Coffee

I like Lance Hedrick's pourover recipe for requiring less dialing in *between *brews due to the fact that you're adjusting the agitation on the fly *during *the brew.

I will also tweak any or all other variables, depending on what seems like it will help or if I'm just feeling like messing around. Dialing by ratio is very underrated, I think, because it's a good way of targeting bitter/sour balance. Bypass brewing is also cool and something that I'm trying to make use of more often.

If coffee has bitterness that resists other adjustments, then dropping the temperature by 5+ degrees can really help.

I use a chemex, I’ll usually tighten the grind as I go through a bag, so I’ll back the setting off a little before a new bag and then tighten from there. Coffee is too expensive these days to throw away a bad brew and I prefer my coffee to be a little soupy vs. over-extracted

The thing about grind size, the more stale and dried out the bean the more easily it grinds. Grinding for the same amount of time will result in a different grind.

Also, my damn filters are inconsistent. Sometimes I get a very strong coffee. But that's not relevant to the post I guess

What I do is first look at the bean roast profile. I usually buy my coffee from the same roastery, so the profile (for traditional brew) is relatively constant. If I see the profile is darker than the usual, I grind it coarser, and vice versa. Everything else (ratio, brew time, water temp) stay the same.

When dialling in (I'm new to it), I like to try and maintain the same brew time. So I'll adjust grind size to try and account for this, although I've found that as I go through a bag I end up wanting a finer and finer grind. Does also depend on the roast of the coffee, so if a roast is darker than I expected I'll grind a little coarser as I believe darker roasts extract more easily.