Transcript

Callum Dickinson, Head of Specialty Coffee

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00:00 Hey guys, Callum from Sigma Coffee. Today I'm going to be walking you through my approach to brewing a light roasted, washed, light profile coffee. Today we're going to be using the Bluebird and it is a washed geisha from Panama. Notes on this are going to be lime, nectarine, jasmine. Typical geisha, especially Panamanian geisha tasting notes. I've got 15 grams weighed out already. You can alter your dose to whatever you prefer, you just need to alter the ratios.

00:28 We're grinding on the 1Zpresso ZP6 and we're grinding at five and a half, which translates to approximately 700 microns. I'm a big advocate of grinding coarser, where possible, especially when we're brewing at home. I don't want to be chucking unnecessary amounts of fines into my brewer, which can act as an uncontrollable variable.

00:55 When we're looking to get the most out of a 100 or 200 or 250 gram bag of coffee, we want to make sure as many of these brews are as good as physically possible. So if we grind on the coarser side and can contain that as a variable, I see that as much more consistent. We've got that ground up. I'm going to get a paper into the brewer. We're using the standard Abaca filter papers and we're using the Timemore Crystal Eye Turbo dripper. Although you can sub this for any dripper. A V60 would work excellently.

01:23 I would probably just err on the side of grinding a touch coarser, as this Timemore is geared at being a little bit more fast with the added contact points. We're going to pre-rinse the filter paper. Get the carafe nice and hot also. Water is set to 91 degrees. If your coffee is coming in at like two or three months of rest, I would probably err on the side of lower, 88, 89 degrees. If it's a touch fresher, a tiny bit higher, 91, 92 degrees. Get rid of this water.

01:54 So 15 grams going in. If you have a WDT, the back of a spoon, anything, a straw even would work. Just to level out any clumps when you've dumped the coffee. Out of these hand grinders, it can be a little bit slanted sometimes if you've not put them in. And that will affect the drawdown. What you can also do is just give it a little shake until you get a flatbed. Tear the scale down to zero. And then we've got our kettle with the aforementioned 91°C water. The approach here is going to be a 50 gram bloom.

02:23 So just above a 3x bloom to the ratio of the weight of the coffee. The second pour at 30 seconds is going to be up to 130 grams. We're going to let that draw down. It will be about 1 minute 15 we're aiming for. And then at 1 minute 15, we're going to do a nice simple center pour up to 230 grams out, which is going to be the total ratio. 1 to 15.3 ratio total. Start. And we're going to bloom. Nice, slow, central, out to the edge pours.

02:58 50 grams. And then we're going to let this gas escape. We're going to let it bloom up to 30 seconds. At 30 seconds, we're going to go with the same style of pouring. Center out to the edges, trying not to hit the filter paper up to 130 grams. This pour is where we're going to do the majority of our agitation.

03:16 So you can pour a little bit more aggressively here, aiming to get as close to the walls, but not touching the walls to create any bypasses, up to 130 or thereabouts. At this point, visually assess the bed. If we've got any, like, craters on one side or if things are weighted, give it a little [unclear: 'juzh'], give it a little swirl until we've got a nice smooth drawdown. In this case, it seems to be pretty stable, so we're just going to let it run.

03:47 We're pretty much getting a drawdown at about 1 minute 7, 1 minute 8 seconds, which is really, really cool for me. And then we're going to do a center pour, really low agitation. If you have a MeloDrip or something like that as well, that would work really well here. We're going to pour all the way up to 230 grams, our total brew weight. Once again, have a little look. You shouldn't at this point because you've just done a center pour, but if you do, for whatever reason, have any sort of, like, craters or anything, any discrepancies in the bed,

04:13 and you see any water rushing through certain areas, maybe give it a little [unclear: 'juzh'] just to make sure everything's moving down as we want it to be. Grab yourself some kind of decanting method. A drawdown in about 2 minutes and 5 seconds, there or thereabouts, which for me, with this particular type of coffee, is what I'm pretty much looking for. With it being a Panama Geisha, it's inherently clean, it's inherently bright, it's inherently acidic. A lot of florals on the top notes, you're going to find that across the board with Colombian geishas, Peruvian geishas, Panama geishas, anything really with this profile. I want to lean into that.

04:45 I want to try and extract these notes to the fullest of their capabilities, and then let the coffee do the talking. Yeah, give it a swirl to cool it down. If you've got another spare carafe, pass it through carafe, make sure it's coming down to room temp. You'll find this coffee goes on quite a journey. With this approach, we're looking at a Panama Geisha here, but this is not restricted to these particular, really super clean, ultra clean profiles. Two more examples here that this recipe would work really well for. We have a washed thermal-shock Laurina from A Matter of Concrete.

05:14 It's from the farm Quebraditas, Edinson Argote, and if you know anything about Edinson's coffees, they're a little bit more funky. This is about as clean as Edinson will get. It is a washed thermal shock, vanilla, violets, and apricots, so that flavor profile is still there. Roast is going to be a little bit more developed than what Bluebird are putting out. Use this recipe as a jumping off point. Try it. If it's a little bit too acidic, if it's a little bit astringent, which it may be, you can start looking at a couple of variables to tweak. Total ratio, so I would go from 230 to 250 and see if that moves any needles.

05:45 If you don't want to do that and you want to keep the ratio at 230, maybe go a touch coarser, especially if you're brewing on something that is a little bit slower flow, like a V60 or something. Another coffee I'd recommend with this particular brew method would be this Pink Bourbon from H&S or any of H&S's like washed, washed adjacent profiles. H&S, notoriously roast obscenely light. I would start with keeping the recipe grind size the same, increasing water temp.

06:14 I'd go from what I've done here at 91 or this recommended 88 to 92 range, push to 95, 96, go a little bit hotter. Maybe think about agitating a little bit more on that second pour, or maybe think about dropping the no agitation third pour and changing it to a normal standard pour to create a little bit more turbulence in the bed and make sure everything's getting extracted. With it being super, super light, you have to work a little bit harder to extract some of those less volatile compounds that are going to sink through right at the start.

06:45 We're getting jasmine, purple florals is a big thing that's kicking through here. I find that typical of Panama Geisha specifically, and this one that I've spent a lot of time with, super, super purple florals. Again, a lot of those florals right up front, followed by nectarine, peach underneath. As this is going to come down towards room temperature, that acidity is going to start singing. For me, it's very lime zest, very lime juice. Sometimes I've even got like sort of pomegranate, passion fruit style sweetness out of this as well, which I've found really, really interesting.

07:14 As a rundown, 15 grams in, 230 grams out, 50 gram bloom for 30 seconds. At 30 seconds, it's going to be a normal circular pour up to 130 grams. Aim for that to be drawing down to a drained bed between 105 and 115 as a ballpark. At that mark, when the bed has drained, we're going to go center pour, nice, low agitation, not trying to disturb the bed much on this third pour, up to 230 grams.

07:44 Aim for a roughly 2 minutes, 2 minutes 30 brew time. So, there you have it. There's our approach to brewing washed, light roasted coffee here at Sigma. Let us know how you get on. Definitely give it a try. Cheers.