CULINARY RESPECT & STEEPED PASSIONS

[taische]

In the kitchen, I’m likely to reserve expressions of passion for serendipitous encounters of a spoony and barely-culinary nature or with an ingredient striking and rare. Kitchen gadgets? Not so much. That said, though I have the deepest respect and appreciation of the design of my instant pot and all it’s done for me, it’s the black digital

Comments

[nanila]

I can see the attraction of the temperature control, but do you find you use the pour rate adjustment as well?

[taische]

I apologize for missing your reply- it seems my LJ notifications have been on the blink for some time! I’ve actually been doing very little pour-over coffee these days, favoring ristretto from the old Sylvia, so the kettle’s only been seeing tea-duty. That said, the stream control is quite good and the impact of that control on breakup is very apparent, so pushing turbulence deeper into the column with good technique is very achievable. The slower max rate when making tea doesn’t bother me, though- sometimes it’s a good to slow down. :-)

[taische]

… of course the day after I wrote that I found myself running on five hours of sleep and up for a larger dose of caffeine than I usually get from that ristretto. I used pretty good technique in terms of pour height and flow rate and the pour over was quite good, but I think the question of how much of a difference pour rate made is an open one (to me, anyway). I think I’ll try a one-off blind test where I simultaneously make two cups (one with “good” technique and another at max flow), walk off, and have someone else hand me each cup quasi-randomly.

[taische]

Okay! I was a slightly surprised to find that the pour adjustment made a pretty significant difference in terms of extraction quality, but it wasn’t the rate so much as the pour height that made a difference. I didn’t use coffee I roasted and ground myself for the test- I used pre-ground Dunkin’ Donuts coffee on the assumption that this would be a good representative drip coffee grind others might use. The filter was a #2 with a linear bottom seam- I think the brew cone is a Melitta. In all cases I wet the grind and let it bloom for twenty seconds or so before continuing. In brief, adding water at 93C “full bore” without adjusting the pour height (i.e.. pouring near the cone) and letting it slow to a slow drip undisturbed resulted in a bitter, over-extracted cup. Backing the temp off to 197F improved things but there was still over-extraction. Using a technique where I pour from high enough that the stream is perhaps 5cm or so from breaking up into drops when it hits the surface seems to reduce over-extraction significantly- my