mellowness finishes with a bit of bite.  (The bite is really what makes the brew fit so perfectly next to the beignets’ sweetness.)

Delicious beignets. Photo from Seattle Met.

Naturally when considering coffee + New Orleans, the French Press came up in conversation...and it was only moments until: “Have you heard about this new gadget...”

Oh yes.  Yes, we’ve heard about it.

Own a Cafe? Integrate the Coffee Catcher Without Changing Workflow..

I (Nate) had the opportunity to attend the Barista Round Table on cup brewing today, led by Sarah Dooley and Jared Mockli. The session included a free experimentation time, and I took the chance to brew a few French presses of delicious Kenya coffee from Water Ave.

I also got the opportunity to clean a press with a Coffee Catcher using Visions' faucet and rinse basket, which is very similar to cafe cleaning setups I've observed around Seattle. It turns out that the water jet from the open faucet did a great job pushing all the fines and grit that had been trapped under the Catcher back out of the press in the rinse water. The result was a sparkling clean carafe - even under the Coffee Catcher (see pictures below).

I think this discovery has significant implications from a production perspective. Now, it seems, the Coffee Catcher can perform a filtering function without being removed from the press from brew to brew. This makes the Coffee Catcher very easy to integrate into traditional cafe workflows. It seems to me like a cafe can brew with the Coffee Catcher exactly as normal, but serve a cleaner cup to customers.

Quality improvements can also be fine-tuned to a particular cafe's trade-off between labor efficiency and quality. At one end of the labor spectrum, a cafe could go the whole way and train baristas to remove the Coffee Catcher and clean it after every brew. At the other end, a cafe could simply leave the Coffee Catcher in all day and simply add Puro Caff at the end of the day. I suspect a lot of cafes will want to fall in the middle, giving a thorough rinse when the roast changes, but otherwise leaving the Coffee Catcher in from brew to brew.

For the record, here are pictures of a Coffee Catcher after brewing and rinsing and swishing just as normal with the press. This was three rinses.

Side View

Bottom View

Top View

Of course, most home users do not use filter baskets in their sinks, and so I expect most home coffee lovers will continue to find that hooking the Coffee Catcher is the easiest way for them to remove grounds from the press. That said, this discovery does allow those who do swish out their coffee to continue to do so while enjoying a cleaner tasting cup.

Returning to the cafe, there are plenty of other ways to integrate the Coffee Catcher into the production environment. I've been thinking a lot about different ways to add unique value to the customer in terms of menu items that go beyond a commodity ("cup of drip") to a value-added experience for the customer. A lot of new drinks territory to explore here, I think.

Multi-Bed French Press Brewing Part 2

Part 1 of the series is here.

Success! I (Nate) visited Seattle Coffee Works on Thursday to start testing out my multi-bed brewing hypotheses. Owner Sebastian was gracious enough to give me the run of his slow bar for an hour and that gave me a chance to select a particular combination of beans and start tweaking brew variables with that given combination.

For this experiment, I selected 6 grams of the Colombia Huila Monserrate and 22 grams of the Tanzania Blackburn Estate. I brewed with water at about 205, and water dose varied between 453 and 478 grams. My target water dose was 454, and I got better at judging water cut-off times over the course of the experiment. Coffee was ground in Sebastian's Bunn Grindmaster. The press pot was a 32 oz polycarbonate. No one at SCW had tried these coffees together before.

Brew 1 - Huila placed on the bottom Coffee Catcher and Tanzania on the top Coffee Catcher. Grind setting at "regular" for both. Brewed 2:45 with top off and bloom. Shook in bloom (there was some bubbling, probably from trapped air) and let rest. 3:05, pulled the first Coffee Catcher with the Tanzania and set aside. Floaties from the Huila bubbled up. At 3:45, I pressed the pot with the bottom Coffee Catcher still in and immediately decanted the contents.

Tasting notes: LOVED it! The coffee just sparkled. There was black pepper, a little nutmeg, hints of blackberries. Just a delicious combination. Sebastian and I thought it was the best of the three. Others thought that a slightly longer extraction might have brought out more of the flavor profiles of the coffees. Pulling the 22 g at 2:45 may have been a trifle early.

Brew 2 - Both coffees mixed and placed on one Coffee Catcher. Brewed to till about 2:45, shaken and pressed at about 3:45.

Tasting notes: There was much less brightness in this brew. The coffees felt very thoroughly blended. The high notes of each one were just muffled. Very smooth. I felt like the unique properties of each coffee got a bit lost in this blend, but some of the tasters that felt there was some under-extraction before thought there was progress in terms of extraction. Certainly the full dose was kept in the brewing chamber for the full 4 minutes.

Brew 3 - Back to two Coffee Catchers, with Tanzania on top again. This time the grind setting for the Colombia was adjusted to a finer setting.

Tasting notes: This was just a bad idea, and I was worried about it when I was grinding. Grind setting adjustment has potential, but it doesn't make sense to fine up the bottom dose, which will be in the press longer anyways. Next time, I might fine up the top dose instead. The result was noticeable over-extraction. Still some signs of life underneath, but not deliciously sweet and drinkable like Brew 1.

My conclusion: this is a REALLY cool way to brew in the press, and I want to try those coffees - and others - soon. Brew 2 and Brew 1 were significantly different, and my conclusion is that the physical separation of the second Coffee Catcher disc produces semi-layered brewing, as I had predicted. What other great coffees should be combined?

Multiple Brew Beds in a Single French Press?

This post is really a question, with some initial answers coming soon. After getting the idea from Josh of Seattle Coffee Works, I've been thinking about the possibilities of brewing multiple coffees simultaneously in a single press.

It's always been possible to mix beans or grinds from different coffees and throw them in the press. The Coffee Catcher may make it possible to layer and adjust that brewing process to bring out the best in both coffees. Blending is not tried often, and for good reason. There are many ways that this could go horribly wrong from a flavor perspective. That said, the possibilities of brew layering are fascinating, including tweaking temperature profiles down the press, incorporating a pour over effect involving multiple coffees, adjusting grind size for different brewing conditions, and even adjusting brew times separately.

I don't know if this would work. I'm still looking for a pair of interesting coffees that I want to combine in the press using two Coffee Catchers. Any suggestions?

Bonus Question: What would we taste if the separate components of an espresso blend were brewed this way?