Total Brew Time: Bang or Bust

In a previous post we highlighted how grind size is difficult to communicate with a number, and the best bet you have is to share your brew time!

Well, we’re here to tell you that brew time can be completely useless!

Or, that’s a bit of an exaggeration - but the total brew time is USELESS without one more important factor.

You see, a recipe containing the exact amount of coffee used, the number of pours, the amount of water added with each pour and within what time frames the pours are made - now you’ve got some meat on the bone! 🥩

The brew time is only relevant once you know the recipe

Let’s take two examples that are two very different ways of brewing coffee with the same device:

Brew A:

15 g of coffee, 250 g of water

0:00-0:30 Bloom with 50 g of water

0:30 - 01:00 Add the remaining 200 g of water until you reach a total water amount of 250 g.

Brew time: 2:30 min

Brew B:

20 g of coffee, 300 g of water

0:00-0:45 Bloom with 40 g of water

0:45-01:00 Add another 60 g of water until you reach 100 g

01:30 - 01:45 Add 60 g of water until you reach 160 g

02:15 -02:30 Add 140 g of water until you reach 300 g

Brew time: 3:30

Now, theoretically, both of these brews can have similar extractions even though they have very different brew times!

Rule of Thumb

The fewer pours you add, the shorter the brew time.. the more pours you add the longer the brew time!

Let’s imagine for a second that we brew a coffee with the two recipes shared above, but with a slight tweak: Both brews have the same brew time of 2:45

It’s nearly impossible that both brews would taste good in this situation, either Brew A would taste balanced and smooth while Brew B would be under-extracted, or Brew B would taste amazing and Brew A would taste bitterly over-extracted.

Why is that?

Notice that Brew A has a total of 2 pours whilst Brew B has 4 pours (including the blooming phase).

The more pours you add, the more agitation you create in your brew

So for each additional pour, the more fines migrate down to the bottom of your filter, and the slower your brew will draw down.

So if Brew B has the same brew time as Brew A, even though it has double the amount of pours, done with 45 seconds in between, it means that the grind size in Brew B would be WAY TOO COARSE and produce an underwhelming, vegetal and sour cup of coffee compared with Brew A. 🤮

To achieve the same extraction with Brew B as in Brew A, we cannot use the same grind size, because each additional pour will slow down the brew - and if it already tastes balanced with two pours, adding two more pours with the same grind size will choke your brew and give unpleasantly bitter and dry notes in your cup. 🤢

Coffee is more than just ‘‘extraction’’ and we can create many different expressions of the same coffee using different recipes. We find that recipes with more pours produce brighter and crisper flavour profiles, while recipes with fewer pours often give cups with silkier mouthfeel and more sweetness.

So, now that you understand a little more about how the amount of pours you do will affect your coffee, remember that brew time is irrelevant unless you know the recipe! 📖

Do you have any favourite go-to recipes you think we should explore? Let us know!

H.S.

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