One of my first specialty coffee experiences was when I came across an extremely fruity (blueberry flavored), Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans. It was brewed as pour over coffee, and it’s fair to say, it got my senses through the roof! I have tried to find the same coffee or something with similar flavor notes (natural processed and fruity flavors/floral) and thankfully, after a lot of trial and error, I managed to get this recipe as close as possible to that first experience. The recipe I’ll be sharing will be “inspired”, if not a shameless replication, of that very experience. Enjoy!
Equipment you will need
- A good grinder (Make sure it’s for pour over coffee. I like to use a manual hand grinder called “Commandante”)
- A pour over dripper and an appropriate filter (I prefer the “Kalita Wave Dripper” for its consistency).
- A scale and a timer.
- A carafe and a serving cup.
- A goose neck kettle to pour the water onto the coffee.
Ingredients
- 23.5g good coffee (I recommend the Ethiopia Guji Gigesa or Ethiopia Aricha in this case)
- Filtered water.
Method
- Start with heating up the water to 95 degrees Celsius.
- As you are heating the water, and if you are using a hand grinder, this is a good time to grind your coffee. The grind size should be medium (if you are using “Commandante” a good starting point would be 28 clicks away from the finest setting point then adjust from there according to your taste.)
- Set your paper filter into your dipper and on top of your carafe and scale.
- Now rinse this paper filter with the hot water to get rid of the papery taste and get the dripper and carafe warm.
- Discard this water from your carafe and scale, and when the water is ready, tare your scale to show zero grams weight with the wet filter, dripper, and carafe on the scale.
- Then add your ground coffee and make sure you get 23.5g of ground coffee in there (+-0.3g is ok).
- Tare it again and get ready for the pour.
- Make sure the coffee is level inside the dripper before starting your timer and pouring your water onto the coffee.
- Pour the water until your scale shows 47 grams then stop to let the coffee bloom for 30 seconds. The period to blooming usually depends on how freshly roasted the coffee (fresher roast longer blooming time). Blooming will get rid of the CO2 and will contribute to getting a better extraction.
- Now, continue pouring your water and making sure the water is being poured on all the coffee grounds until you get to 190 grams (I personally like to move the gooseneck kettle from the center in a circle towards the outer edges and back.)
- Stop and give the dripper a little swirl, just a gentle one to get the coffee on the walls of the filter to settle down into the dripper.
- Wait for the timer to reach 1:20 then continue pouring before stopping when the scale reaches 346 grams.
- Give the dripper a swirl just like you did when the weight was 190 grams and making sure you get around the edges.
- By then the timer should be around the 2 minutes mark, and you should aim to let the coffee brew and drip by 3:10m to 3:20m total (for “Kalita Wave Dripper”).
Rule of thumb: If your brew finishes faster than this time, then your grind size is too coarse and you need to make it finer. If your brew takes longer to finish, then your grind size is too fine and you need to adjust coarser.
At last, swirl the coffee that has dripped into the carafe and wait for it to cool down a little before having a sip of the wondrous blueberry goodness that YOU made!