Second Brew

This afternoon I returned to the siphon with the advantage of experience, though calling a single successful cup of coffee experience may be granting myself rather more authority than the evidence permits.

Still, yesterday had provided information, and information, properly recorded, ought to be good for something.

The first brew had been pleasant but confused. It was slightly bitter while hot, increasingly sour as it cooled, and, once I had added my customary cream and sugar, rather too easily subdued. There was good coffee somewhere in the cup, but it seemed unable to decide precisely what sort of coffee it wished to be.

There was also the matter of the drawdown.

Two minutes.

I had stood watching the coffee descend through the cloth filter with the peculiar anxiety produced by machinery that is technically functioning, but doing so considerably more slowly than one has been told it should.

Today I made two small alterations.

I increased the coffee from 32 grams to 34, and moved the Zwilling grinder from 24 to 26, making the grind slightly coarser. Everything else remained as before: 500 grams of water and 60 seconds in the upper chamber.

The intention was to solve two problems which appeared, at first, to be pulling in opposite directions. A coarser grind ought to permit the coffee to descend more readily and perhaps remove some of yesterday's bitterness. But yesterday's cup had already seemed slightly weak after the addition of cream. The extra two grams of coffee were therefore given the responsibility of preventing the whole experiment from becoming an elegant way of producing brown water.

I lit the burner.

The water climbed.

The coffee went in.

And, having performed the little sequence once before, I found myself considerably less preoccupied with whether the apparatus might suddenly object to my involvement.

At one minute I removed the heat and waited.

This time the coffee descended in seventy-five seconds.

A considerable improvement.

More important, however, was what waited in the cup.

I tasted it black.

The difference was immediately apparent. Yesterday's troublesome acidity had diminished considerably, and the bitterness had disappeared altogether. In their place was something I had previously encountered mostly as language printed upon coffee bags.

Flowers.

Or, more accurately, something distinctly floral.

I could smell it before I properly understood that I was smelling it, and then taste some suggestion of the same thing in the cup. The bag had promised clean, floral, sweet, and for the first time I began to understand that these descriptions were not necessarily the fevered inventions of marketing departments.

The coffee was very pleasant.

What interested me almost as much as the flavour, however, was its physical character.

It felt light.

At first I hesitated over the word because light seemed dangerously close to weak, and the coffee was certainly not weak. It possessed sufficient strength and plenty of flavour. Yet it lacked that peculiar quality I have noticed in much of the coffee I make at home - the sensation that, after swallowing, some portion of the beverage has elected to remain behind and coat the inside of one's mouth.

This did not.

It seemed to arrive, make itself known, and depart cleanly.

I later discovered that what I was attempting to describe was largely a matter of body and mouthfeel, and that these are not the same thing as strength.

This was a useful distinction.

A coffee may apparently possess considerable flavour without possessing considerable weight.

Strong enough, but somehow still light.

I think that is the best description of today's cup, and I prefer it to the more technical language precisely because it is what occurred to me before I knew what I was supposed to call it.

I continued drinking it black and allowed it to cool, partly because I was enjoying it and partly because yesterday had demonstrated that temperature is capable of revealing an entirely different character in the same cup.

It happened again.

As the coffee cooled, a little more sourness appeared. Not enough to trouble me, and certainly nothing like yesterday. It was simply there, more perceptible than it had been while the coffee was warm.

At the same time, the floral quality diminished.

This was another distinction worth making. The coffee had become more sour, but it had not become too sour. There is a difference between noticing something and objecting to it, and I suspect learning to taste coffee may involve learning not to confuse the two.

The cup remained remarkably clean.

Eventually there remained the final test.

Cream and sugar.

Yesterday these had improved certain aspects of the coffee while nearly erasing others. The bitterness and sourness became less troublesome, but the coffee itself seemed to retreat with them. I had been left with something agreeable but slightly insubstantial.

Today I added the same cream and sugar and expected another transformation.

Very little happened.

This surprised me.

The coffee softened somewhat, naturally, but its essential character remained. It did not disappear beneath the cream. It did not suddenly become heavy. Nor did it require the sugar to conceal some defect I had previously tolerated while drinking it black.

It simply remained good coffee.

Indeed, after two days of adjustments involving grams, grind settings, seconds, temperature, acidity, bitterness, floral aromas, body, mouthfeel and an unreasonable quantity of staring at glass, I arrived at a remarkably uncomplicated conclusion:

This is almost perfect.

Brew No. 2

Coffee: 34 g
Water: 500 g
Grind: Zwilling setting 26
Upper-chamber brew: 60 seconds
Drawdown: 75 seconds

Black, warm: Very pleasant. Considerably less acidic than the first brew, no bitterness, with clearly perceptible floral aroma and flavour.

Black, cool: Slightly more sour and less floral, though still clean and very good.

Body: Light and clean without being weak. Strong enough, but without the mouth-coating heaviness I had previously associated with coffee made at home.

With cream and sugar: Surprisingly little alteration to the fundamental flavour. The coffee retained its character and sufficient strength.

Overall: Almost perfect.

There is a temptation, upon arriving at almost perfect, to immediately begin interfering with it.

One more gram.

A slightly different grind.

Five seconds longer.

Three degrees cooler.

This is how perfectly sensible hobbies become occupations.

I shall resist it.

Tomorrow I intend to make precisely the same coffee: 34 grams, 500 grams, grind 26, sixty seconds.

If it produces the same result, then I will have learned something considerably more valuable than how to make one excellent cup of coffee.

I will have learned how to make another.

And perhaps that is the real purpose of all these numbers. Not to reduce something pleasurable to measurements, but to leave a trail back to it.