Brew Guides

Home brewing can be daunting for the beginner but with just a few easy steps you can create filter coffee just as good as a pro barista, here’s Twin Pines’ Martyn Nash’s V60 brewing guide.

The specialty coffee scene in Brighton has been going from strength to strength in the past few years with new cafes and roasters popping up on the regular. This has led to a real upsurge in consumer interest and knowledge – coffee is no longer just ‘coffee’. Quality and flavour are what it’s all about.

When brewing a V60, there are three important things to keep in mind: weight, time and  temperature. At Twin Pines we generally stick to a 16 gram dry dose of coffee and a 240g yield which will be brewed at 90 degrees, taking 2 – 3 minutes for the full extraction. These numbers are by no means to be taken as gospel. Coffee is all about ratios and the most important thing to keep in mind at this stage is that a V60 will nearly always be 1 part coffee to 15 parts water. Different origins and varietals of bean will require different approaches and brewing techniques.

Stage 1: Weigh out 16g coffee, grind it accordingly – somewhere in between espresso and cafetiere (it should feel like fine sand).

Stage 2: Fill your pouring kettle with hot water (90 degrees) and pre-wet your paper filter so it adheres to the cone-drip. This will ensure an even extraction and alleviate the risk of a papery aftertaste.

Stage 3: Place the ground coffee on the wet filter and give it a little shake to flatten out the surface. Put it on your scales, zero them and start a timer. Start pouring immediately.

Stage 4: Pour 50g water on the dry coffee and wait for 30 seconds. This is called the “bloom” and releases all the natural oils in the coffee.

Stage 5: Pour the remaining 190g of water and wait for the brew to finish. You can either do this pour in stages or continuously – just experiment until you get the results you want.

Stage 6: Let your coffee cool down slightly, sip it and enjoy it.

Words by Martyn Nash of Twin Pines – twinpinescoffee.com

It’s very easy to get swept up in Aeropress competitions and start over complicating the coffee you drink at home. Yet, the key to any home brew is keeping it simple and repeatable. There are a few very basic things that will make your coffee taste better. Use coffee within a month of roast date, use filtered water and grind your coffee to order. However, anything out of these parameters won’t make disgusting coffee, it just won’t be as nice as it once was.

I prefer an inverted Aeropress method. Mainly because you don’t get any drips start coming through the paper but, also, as you flip it over you agitate the brew again.

With the Aeropress there is no need for a pre-wet and bloom. Just throw all your water on as quickly as you can using the water flow to agitate your brew. Before you start make sure your kettle is boiled, your Aeropress has your ground dose weighed in and you have wet your filter in the Aeropress cap and you have a timer ready.

My go to recipe is:

– 13g Coffee
– 220g Water
– 97° Water

Stage 1. Start a timer as you start pouring and fill it all the way up as fast as you can.

Stage 2. Put the filter cap on and flip the Aeropress onto your mug at 0:30 giving it a shake to agitate.

Stage 3. Then at 1:00 start plunging, aiming to finish at 1:30. If your coffee is a little weak then extend your overall time. If it’s too strong then flip and plunge quicker!

Words by Chris Campbell of Brewed – brewedroasters.co.uk

Follow our easy guide for homemade cold brew and enjoy an iced alternative for those hot summer’s days. The only equipment needed is a cafetiere, some scales, and a refrigerator.

Although it may look complicated, cold brewing coffee is actually one of the simplest ways to make coffee. It is easy to make a relatively large quantity that will last few days, depending of course on how much you drink. This guide is for a concentrated batch that can be diluted to taste, or have cold milk added to it.

The first step is to weigh out your coffee. As we are using a cafetiere, the grind size should be quite course (the same as if you were making a regular brew with it). As we are making a larger batch, we are going to use 120g of coffee. The amount of cold brew you are able to make is going to be dependent on the size of your cafetiere, but working with roughly a 7:1 ratio is fine.

With the coffee in the cafetiere, add 850ml of room temperature water and stir. For a smaller cafetiere, use 80g of coffee and 550ml of water. Using filtered water is preferable as it results in a better tasting coffee.

The next step is to put the lid on the cafetiere and wait for 12 hours. For this reason, it’s usually best to make cold brew in the evening and leave overnight. It’s also alright to put it in the fridge, just give it an extra couple hours to brew.

Once the 12 (or so) hours are up, just plunge the cafetiere like you would normally and pour the cold brew into a bottle/mug/glass/jug. You can run the coffee through a paper filter for a cleaner brew if you wish.

Then the only thing left to do is chill and dilute to taste. If the concentrate isn’t strong enough, simply leave it to brew longer before filtering next time. The cold brew should last anywhere from a few days to a week if stored in a refrigerator.

Batched brewed filter coffee is undergoing something of a resurgence, probably due to a combination of artisan shops experimenting with the format and the rise in popularity of Scandinavian culture in the United Kingdom.

Filter coffee offers a completely different taste to espresso based coffee. The obvious difference is that the liquid is passed through a paper filter opposed to a metal one; this results in almost all the oils being removed from the final product, as well as any micro grins. Filter coffee, therefore, has a much cleaner, lighter taste and appearance.

Studies have shown that drinking filter coffee, compared against other methods, indirectly lowers cholesterol levels, the negative effects of which are well known. In comparison to capsule machines, the benefits for the environment is in favour of filter coffee due to less energy for production and less waste produced.

Filter coffee is easy to experiment with at home and doesn’t require an expensive espresso machine. You can range from a simple v60 pour-over all the way up to a handmade Moccamaster filter machine.