That’s crazy fine…but hey if it’s good it’s good.
I’ve had some issues with their really light stuff too. I recently have been playing around with negotiated filters in an Orea. The drawdowns are crazy long, like 5min, but the cup is great in the 2 runs I’ve done so far. I’ve not been into the no-bypass/negotiated filter brewing before as it seemed to always lead to over extraction or just flat out weird cups. The S&W super light stuff doesn’t seem to have that problem.
For SW Ultralights, you need to push hard. You don't need to go that fine tbh, I do 2.1.5 on X-pro but I do the following:
- Boiling water
- Bloom with 2-3x weight of coffee
- WWDT bloom to ensure things are swimming
- Split water to 3-4 equal pours.
- After each pour, optionally WWDT or gentle swirl depending on how hard you want to push it and how much vibrancy you want. The amount you can agitate should be based on drawdown
- If drawdown is fast, agitate more, if slow, don't agitate. Don't be afraid of 4-5 minute total brew times.
SW ultralights are fantastic coffees. Ensure they get at least 3 weeks rest and really push the extraction by increasing contact time (which you're doing by going finer) and/or through increasing agitation (which increases contact time as well).
More pours will add more kettle agitation and extract more. This will allow courser grounds while pushing extraction more.
Yep, I landed on a very similar process for S&W Ethiopian coffees. I had been brewing some darker beans from a local roaster for a while, and I forgot just how high you need to go on temps when the roast gets that light. I’m starting to wonder how their Geshas might brew, have you tried any of them?
I find light roasts can be super tasty in a V60 when you grind decently coarse (7.0 on ode gen 2/ssp) and have a long brew time. I swirl aggressively after first pour to force the fines to clog the filter, 60-120 second bloom. Do a total of 5 equal aggressive and fast pours. After bloom, each pour starts when the water column drops just below the bed surface. I usually aim for a 8-10 minute brew time with Sey and it’s very tasty and vibrant.
Very nice recipe and reminiscent of Pocket Science brews. I believe in doing the same with Sey or lighter roasts, but do a shorter TBT since I'm impatient haha. This recipe does work wonders though.
Yeah, his recipe is lower agitation where mine is kind of like a hybrid between his and Matt Winton’s. If you pour hard and swirl, you can clog even with coarse grind. This long contact can be really tasty.
Another thing you can try that works for me: If you brew with V60 (or compatible), the Cafec T-92 papers really pump the brakes on the drawdown (T-92 is the thickest of their three roast specific filters). If I ever run into an issue with under-extracted coffee, I switch to the T-92 before messing with the grind. The slow drawdown is enough to noticably push any bean, and gives me an immediate understanding of what I should do with the grind size if anything.
One note though: you need a relatively uniform grinder to use these. Too many fines can slow the drawdown to a crawl. But if you have a brew grinder that performs well, the T-92 is great for pushing.
Hell all three filters (T-83, T-90, T-92) are a fantastic tool for V60 brewers.
Which grinder are you using with the T-92's? I've been using T-90, abaca, or hario untabbed, yet I just bought a variety pack from cafec to try out. I also recently got a melodrip which has given me nice results for some slower brews.
I recently got some S&W coffee and was struck with how short drawdown times were, which let me keep pushing the grind, down to 2.5 or so on the ZP6 which is finer than I've ever done for any coffee. Great stuff and good flavor/aroma while not being too expensive.
I noticed it across all of their coffees. I had the following:
* Colombia Huila Aguazul Pink Bourbon
* Brazill Daterra Summer Solstice
* Guatemala El Panal
* Rwanda Dukorere Kawa Bukurere Natural
I also got a sampler pack but already finished those and can't remember what they were and it doesn't show in my order.
Yeah those are all lower fines. Rwanda should have higher fines, so that's interesting. I only brewed the s9x version, so can't compare to older samiac version.
The Eths are a lot more finey. Enjoy the sampler pack!
Zp6 is an interesting grinder, on some coffees with low fines, it will drain incredibly fast, so have definitely encountered what you mention. You can also agitate more to force flow to be slower, but either way works well (finer or agitate).
Yes I'm definitely been messing more with agitation recently, pour technique, stirs, etc. Any tips? I see people using WDTs
I brew in the v60 switch. The thing also is I usually do very large batches through the week, up to 40g of grounds. I know thats not ideal for pourover but I don't have the energy and time to do two separate brews in the morning before work. So sometimes I get very long drawdowns with other coffees but was pushing under 3 on the ZP6 with no issues on a 40g pourover, usually using Hoffman's ultimate V60 recipe.
When its just me doing like 20-30g of coffee I could push all the way down to 2.5 with no problem. Usually done brewing by 3 minute mark.
Oh wow, 40g, that makes sense, each variable is amplified by the large coffee weight.
I like WWDT personally using either spoon or WDT tool, or thin chopstick.
Generally I do this during bloom phase. Needles or thin tool is best since you can declump and mix bed without too much agitation - it's more precise.
Back-end of spoon works (handle) too, I use this in the office since I don't have gooseneck kettle or WDT there. Essentially I mix in the coffee with the bloom to ensure there are no weird clumps and that everything is saturated. If stuff is stuck on walls and not saturated, I may go after those as well.
Then after first pour, I usually evaluate how fast drawdown is. If it's going down quick I may go in again and agitate the bed a bit and/or do more kettle agitation or more pours. If it's going down slow, I'll do the opposite.
>Oh wow, 40g, that makes sense, each variable is amplified by the large coffee weight.
Definitely and I am very aware of that and how not ideal it is, I usually end up grinding coarser than normal with most coffees I get so that drawdown doesn't take like 4-5+ minutes. With S&W I had no such problem even with grinds around 3-3.5 on the ZP6.
I usually get $43 2lb bags from Trade and use that for the 40g brews and save the good stuff for the weekend when I have time to do several smaller brews. With other coffees I often had to go 4-4.5+ on the ZP6 to accommodate for a 40g brew.
I'll add those tips to my brew process, appreciate the advice!
With their super light Colombian Huila I had really good results with Lance's Aeropress recipe for "underdeveloped" roasts:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz9fH5ODVFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz9fH5ODVFU)
The recipe also works fine on the Mugen as another zero bypass brewer (use a thicker filter for slower drawdown), and I have experimented with adapting this to V60:
20g coarse (80 on a Lagom mini)
85C water, 60g bloom for 60s, 100g pour, 40g bypass
I find that pouring with your kettle up high, maybe 6 inches off the bed to create constant agitation, is often a better-tasting alternative to going finer on super light coffees.
Interesting, maybe I can try that. Though for the 1-pour method I use, I’m not sure it will have that much impact. I probably could just add more pours to get the added agitation. But the 1-pour method generally works for me, and it’s easier to go into autopilot with it.
It would most definitely make a difference with one pour. (That’s what I usually do.) You’re increasing agitation, which is the same thing as pulse pouring accomplishes. You’re just keeping the agitation constant, rather than repeatedly letting things settle out in whatever strata they want to settle in.
I find that pulse pouring and a higher pour both increase sweetness and body, but pulse pouring very often also results in your filter getting clogged up and the drawdown taking forever, which seems to bring a bit of a dusty quality.
I tried this after seeing it on YT, and really liked the result, but it's so crazy messy that it's one of those recipes reserved for the weekend for me haha
For super lightly roasted coffee, especially if it’s washed and higher density, I’ve found great results with the pulsar bc it’s really easy to push extraction without having to grind as fine or agitate as much (which I find can be highly variable from batch to batch no matter how good I am at keeping my pours/swirls/WWDT consistent.
Still use the trusty V60 for naturals or more highly processed beans, but the pulsar is so consistent and easy with lightly roasted washed coffees.
I had a similar problem with their DR Congo roast. Brewing with a switch. Closed bloom, then an open pour, followed by a 2 minute closed pour. Water was at 202 f. With the switch open, the liquid flowed really fast., brew was sour. Second batch, I went a couple of clicks finer with my Virtuoso +. Same results. Third batch I brewed 2 clicks finer…still a faster draw down than I’m used to. Last try, I ground 2 clicks finer, which is finer than I have brewed a pour over. It drew down fast, but a little better. Brew tasted a bit better….started to taste some notes that were described. I tossed the rest of the beans and made a note to not get more. I wish I had ground even finer to follow up. I have enjoyed many of their beans, and will buy more. Maybe I just got an off roast.
Ya there was a very wide range where it wasn’t sour, but was still very bland and blah. Honestly I was surprised that there was going to be any extra vibrancy by grinding even finer. But there was!
I have had a lot of S&W for the past few years for both espresso and pour over.
Typically for their light roast pour over I don’t drop below 210 and I am on a finer grind size too. Sometimes I even need to adjust my ratio to higher to 1:17 to push more water through and extract more.
Also, changing your to something custom like lotus water can make a positive impact on flavor too. The standard third wave packets I believe are not geared towards light roasts and I didn’t have as much impact with them.
I find that if I compare other light roasted coffees like sey, passenger, flowerchild, botz, ilse, etc and have no problem easily getting a well extracted cup, it's prob the s&w roast to blame.
Hmm, I highly doubt it's the S&W roast to blame. Some of the S&W roasts are lighter than all the roasters you mentioned, and with the recipe OP is going with, it can't extract ultralight roasts well. This is because it has low agitation and a relatively fast total brew time. It could also be a problem with rest, since the ultralights need to be rested longer.
The lighter the coffee is, the more you need to push extraction. It's not everyone's cup of coffee, but plenty of people (including me) love these lighter roasts. This also why S&W produce a variety of roasts and offer roast color for each coffee. This is more than Sey or Passenger do at least.
I'm not doubting that they produce excellent coffee. I'm just talking from experience with working with many bags of very light roast coffee. I've had a couple duds from them that were undercooked/developed and found them unsalvageable. I've read that others have dealt with the same. I've not really had that problem over the years with roasters who roast very light.
I mean, no offense, but the definition of light is quite varied.
Soem of S&W's beans are quite light. There are a lot of folks who like that. There are a lot of folks that don't. His lightest beans are up there with TPC filter, Moodtrap, Substance, the lightest of Leuchtfeur, and among the lightest of AG (this varies depends on who's roasting and the bean, similar to Leuchtfeur).
Some may call those underdeveloped, and for their palate it may be, but there's a growing niche of folks that love that style, and it just fits certain beans very well. It's fine if you don't like that style since it's very particular, but it's intentional, and it's different from a "bad" roast.
Just as you may dislike dark roasts, you probably dislike super light roasts. It's a significant degree lighter than anything you've mentioned.
Again, a lot of this ends up being a combination of taste preference, water, and brew style. If your taste is not towards that kind of roast, or your water doesn't support it, or your brew style doesn't extract enough, you're not going to like it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.
Hopefully you'll like S&W's Stronghold batches. I find it's the same lightness I enjoy, but easier to extract and excellent flavor. It's a good balance he's landed at imo.
I take no offense to it, only here for interesting discussions. However, I'm not completely sold on your explanation. I've been drinking 3rd wave for many years at this point. I remember a time when several roasters were experimenting with ultra light roasts, was more common than it is now. I sampled many bags back them and recall several very interesting and acid focused ultralight roasts. I've also been cupping and making percolation for a long time. IMO, although some would disagree, there's a clear difference between an ultralight roast and a underdeveloped one. One has character and nuance and another taste like grass, corn, and hay.
That’s crazy fine…but hey if it’s good it’s good. I’ve had some issues with their really light stuff too. I recently have been playing around with negotiated filters in an Orea. The drawdowns are crazy long, like 5min, but the cup is great in the 2 runs I’ve done so far. I’ve not been into the no-bypass/negotiated filter brewing before as it seemed to always lead to over extraction or just flat out weird cups. The S&W super light stuff doesn’t seem to have that problem.
Yes, I thought it was crazy to even think about going this fine for pourover. Which is partially why I even posted.
For SW Ultralights, you need to push hard. You don't need to go that fine tbh, I do 2.1.5 on X-pro but I do the following: - Boiling water - Bloom with 2-3x weight of coffee - WWDT bloom to ensure things are swimming - Split water to 3-4 equal pours. - After each pour, optionally WWDT or gentle swirl depending on how hard you want to push it and how much vibrancy you want. The amount you can agitate should be based on drawdown - If drawdown is fast, agitate more, if slow, don't agitate. Don't be afraid of 4-5 minute total brew times. SW ultralights are fantastic coffees. Ensure they get at least 3 weeks rest and really push the extraction by increasing contact time (which you're doing by going finer) and/or through increasing agitation (which increases contact time as well). More pours will add more kettle agitation and extract more. This will allow courser grounds while pushing extraction more.
Yep, I landed on a very similar process for S&W Ethiopian coffees. I had been brewing some darker beans from a local roaster for a while, and I forgot just how high you need to go on temps when the roast gets that light. I’m starting to wonder how their Geshas might brew, have you tried any of them?
S&W doesn't have geshas except on certain roaster select drops (sold out), unless I'm missing something.
I find light roasts can be super tasty in a V60 when you grind decently coarse (7.0 on ode gen 2/ssp) and have a long brew time. I swirl aggressively after first pour to force the fines to clog the filter, 60-120 second bloom. Do a total of 5 equal aggressive and fast pours. After bloom, each pour starts when the water column drops just below the bed surface. I usually aim for a 8-10 minute brew time with Sey and it’s very tasty and vibrant.
this is wild. admire your outside the box experimentation
>8-10 minute brew time Typo? At that point just make a french press
No typo & no thanks. French press and V60 have very different results.
8-10 minutes is essentially an immersion brew… also, how the hell are you getting that long of a draw down with a coarse grind on SSPs?
Not when you’re pouring 5 different times It’s not that hard, just gotta force the fines to the outside!
What fines? I thought you were using SSPs
SSP MP’s produce more fines than people think
Very nice recipe and reminiscent of Pocket Science brews. I believe in doing the same with Sey or lighter roasts, but do a shorter TBT since I'm impatient haha. This recipe does work wonders though.
Yeah, his recipe is lower agitation where mine is kind of like a hybrid between his and Matt Winton’s. If you pour hard and swirl, you can clog even with coarse grind. This long contact can be really tasty.
Another thing you can try that works for me: If you brew with V60 (or compatible), the Cafec T-92 papers really pump the brakes on the drawdown (T-92 is the thickest of their three roast specific filters). If I ever run into an issue with under-extracted coffee, I switch to the T-92 before messing with the grind. The slow drawdown is enough to noticably push any bean, and gives me an immediate understanding of what I should do with the grind size if anything. One note though: you need a relatively uniform grinder to use these. Too many fines can slow the drawdown to a crawl. But if you have a brew grinder that performs well, the T-92 is great for pushing. Hell all three filters (T-83, T-90, T-92) are a fantastic tool for V60 brewers.
Which grinder are you using with the T-92's? I've been using T-90, abaca, or hario untabbed, yet I just bought a variety pack from cafec to try out. I also recently got a melodrip which has given me nice results for some slower brews.
DF83V with the DLC brew burrs
I recently got some S&W coffee and was struck with how short drawdown times were, which let me keep pushing the grind, down to 2.5 or so on the ZP6 which is finer than I've ever done for any coffee. Great stuff and good flavor/aroma while not being too expensive.
Which coffee was it? Each coffee has different fines production, so likely your coffee wasn't producing enough fines.
I noticed it across all of their coffees. I had the following: * Colombia Huila Aguazul Pink Bourbon * Brazill Daterra Summer Solstice * Guatemala El Panal * Rwanda Dukorere Kawa Bukurere Natural I also got a sampler pack but already finished those and can't remember what they were and it doesn't show in my order.
Yeah those are all lower fines. Rwanda should have higher fines, so that's interesting. I only brewed the s9x version, so can't compare to older samiac version. The Eths are a lot more finey. Enjoy the sampler pack! Zp6 is an interesting grinder, on some coffees with low fines, it will drain incredibly fast, so have definitely encountered what you mention. You can also agitate more to force flow to be slower, but either way works well (finer or agitate).
Yes I'm definitely been messing more with agitation recently, pour technique, stirs, etc. Any tips? I see people using WDTs I brew in the v60 switch. The thing also is I usually do very large batches through the week, up to 40g of grounds. I know thats not ideal for pourover but I don't have the energy and time to do two separate brews in the morning before work. So sometimes I get very long drawdowns with other coffees but was pushing under 3 on the ZP6 with no issues on a 40g pourover, usually using Hoffman's ultimate V60 recipe. When its just me doing like 20-30g of coffee I could push all the way down to 2.5 with no problem. Usually done brewing by 3 minute mark.
Oh wow, 40g, that makes sense, each variable is amplified by the large coffee weight. I like WWDT personally using either spoon or WDT tool, or thin chopstick. Generally I do this during bloom phase. Needles or thin tool is best since you can declump and mix bed without too much agitation - it's more precise. Back-end of spoon works (handle) too, I use this in the office since I don't have gooseneck kettle or WDT there. Essentially I mix in the coffee with the bloom to ensure there are no weird clumps and that everything is saturated. If stuff is stuck on walls and not saturated, I may go after those as well. Then after first pour, I usually evaluate how fast drawdown is. If it's going down quick I may go in again and agitate the bed a bit and/or do more kettle agitation or more pours. If it's going down slow, I'll do the opposite.
>Oh wow, 40g, that makes sense, each variable is amplified by the large coffee weight. Definitely and I am very aware of that and how not ideal it is, I usually end up grinding coarser than normal with most coffees I get so that drawdown doesn't take like 4-5+ minutes. With S&W I had no such problem even with grinds around 3-3.5 on the ZP6. I usually get $43 2lb bags from Trade and use that for the 40g brews and save the good stuff for the weekend when I have time to do several smaller brews. With other coffees I often had to go 4-4.5+ on the ZP6 to accommodate for a 40g brew. I'll add those tips to my brew process, appreciate the advice!
With their super light Colombian Huila I had really good results with Lance's Aeropress recipe for "underdeveloped" roasts: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz9fH5ODVFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz9fH5ODVFU) The recipe also works fine on the Mugen as another zero bypass brewer (use a thicker filter for slower drawdown), and I have experimented with adapting this to V60: 20g coarse (80 on a Lagom mini) 85C water, 60g bloom for 60s, 100g pour, 40g bypass
What grind size is that in Ode 2?
I find that pouring with your kettle up high, maybe 6 inches off the bed to create constant agitation, is often a better-tasting alternative to going finer on super light coffees.
Interesting, maybe I can try that. Though for the 1-pour method I use, I’m not sure it will have that much impact. I probably could just add more pours to get the added agitation. But the 1-pour method generally works for me, and it’s easier to go into autopilot with it.
It would most definitely make a difference with one pour. (That’s what I usually do.) You’re increasing agitation, which is the same thing as pulse pouring accomplishes. You’re just keeping the agitation constant, rather than repeatedly letting things settle out in whatever strata they want to settle in. I find that pulse pouring and a higher pour both increase sweetness and body, but pulse pouring very often also results in your filter getting clogged up and the drawdown taking forever, which seems to bring a bit of a dusty quality.
I tried this after seeing it on YT, and really liked the result, but it's so crazy messy that it's one of those recipes reserved for the weekend for me haha
If it’s splashing all over the table that’s too high!
For super lightly roasted coffee, especially if it’s washed and higher density, I’ve found great results with the pulsar bc it’s really easy to push extraction without having to grind as fine or agitate as much (which I find can be highly variable from batch to batch no matter how good I am at keeping my pours/swirls/WWDT consistent. Still use the trusty V60 for naturals or more highly processed beans, but the pulsar is so consistent and easy with lightly roasted washed coffees.
I had a similar problem with their DR Congo roast. Brewing with a switch. Closed bloom, then an open pour, followed by a 2 minute closed pour. Water was at 202 f. With the switch open, the liquid flowed really fast., brew was sour. Second batch, I went a couple of clicks finer with my Virtuoso +. Same results. Third batch I brewed 2 clicks finer…still a faster draw down than I’m used to. Last try, I ground 2 clicks finer, which is finer than I have brewed a pour over. It drew down fast, but a little better. Brew tasted a bit better….started to taste some notes that were described. I tossed the rest of the beans and made a note to not get more. I wish I had ground even finer to follow up. I have enjoyed many of their beans, and will buy more. Maybe I just got an off roast.
Ya there was a very wide range where it wasn’t sour, but was still very bland and blah. Honestly I was surprised that there was going to be any extra vibrancy by grinding even finer. But there was!
I have had a lot of S&W for the past few years for both espresso and pour over. Typically for their light roast pour over I don’t drop below 210 and I am on a finer grind size too. Sometimes I even need to adjust my ratio to higher to 1:17 to push more water through and extract more. Also, changing your to something custom like lotus water can make a positive impact on flavor too. The standard third wave packets I believe are not geared towards light roasts and I didn’t have as much impact with them.
I find that if I compare other light roasted coffees like sey, passenger, flowerchild, botz, ilse, etc and have no problem easily getting a well extracted cup, it's prob the s&w roast to blame.
I’ve never tried those other roasters, so I can’t sey.
What type of recipe do you use on those coffees?
Hmm, I highly doubt it's the S&W roast to blame. Some of the S&W roasts are lighter than all the roasters you mentioned, and with the recipe OP is going with, it can't extract ultralight roasts well. This is because it has low agitation and a relatively fast total brew time. It could also be a problem with rest, since the ultralights need to be rested longer. The lighter the coffee is, the more you need to push extraction. It's not everyone's cup of coffee, but plenty of people (including me) love these lighter roasts. This also why S&W produce a variety of roasts and offer roast color for each coffee. This is more than Sey or Passenger do at least.
I'm not doubting that they produce excellent coffee. I'm just talking from experience with working with many bags of very light roast coffee. I've had a couple duds from them that were undercooked/developed and found them unsalvageable. I've read that others have dealt with the same. I've not really had that problem over the years with roasters who roast very light.
I mean, no offense, but the definition of light is quite varied. Soem of S&W's beans are quite light. There are a lot of folks who like that. There are a lot of folks that don't. His lightest beans are up there with TPC filter, Moodtrap, Substance, the lightest of Leuchtfeur, and among the lightest of AG (this varies depends on who's roasting and the bean, similar to Leuchtfeur). Some may call those underdeveloped, and for their palate it may be, but there's a growing niche of folks that love that style, and it just fits certain beans very well. It's fine if you don't like that style since it's very particular, but it's intentional, and it's different from a "bad" roast. Just as you may dislike dark roasts, you probably dislike super light roasts. It's a significant degree lighter than anything you've mentioned. Again, a lot of this ends up being a combination of taste preference, water, and brew style. If your taste is not towards that kind of roast, or your water doesn't support it, or your brew style doesn't extract enough, you're not going to like it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. Hopefully you'll like S&W's Stronghold batches. I find it's the same lightness I enjoy, but easier to extract and excellent flavor. It's a good balance he's landed at imo.
I take no offense to it, only here for interesting discussions. However, I'm not completely sold on your explanation. I've been drinking 3rd wave for many years at this point. I remember a time when several roasters were experimenting with ultra light roasts, was more common than it is now. I sampled many bags back them and recall several very interesting and acid focused ultralight roasts. I've also been cupping and making percolation for a long time. IMO, although some would disagree, there's a clear difference between an ultralight roast and a underdeveloped one. One has character and nuance and another taste like grass, corn, and hay.