The Creation of our Cafec Flower Brewing Recipe
After its success crowned appearances at the Japanese Brewers championships, we got our first Cafec Flower dripper in 2019 and worked at perfecting a custom recipe that would make our Bolivian specialty beans and roasts shine ever since. Like the dripper (and its bespoke paper filters) our inspiration came from Japanese brewing techniques, more precisely from Japanese brewing champion Tetsu Kasuya’s 4:6 Hario V60 recipe and the Osmotic Flow approach that lies underneath the Cafec drippers’ creation. The recipe we came up with is a hybrid that mixes the theories behind both techniques, briefly summarized in the following paragraphs.
Tetsu Kasuya 4:6 Method
Tetsu Kasuya developed his winning recipe based on his observations. He divides his pour into 2 parts, with the first 40% he locks in the acidity and sweetness levels of his cup, while in the second 60% he defines its body. The first part is hereby divided into 2 pours: the first for acidity, the second for sweetness. But how does it work? An extraction, extracts following attributes in a specific order: first acidity, then sweetness and finally bitterness. Applying this to his recipe, he can regulate the balance of the final cup as he likes. The more water he pours in the first pour, the more the balance of the cup will tend towards acidity, the more water he leaves for the second pour, the more the balance will shift towards sweetness. The second part of the 60%, defines how much body the resulting cup will have. He found out that depending on how many pours he would divide this second part, he could influence the body. If he pours only once, the body will be on the lighter side, with 3 separate pours it will be on the heavy side, while with 2 pours, a medium body will result.
You can watch this video on YouTube for a better visual understanding of this technique.
We absolutely love this easy to understand approach to pour-over extraction, allowing you to easily create the desired outcome of your cup based on simple rules to follow. Of course, every coffee is different and will have its favorite combination in which it works best! It is therefore our responsibility on interpreting the coffee we’re brewing, as every bean has a specific sensory profile that heavily depends on variety, processing method, terroir and roast profile.
Cafec’s Osmotic Flow
Our second inspiration comes from Cafec itself in the form of the osmotic flow theory, more than its original application. Osmotic flow sets itself apart from immersion in that it tries to selectively extrapolate pleasant sensory attributes from the coffee and avoid indiscriminate extraction. It does this following the principle of osmotic pressure. The goal of the osmotic flow is to create a pressure difference between the semipermeable membrane of the coffee grounds (holding a high concentration of solubles) and the water (holding a lower concentration of solubles). This passage occurs until an equilibrium is reached, after which the process needs to start over. Basically, as you bloom, spacing between coffee grounds expand as CO2 is released, this gas - being lighter - will escape to the surface, coffee essence will seep out of the grounds and be carried into the cup by the water flowing through. Then this process is repeated.
For a more in depth explication of the osmotic flow principles, you can visit this page.
There are caveats though that severely limit its applicability. Osmotic flow needs a lot of variables to play nicely together but are not always available or feasible: it was developed with japanese roasts that are traditionally darker and thus hold more CO2, work best with pretty freshly roasted beans (and then it gets harder and harder to achieve properly), it needs a specific, incredibly thin spouted kettle (which are not available as an electric version) to allow for an extremely low and constant flow, and finally it’s a pour-over that can easily go above 5 minutes to complete, so not really practical in a coffee shop setting.
What we do like about this approach is the selectiveness and flavor clarity it achieves in the cup. A breath of fresh air setting itself apart from the loud “maximize extraction” and the “higher the TDS the better” mainstream choir. Numbers in both brewing and roasting are never the goal itself, they are there to guide us, to make things repeatable, to double check quality. It also breaks with “stirring”, “swirling” and what else which, compared to the elegant approach of osmotic flow seem desperate attempts of saving a stalling brew or a glorified technique.
Our own custom recipe
For us, coffee is a ritual that takes time, allows us to slow down, to have our moment of peace in a hectic life, it’s almost like meditating, blending out all that is going on and focussing on what’s there in front of us, our movements and the delicious result it will provide. So it’s no big surprise that our own recipe is heavily influenced by Japanese craftsmanship and artistry. You can find our custom recipe here, but in the following paragraphs we will drill down on some of its aspects, based on our interpretation on the two techniques explained above.
What do we want to see reflected in the cup?
Before even starting to develop a certain brew style or recipe we need to decide what we want to achieve in the cup itself. We quickly learn that brewing isn’t some stand alone thing that you develop and can then apply to any coffee from any roaster. A brewing guide is only the last step in a long chain of decisions and events that will lead to a certain cup profile. As origin driven roasters we focus on sourcing only traceable nano lots, scoring 85 plus points, as these feature a particularly complex and interesting sensory profile, way beyond the usual “single origin” characteristics in which we don’t really believe in. When choosing these lots from our selected pool of producers that we work with long term, we pay much attention to what sets each particular lot apart, making it unique and rare. We custom roast these nano lots to a point where we can clearly identify in the cup the sensory profile coming from the variety (e.g. florals in a Geisha), the nuances it acquires from the specific terroir (including soils, elevation, fauna and microclimate) as well as the applied processing method (e.g. heavily sweet fruitiness and rounder body from a natural). Once we have ensured that all the specific factors that define a certain nano lot are carefully translated into the roasted bean, we need to work on a recipe that carries those attributes into the cup and help us pin a coffee back to where it came from. This is what enables us to enjoy a cup of coffee at 360°, being brought back to origin, into the micro lot it grew on, appreciating all the minute and detailed work that went into it along the supply chain just for that moment of joy, making us smile at the thought that with one sip we travelled half way around the globe to take in the essence of nature itself.
The right order of priority
When seeking an improvement always look for the right sequence of things, from biggest impact to lowest. Before even talking about the recipe, we must get the ingredients right: coffee and water. These two alone will make the greatest difference, and while the first is pretty obvious, the second is heavily overlooked. While a balanced pH of around 7 is easily reached with most of the waters you will consider using for your brew, the right level of ppm is trickier to get. We find that for a perfect cup, water should have anywhere between 50 and 100 ppm. Below that, your coffee will taste very light and delicate, not to say flat. Above that, you’ll get astringency pretty fast. Another important fact to consider, is the mineral composition of the water itself: you’d want to use a water that has lower calcium levels and high enough magnesium levels. To not divert any further at this point, we will publish a more detailed blog post on brewing water in the future.
The coffee you’re using for your brew is of the same importance. Favor traceable, pure nano lots or at least micro lots from roasters that are actively engaged at origin, work alongside their producers to guarantee quality from farm to cup, and seek longterm commercial relations with the same producers while paying them transparent prices. All these are key indications that a roaster is knowledgeable on the raw material he or she is working with and fully committed to translate the unique flavors that are coming from the variety, terroir and processing method into the roasting profile and to your cup. This is how clarity in flavor has a chance to reach your cup. Before even starting to talk about burrs and coffee equipment.
Grinder
Dang! I really didn’t wanted to go there in this post, but when talking about the biggest impact in the quality of your cup, this is the one parentheses that I would choose to open (and close). The one piece of equipment that will have a major impact on your result is your grinder. Thus I am just talking about upgrading from a cheap(er) grinder to a proper grinder, not about thinking of upgrading every time a new “better” grinder hits the market. You’re very rapidly getting into diminishing returns. At the coffee shop and at home we’re using the 1Zpresso K-Max handgrinder, although most of their more premium grinders will do. Switching to this grinder really made a noticeable difference in the cup, but from there - even spending 10x the price - wouldn’t. The bigger 48mm conical burr set and the low rpm (from manual grinding), seem to get the cup’s clarity into that special sweet spot!
Now closing the parentheses and back to where it matters even more than the grinder:
The Pouring Structure
The pouring structure itself, is influenced by Tetsu Kasuya’s observations. In our pour-overs we usually like to highlight sweetness and the tactile characteristics of a certain coffee lot. That’s why our second pour (70 grams) is bigger than the first (40 grams) and we end with 3 equal 30 grams pours to highlight the body (texture) of the coffee. For some specific coffees, we might want to highlight more the acidity and thus would invert the first two pours: start with a longer pour, followed by a shorter one.
Osmotic Flow Technique
The next KEY point is the pouring technique itself. To make our recipe work properly, all our attention needs to be on this, pouring as slowly as we can (or as slowly as our gooseneck kettle allows for). The “trick” in allowing the osmotic flow to unfold its magic is to make the coffee “breathe”. We want to create a nice dome on top of our coffee bed, expanding and contracting it as we slowly pour our 5 pours. With each pour, the coffee should be expanding, creating osmotic pressure allowing the solubles to exit the semipermeable membrane towards the lower concentration of the water, that will then carry them into the cup (contraction). This process is repeated at each pour, and the particular flower design at the inside of the dripper’s walls helps you achieve it. For it to be working, it’s incredibly important to avoid a water pool on top of your coffee grounds at any moment! If this issue is recurring, pour even slower, and if this doesn’t work, grind coarser. With some lighter roasted coffees that shed a lot of silver skin, avoiding a stalling brew might be trickier. In this case you can try to reduce the delta in volume between the first 2 pours, by pouring 50 grams in the first, and 60 grams in the second pour.
Coffee Dose & Ratio
To compensate the “selectiveness” in extraction, you’ll find that we work with a slightly bigger dose of coffee (15 grams) and a tighter coffee to water ratio (1:13) to achieve our desired output in intensity of flavor and body. On the other hand, our recipe is dialed in for very soft water (at around 60 ppm), so you might move towards more common dosages of 12-14 grams (and ratios 1:16 - 1:14), should you work with slightly harder water and therefore extract more out of the coffee. Generally speaking, we favor playing more with the coffee dosage than with grind size as grinding finer to extract more out of the beans will lead to an unbalanced, astringent cup of coffee. We learned this in Bolivia at 2500 masl, where water boils at 91°C. To compensate this low brewing temperature (for lighter roasts), most baristas tend to resort towards grinding finer, which inevitably leads to stalling, simultaneously over-extracted and watery cups and other nasty stuff that you want to avoid in filter coffee. Instead, we upped our coffee dosage to extract a nicely tasting, balanced cup.
Water Hardness and Temperature
We find that there is a direct correlation between water hardness and water temperature that you need to figure out for your brews. Within certain boundaries - everything else staying the same - the higher the hardness of your water, the lower your brewing temperature should be to arrive at a same result in the cup. Taking our filter roasts as an example, a water hardness towards 100 ppm works better with 93°C, while a water softness towards 50 ppm works better with 95°C. In our roastery in Locarno, Switzerland at 200 masl we are brewing with water at 60 ppm and a temperature of 95°C, to obtain similar results in our coffee shop in Cochabamba, Bolivia at 2500 masl, we set our brewing water to approximately 125 ppm and 91°C (the highest we can physically go). We tested and measured different tap waters from around Switzerland and we would recommend the following: if you’re living within the Alpine arc, you should be able to use your water right out of the tap, if you’re leaving beyond that and your water is more calcium heavy, filter your water in a Brita or BWT active carbon filtering carafe before brewing coffee. This should keep you within acceptable parameters of water hardness.
Our Brewing Setup
You might wonder what our setup looks like? We use the Cafec Flower Dripper made out of ceramic, paired with their proprietary Abaca+ Paper Filters (we were using the dedicated light roast filter, but since they switched to a thicker membrane, the flow slowed down so much that our recipe wasn’t working anymore on it) and the Fellow Mighty Small carafe. As already mentioned above, we grind with a 1Zpresso K-Max handgrinder usually between 6,8 and 7,2 clicks depending on our coffee and brew with a Fellow Stagg EKG electric gooseneck kettle. To time and weight our pour we use the Timemore Black Mirror Basic Plus brewing scale, which is neither dumb nor smart but just does really well what it’s supposed to.
With exception of the grinder (that you can easily buy on their homepage offering free express shipping), we have everything else in stock at our roastery in Locarno.