Q&A COFFEE PODCAST, EPISODE 2: BREWING

Q&A Coffee Podcast with Scott Rao

As of today’s podcast, I ‘ve begun separating the podcasts by theme: brewing, roasting, coffee & health, etc. My hope is to help listeners decide which episodes may interest them most. Today I fielded questions with Vassily about brewing, with a few coffee-business questions in the mix as well.

EPISODE TWO (also available on iTunes):

EPISODE QUESTIONS & TIMES

Mirko Thamm (1:10)

1: concerning the CO2 level of the beans. Is it better to degas after grinding (30-45min) or to grind and brew directly after grinding. Which way will get better (sweeter or more consistent) results?

2: Sieving the grind. I sieved my grind and if I used just a small range of particles (like 400-500 micrometer) the coffee was not as complex as the whole range. Should we sieve the course particles (bigger than 500microns), the fines or just a small range? Thanks

From Jonathan Mitchell (5:20)

#1 Business - I have a few potential office/law firm clients that want to become a wholesale partner but they are reluctant to keep a grinder on hand. They want me to pre-grind the coffee. I am already a little hesitant to have my coffee represented in this area but it feels like an untapped arena and a decent source of revenue. What are your thoughts?

#2 Any tips on partnering/raising money for future expansion? I am so scared of losing ownership, as I never want to compromise profit sharing with my employees, but I am also scared to dip into my personal savings for a new shop.

Benjamin Byrd , Due South Coffee Roasters (09:55)

I have a Breville precision brewer on the way and I was wondering if you had any tips on programming it for the best results, or if the batch brew rules blog was directly applicable to it. Thank you for your time and for all you do to save the industry from underdevelopment!

Ghazi Almoayed (12:30)

Hey Scott

I have 2 questions for you about espresso brewing:

1. What are you thoughts on lowering pressure to 5 or 6 bar? Is this beneficial for better extractions + consistency regardless of roast level

2. For lighter roasts I have heard about extracting 1:3 . So 18g in with 54g out. Is this only possible with an EK grinder or can a Baratza Forte still pull this off? What sort of timings should one aim for when attempting those ratios ?

Nuno Cristiano de Sousa (19:48)

Hi Scott!

First of all, thanks for taking the time to answer questions of the community
- How do you scale up your filter recipes?

I can make my extractions pretty aromatic and balanced with a 2 pours recipe, comandante 25clicks, pouring at an average 2.5ml/sec (measured in acaia). If the flow rate is higher, the total time is lower, and that messes up the extraction.

However when I tried to scale up to 500ml/17oz, i changed the grind to 28 clicks, kept flow rate, and the average extraction time raised to 3:30.