Brain

Coffee

3 min read

For me, the hobby of the roasted bean juice started small, curious and innocent. It quickly spiraled out of control and before I knew it, I was stuck knees deep in the most fascinating, frustrating, rewarding and cost intensive hobby yet.

How it started

Water

I always knew that water was important for brewing coffee. Even with Espresso, which has a much lower ratio of ground coffee to the final water volume, the drink consists mainly of said water.

But only after attending a long cupping session at my go-to roaster, with the main focus of this session being brewing water, could I really grasp the impact of it.

I then first started using Volvic, then proceeded with custom water, produced by mixing distilled water with a precise amount of minerals. I used Barista Hustle’s #4 water recipe for a long time, until Lance Hedrick’s YouTube video on that topic prompted me to experiment again. See the How it’s going section below for my current recipe.

How it’s going

Espresso

Currently I mainly focus on Espresso and drinks based on it.

My equipment consists of the

My machine also uploads all my brews to visualizer.coffee, so feel free to check it out.

Filter

I occasionally also dip my toes into filter(esque) coffee, especially while traveling. For doing a filter-style coffee with my machine, I use a Filter3-basket.

While traveling, I mainly use a setup of the

This combination allows me to easily cook up a brew without much of a hassle using my “Quick And Dirty” Aeropress recipe.

Water

I currently use my own recipe, although I plan to further reduce the hardness component to prevent scale buildup.

CAUTION

Note that most machines are not suited for water with this low of a ppm!

The Decent espresso machine is a little different in that it uses almost no metal tubing etc. internally. It uses mainly Teflon for that and even major components of the group head have been transitioned from brass to PPS. The Decent team themselves sometimes use distilled water, so it should be fine. Nevertheless proceed at your own risk!

When in doubt, think about using the Dr. Pavlis water recipe mentioned by Lance Hedrick in his video.

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