Last summer, I wrote this newsletter about the challenge of roasting for different brewing methods. We ultimately preferred lighter roasts for bypass-style pour over brews, and slightly more developed roasts for full-immersion, longer brews.
I think the paranoia (dramatic I know, but true) about a given variable in coffee comes and goes over time. You explore something in depth, then come to a conclusion. To do that properly, you have to leave other variables alone. Depending on what happens, you go on an exploratory path and land somewhere that tastes good to you. That becomes the way you approach that aspect of coffee. Over time, you brew and taste with those ideas in mind. But every now and then, something makes you question them. A different experience or cup triggers a moment of “was I actually right?”, and so the cycle continues. Of course, it’s not just a conceptual or logical question, preferences change too. I often wonder if the me now would choose the same coffees as the me ten years ago. Philosophical questions! All I can really do is focus on what tastes good to me today.
One thing that has definitely changed in the last decade is the sheer variety of filter brewing devices. The old pour over vs immersion split doesn’t feel that relevant anymore. Pour over brewing is less distinct than it first appears, depending on the recipe, the slurry can essentially behave like an immersion. Also, brewers that blend immersion and percolation, like the Hario Switch and Pulsar, are becoming more common.
I’ve started to think that a more meaningful way to differentiate brewers is whether they are bypass or no-bypass. In its simplest form, bypass brewing describes a final cup made up of both water that has extracted flavour from the coffee, and water that hasn’t. That second portion either skips the ground coffee during brewing or is added afterwards. You saw this in those old AeroPress recipes—brew a concentrate, then dilute. In that sense, a long black or americano is a bypass brew too. So are pour overs like the V60, Kalita, or Orea since water runs down the walls of the filter, missing a portion of the coffee bed. It’s hard to measure or control exactly how much bypass is happening, but brewing technique has a big influence. Thinking about things in bypass terms has helped me understand why I’ve settled into certain filter preferences.
I used to think I just preferred less paper. And while paper does have an effect, I’ve also noticed that brewers with more paper tend to have higher bypass. With these brewers, you need to grind finer so that the water interacting with the coffee becomes more concentrated—which then balances out with the water that bypasses. Finer grinding on nearly all grinders comes with trade-offs. As you push the coffee through finer burr settings, the grind becomes less efficient. You get more friction, heat and pressure as the coffee regrinds and churns. Some newer single-dose grinding techniques, such as slowing down the feed of the coffee into the burrs, help reduce this damage.
One thing I really like about no-bypass brewers is that you can grind coarser and still get high extractions, mitigating the damage imparted during grinding. That’s one reason we moved to slower, full-immersion brews years ago. It’s also part of why the cupping table tends to taste so good.
Lately, I’ve been brewing with an AeroPress paper on the Xbloom to make a no-bypass cup. I grind coarse and drop the grinder RPM. The Xbloom has impressed me, it offers great value for a one-cup automated brewer that also has a high-quality integrated grinder.
We also changed the water setup in both shops and the roastery. It’s now split: RO water for filter coffee, and resin-exchange for moderately hard water for espresso. We generally use fairly soft water for filter these days.
Ultimately, every decision we make from farm to cup is a contextual one. More than ever, I’m drawn to clean, aromatic coffees, and my brewing preferences are all geared toward revealing and amplifying those qualities. As we’ll explore in the next newsletter on espresso brewing, the coffee itself can completely change how to think about the brew method.
We’ve started stocking a few of the no-bypass brewers we’ve enjoyed using—the Hoop, the NextLevel Pulsar, and the Delter Coffee Press. The Delter is interesting. It behaves like a filter espresso device: a small slurry volume and percolation-driven process. It’s always tasted distinct to me—juicy, bright, and specific.
That said, I’ve had some lovely bypass brews recently too. I’m not anti-bypass. But I do think these no-bypass brewers are delivering something really compelling. Try them out.
Yours,
Maxwell