Some customers have asked me what the right way to brew our coffee is. There isn't one, but there is a setup I keep coming back to, and it's what I recommend to anyone who asks.
Wait a week
Give the coffee at least seven days after the roast date before you brew it. Fresh-roasted beans are still releasing CO2, and that gas gets in the way. If you brew too soon, you'll get some grassy, vegetal notes. Those usually go away after about a week and improves with time (to a point).
Take our Ethiopia Yirgacheffe for example. On day three it's closed off and hard to read. By day ten the florals and citrus are properly open.
The gear
I use a Hario Switch, which is forgiving in a way most brewers aren't. You get the clarity of a pour-over and the consistency of an immersion brew in one device, and it's hard to ruin a cup with it.
For grinding, I use a 1Zpresso K-Ultra hand grinder, set to position 9. Grind consistency does more for your coffee than almost anything else you can spend money on. If you upgrade one thing, upgrade this.
For water, I use a Fellow Stag EKG Pro. Temperature control is pretty important and we're not aiming for a boil but below that.
The recipe
18 g of coffee to 300 g of water, at 85°C.
That temperature is deliberate. Most people default to 93°C or higher, and with a light, delicate Ethiopian that pulls out a papery harshness that sits on top of everything else. Dropping to 85 gives you a rounder, sweeter cup and lets the fruit come through instead of getting buried.
Close the valve and pour 120 g of water over the grounds. Let it sit for a minute and a half. This isn't really a bloom in the usual sense — it's a full immersion soak, and it's doing most of the extraction work. The grounds stay fully submerged the whole time, so every particle sees the same water for the same duration, which is exactly what you want from a coffee this delicate.
At 1:30, open the valve and pour the remaining 180 g. The first phase built the body and sweetness; this one rinses through what's left and brings some brightness and clarity back into the cup. Total brew time usually lands around 3 to 3:30.
Let it cool
This is the part most people skip. Don't drink it straight off the brewer. Give it a few minutes to come down in temperature.
Hot coffee mostly tastes like heat. As it cools toward room temperature, the sweetness and acidity separate out and you start to taste what's actually in the cup. A good Yirgacheffe is a completely different drink at 55°C than it is at 80. If you've ever wondered what all the fuss about a coffee's tasting notes is, this is where you'll find them.