Tuesday, July 19, 2022

BH Unlimited Update - Jul 19th 2022

Wet Weiss Works

BH Unlimited Update, July 19th 2022.

In the last update we mentioned a new brewing concept which Dan Shusett from Tricolate introduced us to. We're calling it Wet Weiss Distribution — it's like the WDT but using a comb in the wet coffee slurry. Here's a bit of background on this ingeniously simple new approach and some info on an experiment we designed to find out for sure if the Wet Weiss technique actually works:

Zero-bypass brewing has become increasingly popular with baristas over the last few months, but there is something a little counterintuitive about it. You see, usually, when you pour water onto coffee grinds, a crust forms — right? At least it does in a cupping bowl; it does in a French press, too. It basically does in an Aeropress depending on your brew method. But no crust of coffee forms when brewing espresso. You need only watch one of those see-through portafilter videos like this beauty (great backing track) to see that. The downwards flow of water is able to push those gases through the bottom of the filter basket before they have a chance to form a crust and ruin your puck. So what about zero-bypass brewing? So far, it looks like the established best practice is to prevent a crust from forming at all costs. This is where zero-bypass brewing becomes particularly interesting and needs some closer scrutiny.

One easy investigation you might try is going to Youtube, searching 'zero bypass brewing' and then zooming in — literally hit CTRL+. What you will notice is that in almost every video about zero-bypassing you can see a layer of bubbles trapped in the coffee bed, like a crust of coffee on a scuba dive. But Wet Weiss has completely solved that problem for us.

Tricolate, a zero bypass coffee brewer

We designed an experiment to find out what effect Wet Weiss has on the contact time and extraction efficiency of the Tricolate. In case you're not aware, the Tricolate is, in itself, a very efficient means of extracting coffee, but we were delighted to find that Wet Weiss seems to make it gargantuanly better. The Wet Weiss method dramatically increased extraction. We explain all the details in this new blog post. In case you don't yet have a BH Unlimited subscription, no stress, this post is open access.

Quick Links

Well done to the folks at Ārāmse for so thoroughly answering the question that was on everyone's lips: 'Can't I just use the bottom of my Aeropress to make a zero-bypass brew instead of having to buy a Tricolate or a Nextlevel brewer?'

We picked up a copy of the delightful Martin Hudak's new book during WOC in Milano. It's called Spiritual and it is all about the past, present, and future of coffee cocktails. Martin has uncovered written evidence of coffee cocktails from more than two hundred years ago.

Thanks to Ourcoffeeshelter for producing this vid to show you how to assemble the Comb.

We enjoyed reading this interview with our good friend Stephen Leighton from Drop Coffee in Stockholm. The interview covers Drop's laudable philosophy of only stocking coffee grown by producers that either Steve or Joanna Alm (managing director of Drop Coffee, and three times Swedish Coffee Roasting Champion) have personally visited and created enduring relationships with.

New Videos

We have uploaded six new videos to the online education subscription this week:

AE 3.01 What Defines a Good Puck?

AE 6.01 Pressure

RS 0.02 The First Coffee Roasters

T 1.05 The Science of Shade-grown Coffee

T 3.03 Irrigation

CBGB 0.04 The Emergence of the Brazilian Coffee Industry

The Coffee Buyer's Guide to Colombia

This week in The Coffee Buyer's Guide to Colombia, we visit Caquetá, Casanare, and Cauca. We've chosen a systematic approach to covering Colombia's coffee-growing regions to highlight some of the less well-known origins.

Caquetá and Casanare lie on the eastern side of the Andes, so both departments contain a lot of low-lying land, not suitable for arabica production. Coffee is nonetheless important to Caquetá's economy — as it is the department's only significant international export. Meanwhile, Casanare produces relatively small amounts of coffee, and is better-known for oil production and cattle farming.

Most of the arabica in the eastern departments grows below 1,200 metres, and some as low as 200 metres. Both departments also produce small amounts of specialty coffee on the higher slopes of the Andes to the west. If Colombia begins producing robusta in the future, the eastern departments are likely to be where it would start.

Coffee planted on a steep hillside in Cauca. Photo by CIAT/NeilPalmer.

Cauca is in the southwest — Colombia's 'other' coffee heartland, after the central Eje Cafetero. The geography of Cauca's high plateau gives it a stable climate and remarkably consistent conditions for growing coffee. These features were key to its bid for a Denomination of Origin (DO), which was awarded in 2011.

BH Unlimited subscribers have advanced access to each new chapter as the production progresses.

An Ad-Free Learning Experience

At BH we never do ads for other company's products on our website. There's no product placement in any of our courses, newsletters or blog posts. Our only income comes from what you pay for your subscriptions. When you see machinery or coffee gear mentioned in any of our educational material, or featured in our course videos, we have chosen to use that equipment because we like using it, because we think it's historically significant in the evolution of the espresso machine, or because it shows you something you need to see about modern coffee culture. It's as simple as that.