techniques in making Filter Coffee, today with the clever coffee dripper.

As seen on Expresso (SABC3) this AM

For the real how to, see here: http://www.truthcoffee.com/how-to-train-your-abid/

Using your new ABID:

Take freshly ground coffee, ground on a filter setting.

Leave the ABID on the counter on it’s coaster. It shouldn’t leak

Use about 18g of coffee this is around 60mls or two heaped tablespoons.

The size of filter paper is not that important, but for best results, insert filter paper and rinse it with your freshly boiled water, swirl to thoroughly wet the paper, disposing of the water, in order to remove any bleach or paper taste from the filter.

Add the coffee.

Pour over a little water no hotter than 95°C. This is easily achieved by letting the kettle boil and stand for round a minute. The average kettle loses 7°C every minute. Not using cooler water will cause a bitter flavour.

Allow it to swell the coffee and after a few moments pour in more water. We recommend using a total of 250mls of water, but don’t use more water than your cup holds.

Wait 3-4 minutes. It is worth timing. Longer increases flavour and body, shorter enhances perceived complexity.

Place the ABID on your cup and the coffee will come out on its own

Enjoy.

Dump the filter and rinds in the bin or in your garden (makes good compost)

Dishwasher safe, but a brief rinse will do or if using immediately again, don’t bother, just tip out rinds and go again.

For more help:

021-4192945

www.truthcoffee.com

Info@truthcoffee.com

the abid Clever Coffee maker as seen on SABC TV Expresso (pardon their spelling….?) this morning by insomniacs and other people who don’t sleep.

Buy one here

Lear how to use it here

Filter coffee machine? pity about the heating element ruining the coffee as it drips through, and with a very few exceptions, little control of brew strength.

Cheap home espresso machine? great except they don’t work. To make things worse optimising them involves purchasing a grinder costing waaaay more than the toy machine you bought and stuck in a cupboard

Moka pot? good especially when a grinder is involved, but you need to know how to use it in anger. Complicated, messy and involved.

Plunger, Again as with the Moka pot a little technique is involved, and many complain about the coffee solids coming through as residue in the cup.

What to do, what to do?

Try the ABID dammit. Cheap, around R150, easy to use and you can control brew contact time. too little contact between water and ground coffee and dull watery underextraction is the brew of the day. Too long and bitter mud is the joy produced. Abid solves that allowing you to accurately decide when to stop brewing (we have best results as with plunger of 3 minutes.)

Simple technique: Put it on the counter, insert a filter paper, put in just under 20g of coffee. fill with 250ml of just off boiling water (95°C is perfect). set a timer to 3 minutes or tap your fingers in a suitably irritating drumming fashion on a table… then place on a cup to allow the coffee to flow out automatically.

to wash up, tip into garbage, rinse with water. Done

It is microwave and dishwasher proof , but who cares?

buy here

Brewing…

He concisely describes the first 3 waves with the third being the one we are TRUTH.fully living, but I find it very interesting how we and the better, more well-known guys, especially abroad¹ have been getting “keeping on track” so to speak.

We have been promoting the Abid per-cup drip filter experience (read more about them here) and falling more in love with them. The main thing that resonates in his blog with us here is that we love coffee and are still in it because we love it and love having fun with it and where ever this ‘wave’ leads us I just hope that we continue to have fun and enjoy the coffee along the way.

Zane

A new way of preparing coffee

We now stock and use the abid, the first in South Africa

this is the video that started all the fuss:

Videocast #3 – Chemex/Pourover from James Hoffmann on Vimeo.

that coffee bastard James Hoffman, sometime world barista champion and Uber coffee geek got me thinking again. these are the consequences.

Then these guys had to go analyze it all:

(pulled from their site)

via Abid Clever Coffee Dripper // The Other Black Stuff.

I’m going to be honest here, though I’ve had long-standing love affairs with the French Press, and even the vac-pot, drip brewing is a more recent interest. Like the good sheep I am, I’ll admit it was sparked by Square Mile’s now famous/infamous Chemex videocast.

They are dangerous videos to watch because they usually make me want to go buy some new toys. I’ve actually really enjoyed using the Chemex, and other drip cones, I still love the elegance of the Chemex, but to a certain degree I find all of these manual drip methods as much of an art as a science.

With all coffee brewing there are 5 basic things you want to control:

Coffee Dose

Coffee Grind Size

Water Dose

Water Temperature

Contact Time

Ideally these 5 elements would be completely independent of each other. However, with manual drip, contact time is inversely proportional to coffee dose and coffee grind size, meaning one cannot alter one without altering the other. In practice this often meant I was bumping up the dose a little, or making the grind a little finer to push out the contact time to the desired amount. It’s a bit like stepped espresso grinders, having to alter the dose to compensate for jumps in grind size.

Of course pour rate and pour style also influence contact time (and of course turbulence and agitation), but all things being equal contact time is dependent on coffee dose and grind size. Most people would agree, I’m sure, that contact time and grind size should be directly rather than inversely proportional.

Brewing…

Enter the Abid Clever Coffee Dripper.

These are not easy to acquire in Europe / US (yet). After scouring the internet looking to buy one, I eventually succeeded in getting one when the manufacturer kindly sent me one (thanks Jessica). I already had the tea brewer from Abid, rebranded by a few different sellers, which Abid call the Miraculous Coffee & Tea maker. Despite the name it isn’t actually great for coffee, producing a very sludgy cup (great tea brewer though).

The premise of their brewers is simple enough, you have a vessel in which coffee/tea can be brewed. At the bottom of the vessel there is a valve attached to a platform. When the platform is down the valve is closed, when it is pushed up (by placing the brewer on top of a cup), the valve opens, allowing the brew to exit at the bottom.

Basically the valve stays closed unless you place it on top of a cup or jug or something similar – then it opens.

Draining…

The Clever differs from some of Abid’s other brewers being cone shaped, designed to accept a coffee filter (solving the sludge problem). Flat bottomed filters (eg Mellita) are the best fit, though I’ve found Chemex and Hario (paper and cloth) filters to work fine with the brewer. There is a small space under the filter, which is a slightly larger, though still a small space with the cone filters – no biggie. Well, there is one time when this becomes a little of an issue, if you are brewing more than one cup at one time, the liquid that fills this space tends to be weaker than the liquid that remains on the other side of the filter paper. By separating the brew into two cups, the first would get all of this portion. In this scenario it would be best to first empty into a preheated jug, before portioning into individual cups.

In practice I found myself using a coarse grind, much coarser than I would have dreamed of with a Chemex, with a somewhat high dose (80g / L) – though I don’t mean to prescribe on this. For a 4 minute brew you can allow to stand till about 3:15 – 3:25, then place on top of the cup. I like to submerge the grinds, however, after about 30-45 seconds. The grinds settle at the bottom of the cone and remain in contact with the brew water until the final moments. It does add about 30 seconds onto the drainage time for me (with my dose / grind size / brew volume). simple stuff, and by and large I’ve been very happy with the results. A super clean cup that is incredibly simple to prepare (and clean up after).

Underneath…

Probably worth noting that it’s also dishwasher and microwave safe, and while I can’t see much use for the latter, the former is a nice option to have.

Made a video of the Abid – this isn’t meant to prescribe a “definitive” technique for the brewer – it’s just how I have been using it.

As always – can be viewed in HD on Vimeo.com.

Abid Clever Coffee Dripper from The Other Black Stuff on Vimeo.

*Addendum 1* the drain time is of course dependent on your grind (and whether you submerge or not). With finer grinds I’ve experienced drain times of up to 2.5 mins.

Abid Clever Coffee Dripper from The Other Black Stuff on Vimeo.

buy it here