Brew Guide

This is just a general guide to our approach to brewing coffee. Your mileage my vary, but this is the approach we take at home. If you ask how we brew or rest our coffee, you’re probably just going to get a link here, so if that’s why you’re on this page, hello again.

Roast Level

We roast as light as we can to avoid any roast character while maximizing sweetness and preserving floral notes. We strive to roast with a nordic light approach, but ultimately, the coffee dictates the roast. Roast level is subjective though, and our light may be different than the light you’re used to. Which is fair.

We typically roast to what we label “1/5,” which may be lighter than a typical American light, and the roast profile aims for the shortest development time that still properly develops the coffee.

2/5 is reserved for ~ American light. Minimal roast characteristics, but the coffee takes on a bit more body.

3/5 would be our medium roast, but I don’t think this or anything beyond exists in our graphics folder.

Rest

Natural - At least 2 weeks from roast date, but may continue to improve over time

Honey - At least 2 weeks, but may benefit from extended rest (~3-5)

Washed - At least 3 weeks, but will benefit from extended rest (~4-6)

Note that these are just general guidelines based on what we’ve found for our coffees. We encourage you to try the coffee though to determine. It’s always fun to see a coffee change over time. More rest typically lends itself to more cohesive flavors, toned down acidity, and balanced funky notes. Washed coffees tend to be more expressive and bright with time.

We sample coffee over time and find tasting notes are still accurate up to around 4 months. We encourage you to enjoy the coffee before 6 months though.

Water

Tap water is pretty variable based on geographic location and source. The geology of your region will dictate the mineral profile and hardness of your water. We strongly encourage you to remove that variable for brewing coffee (unless you live in Norway because that’s what we base our coffee water on).

The water we use is a version of the water recipe from Jonathan Gagné:

350 mL Concentrate

1.75g Epsom Salt

0.70g Magnesium Chloride hexahydrate

0.53g Calcium Chloride anhydrous

0.60g Baking Soda

0.70g Potassium Bicarbonate

25mL concentrate per gallon of RO water to get ~38ppm TDS

We also use:

1 light roast Third Wave Water packet into a 2.5 gallon distilled water jug.

At the very least, try some Poland Spring water, which is generally low TDS.

Recipe

We test ALL coffee with a 1:16.6 ratio (15g:250mL) with an Orea O1 flat bottom brewer with fast filters

208F water

1ZPresso ZP6 setting 5.5

45 second bloom of 60mL with a pour to generate agitation

0:45 - pour in a circular pattern to 160mL (~3.5 mL/sec)

Once the water level reaches the coffee bed, pour in a circular pattern to 250mL (~3mL/sec)

Aiming to finish around 2:30

Funky coffees tend to be more balanced with a lower water temperature (200-202F).