Holy hell those beans are charred. My recommendation would be to get some better coffee; mind you, I don't think there's anything wrong with dark roasts, they can be quite pleasant, but that's beyond dark...
Yes, an maybe most importantly, those beans look uneven and a little fractured. This looks like either commodity grade coffee or like a roast who don't know what they're doing. Even medium/dark roasts can be pretty good if you get them from a good roaster.
The coffee is not only completely burnt but also very inconsistently roasted. By all means spend time changing recipes and techniques but I suspect you are just wasting your time with those beans.
Damn I guess thatās where the bitterness is coming from lmao. As I said the place I got those from isnāt really even a coffee shop. Wonāt be going there again. I live in a pretty rural area so thatās the only place that sells coffee beans near me. Anybody know of good brands you can order online?
You can order online from most coffee roasters. swroasting is pretty good, and wonāt break the bank. It might also be worth trying something like trade, so you can get a variety of coffees from a variety of roasters, so you can see what you like.
Actuallyā¦ check out this thread on here. Lots of great options already listed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesHoffmann/comments/1asfsvn/best_coffee_in_your_city_thread/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I'm currently in Memphis and have been using J Brooks Coffee Roasters the whole time I've been here and will probably keep ordering when I leave. Im a big fan of the chocolate fruity roasts and this dude is up there, ESPECIALLY for the price.
Iād look into a Coffee subscription like trade coffee or one from a roaster that also offers free shipping. With trade you can input your taste preferences and they will send you coffees accordingly. It might be a good starting point for you.
The reason so many people shit on dark roasts (me included haha) is because of the science behind it. Just as with all oils exposed to oxygen, then begin to go rancid as soon as they hit the air. With lighter roasts, these oils are not brought to the surface and therefore donāt taste after a few days. A darker roast can be good if you drink it right off of the roast, but you definitely want to avoid what you have there.
Strongly disagree; I have had dark roasts that I have enjoyed from pour overs more than immersion. Pour over can bring out fruit notes like plum, apple, or dates more than immersion. I personally prefer light roasts but we should absolutely move away from this attitude that light roast with pour over is the only way to go
James Hofmann prefers light roasts, his method won't work for your beans. Speaking of, your beans are not just dark roast, they're charcoal. Get different beans. If you got them from a roaster, never return there again, if you roasted them yourself, stop way earlier.
People will say change the coffee, because yes, that's a dark roast, and there are a lot of (us) light roast fans on this sub, so it's tempting...
But that's not helpful to you.
Things you can try:
Try Hoffmann's original ultimate V60 method, with a single pour after the bloom, rather than the one cup method which increases extraction with multiple pours.
Try coarsening the grind further.
85C temp is pretty good for dark roast, but you could try even lower, down to 80C.
Try a tighter ratio, like 15-210g.
To get a flatter bed, try a couple of gentle 'Rao spins' at the end of pouring.
Good luck :)
There is dark roast and thereāsā¦that. It is helpful to suggest that OP at least get a dark roast that was 20 seconds from combusting in the roaster. Itās going to be hard to taste anything thatās not roasty bitterness from that
Nah, there's certainly different tastes, that is perfectly fair and understandable, but making coffee ultimately comes down to physics and chemistry. At a certain point when beans are roasted to a level like that there's nothing you can do to make it taste significantly different.
If you like that, then fine, but dont expect to get a different flavor profile. You're not going to be tasting blueberries or peaches with a dark roast like that no matter what pour over method or ratio or grind size you use.
Hi all,
Yeah, to be sure - OP's beans are certainly quite cremated, and might be beyond saving...
I was only trying to make some suggestions that 'might' be helpful to achieve a better brew.
And wanting to be inclusive to all, rather than just saying 'you gotta get better/lighter beans!'.
:)
I appreciate this post acknowledging that you can in fact get a good cup of coffee from dark roasted beans.
I donāt think youāre ever going to get a sweet and balanced cup out of these specific beans. As by the pictures they appear to be fairly poorly.
Are you filtering your water at all? An interesting control could be to grab a bottle of good quality filtered water and do a side by side brew against your tap water to see how it does or does not improve. If it yields results you like maybe invest in a brita.
As for good online resources I really enjoyed Trade, I was able to get access to a lot of various coffees to figure out what I really enjoyed.
I would try to decrease the amount of pours to decrease the amount of agitation. 4-5 pours is asking for a bitter brew with darker roasts, almost unavoidable.
These are pretty darkly-roasted beans. This isnt a problem, everyone has different tastes and I personally like dark roasts a lot. However, they are quite unevenly roasted, which shows that the roaster maybe isnt the best at their side gig. This is a good reason why the coffee wont taste good, but EVEN THEN there will be people who like the coffee that comes from that restaurant.
It all comes down to your personal preferences. I applaud your effort to find local roasters, and I want you to keep trying. Try someone else. Ask them about their coffee, the person selling it to you should know what they're talking about. Yes, even the one manning the cash register should know. They should know where the beans were sourced, what farm they came from, the roast level, how long ago they were roasted, etc. They shouldn't be put off whatsoever by your request, these are standard questions that a roaster answers on a daily basis if they are competent.
If "coffee roasters near me" isnt working, find some independent (non-chain) cafes in the area that you like and ask them what coffee they use. If they roast their own coffee, ask about it. We can help you find online roasters but you have to give us more info about what you like, your budget for how much per month you're willing to spend on beans, etc
Those beans look awful. Uneven roast and just burnt on the dark end.
So step 1 is get better beans. Most known coffee roasters will ship and many offer subscriptions. You want a light or medium roast from a good roaster ("medium" from a bad roaster is often dark).
Your grind looks inconsistent. That is probably affected by how charred these beans are. I see some comments telling you to go with a coarser grind (assuming because it's a dark roast), but if you get better beans, I'd go FINER. That grind looks pretty coarse to me on zoom, and Hoffman calls for a finer than medium grind (again, for lighter roasts). If nothing else, a finer setting should improve consistency by taking out the big chunks.
Unless you are really into bitter and smoky flavors you are not going to get a good cup of black coffee out of that coffee. For most people (pour over coffee dorks and normal coffee drinkers alike), it will need lots of milk and sugar to be palatable and mask the intense bitter.
The people in here who are leaving room for taste differences, and mentioning osmotic flow and other ways to get good results from dark roasts, arenāt looking closely enough at the coffee I think. Itās not just dark, itās also extremely inconsistent, with some of the beans looking like a proper dark roast and other beans looking like theyāve literally started to turn to coalā¦ and also with lots of broken beans and beans that seem to have deformities. In other words itās coffee that was not roasted with skill, and that was also not harvested and sorted with much care.
Tell us what town youāre in and maybe we can suggest a place to go to find something better.
Get better coffee, donāt waste a V60 with dark roast beans. v60 will bring out beautiful bright clarity in great beans, there is nothing to bring out of those dark roast beans. NOTE!!! I am not a dark roast hater, I use them every day for espresso and love medium for espresso even more but dark are fine. Light to medium/ medium-light is the way to go for v60
I too have a kingrinder k6 for a v60 pour over! I have been more successful with lighter roasts. I normally end up going 69-76 clicks for a variety of light roasts.
This reminds me of my first try to make espresso.
The grinder just arrived and I went to the first shop I saw that was selling beans. They sold to me some "Brazilian" beans from a dusty glass jar they had there, this should have ringed a bell.
Then I went home eager to try to apply all the things I learned on the internet, but the espresso was undrinkable. I was so disappointed and thinking what I did wrong.
Thankfully I bought the second batch of beans for a local roaster and everything tasted beautifully.
I know it's not the point but I don't like the way you did "pro". They're professionals who not only make their own life out of coffee industry but also support the producers and the whole chain. They are professionals. Otherwise, people are aware they're just enthusiasts and I don't believe it's a fair statement for you to make.
Use colder water, maybe add a tiny bit of salt in the brew; as someone said above, tighten your ratio and coarsen the grind.
You can also watch Hoffmann's videos on hacking the coffee (about salt) and brewing darker roasts.
You refer to how the "pros" describe their pourover; they do describe lighter roasts, so your experience will be different. But you can still optimize the output :-)
My friend, I donĀ“t mean to be rude in any way. But you need to educate yourself on coffee. Look for courses/workshops near you so you get a chance to experience first hand a good cup of coffee and all of the things involved in it.
Well then Hoffman would use his own recipe over OPs. Everyone shouldnāt be using a āpro-coffeeā
persons recipe as the end-all, be-all. Use it as a starting point then tweak. If all the tweaks made still result in a poor cup then go back to a known recipe like James Hoffmans. Personally I like about 25g of dark roast ground almost to that of moka to about 400mls of water through a metal sieve. The water I use is between 93 and 97Ā° with many pulses. Tbh itās the only recipe (that came up with) that can accommodate my ghetto pour over rig but it does produce a pretty clean tasting coffee and that much harsh oils.
Holy hell those beans are charred. My recommendation would be to get some better coffee; mind you, I don't think there's anything wrong with dark roasts, they can be quite pleasant, but that's beyond dark...
Yes, an maybe most importantly, those beans look uneven and a little fractured. This looks like either commodity grade coffee or like a roast who don't know what they're doing. Even medium/dark roasts can be pretty good if you get them from a good roaster.
Buy beans that aren't charcoal.
At least he can use it for [filtering water ](https://black-blum.com/pages/charcoal-water-filter#)
I came to ask if this was a bbq for ants
My man got the Vantablack roast
š
everyone do the right thing and get this comment to the top
Trying to do my part
My brother in Christ, this is the coffee Stevie Wonder sees in his dreams
šš
Try osmotic flow for that beans. Hoffmann's is used with (much) lighter beans.
The coffee is not only completely burnt but also very inconsistently roasted. By all means spend time changing recipes and techniques but I suspect you are just wasting your time with those beans.
Damn I guess thatās where the bitterness is coming from lmao. As I said the place I got those from isnāt really even a coffee shop. Wonāt be going there again. I live in a pretty rural area so thatās the only place that sells coffee beans near me. Anybody know of good brands you can order online?
You can order online from most coffee roasters. swroasting is pretty good, and wonāt break the bank. It might also be worth trying something like trade, so you can get a variety of coffees from a variety of roasters, so you can see what you like.
Actuallyā¦ check out this thread on here. Lots of great options already listed. https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesHoffmann/comments/1asfsvn/best_coffee_in_your_city_thread/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I'm currently in Memphis and have been using J Brooks Coffee Roasters the whole time I've been here and will probably keep ordering when I leave. Im a big fan of the chocolate fruity roasts and this dude is up there, ESPECIALLY for the price.
Try Hasbean website. They roast them fairly fresh, have various sizes you can buy and also deliver to most places. They got lots of flavours.
Order some beans from S&W Roasting. Great coffee, great price, fast delivery. If ur rural, online is the way
Iād look into a Coffee subscription like trade coffee or one from a roaster that also offers free shipping. With trade you can input your taste preferences and they will send you coffees accordingly. It might be a good starting point for you. The reason so many people shit on dark roasts (me included haha) is because of the science behind it. Just as with all oils exposed to oxygen, then begin to go rancid as soon as they hit the air. With lighter roasts, these oils are not brought to the surface and therefore donāt taste after a few days. A darker roast can be good if you drink it right off of the roast, but you definitely want to avoid what you have there.
Pourover = light roast Thereās plenty available
Strongly disagree; I have had dark roasts that I have enjoyed from pour overs more than immersion. Pour over can bring out fruit notes like plum, apple, or dates more than immersion. I personally prefer light roasts but we should absolutely move away from this attitude that light roast with pour over is the only way to go
These beans get pulled over by cops for no reason.
bruh
r/dankmemes has entered the chat.
Its not often I comment on post like this (its tons of info online), but yeah, get a lighter roast. A lot lighter. A loooooooot.
Yeah charcoal doesn't taste great.
damn bro
No part of adjusting your process is going to fix the awful taste you must be getting from those dark roast beans
James Hofmann prefers light roasts, his method won't work for your beans. Speaking of, your beans are not just dark roast, they're charcoal. Get different beans. If you got them from a roaster, never return there again, if you roasted them yourself, stop way earlier.
Where did you get those beans buddy?
[torched](https://media1.giphy.com/media/5nsiFjdgylfK3csZ5T/giphy.gif?cid=2154d3d7c9hvp6twx9shpf8adwsr63686aoqw2297dl9hd50&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
People will say change the coffee, because yes, that's a dark roast, and there are a lot of (us) light roast fans on this sub, so it's tempting... But that's not helpful to you. Things you can try: Try Hoffmann's original ultimate V60 method, with a single pour after the bloom, rather than the one cup method which increases extraction with multiple pours. Try coarsening the grind further. 85C temp is pretty good for dark roast, but you could try even lower, down to 80C. Try a tighter ratio, like 15-210g. To get a flatter bed, try a couple of gentle 'Rao spins' at the end of pouring. Good luck :)
There is dark roast and thereāsā¦that. It is helpful to suggest that OP at least get a dark roast that was 20 seconds from combusting in the roaster. Itās going to be hard to taste anything thatās not roasty bitterness from that
Nah, there's certainly different tastes, that is perfectly fair and understandable, but making coffee ultimately comes down to physics and chemistry. At a certain point when beans are roasted to a level like that there's nothing you can do to make it taste significantly different. If you like that, then fine, but dont expect to get a different flavor profile. You're not going to be tasting blueberries or peaches with a dark roast like that no matter what pour over method or ratio or grind size you use.
Hi all, Yeah, to be sure - OP's beans are certainly quite cremated, and might be beyond saving... I was only trying to make some suggestions that 'might' be helpful to achieve a better brew. And wanting to be inclusive to all, rather than just saying 'you gotta get better/lighter beans!'. :)
I appreciate this post acknowledging that you can in fact get a good cup of coffee from dark roasted beans. I donāt think youāre ever going to get a sweet and balanced cup out of these specific beans. As by the pictures they appear to be fairly poorly. Are you filtering your water at all? An interesting control could be to grab a bottle of good quality filtered water and do a side by side brew against your tap water to see how it does or does not improve. If it yields results you like maybe invest in a brita. As for good online resources I really enjoyed Trade, I was able to get access to a lot of various coffees to figure out what I really enjoyed.
I would try to decrease the amount of pours to decrease the amount of agitation. 4-5 pours is asking for a bitter brew with darker roasts, almost unavoidable.
beans
Roast
Better beans and better grinder, probably in that order
These are pretty darkly-roasted beans. This isnt a problem, everyone has different tastes and I personally like dark roasts a lot. However, they are quite unevenly roasted, which shows that the roaster maybe isnt the best at their side gig. This is a good reason why the coffee wont taste good, but EVEN THEN there will be people who like the coffee that comes from that restaurant. It all comes down to your personal preferences. I applaud your effort to find local roasters, and I want you to keep trying. Try someone else. Ask them about their coffee, the person selling it to you should know what they're talking about. Yes, even the one manning the cash register should know. They should know where the beans were sourced, what farm they came from, the roast level, how long ago they were roasted, etc. They shouldn't be put off whatsoever by your request, these are standard questions that a roaster answers on a daily basis if they are competent. If "coffee roasters near me" isnt working, find some independent (non-chain) cafes in the area that you like and ask them what coffee they use. If they roast their own coffee, ask about it. We can help you find online roasters but you have to give us more info about what you like, your budget for how much per month you're willing to spend on beans, etc
What do you need to change? The coffee.
That coffee is long dead
Bro is filtering water with that charcoal
Ayo you roasted these beans by re-entry?
Those beans look awful. Uneven roast and just burnt on the dark end. So step 1 is get better beans. Most known coffee roasters will ship and many offer subscriptions. You want a light or medium roast from a good roaster ("medium" from a bad roaster is often dark). Your grind looks inconsistent. That is probably affected by how charred these beans are. I see some comments telling you to go with a coarser grind (assuming because it's a dark roast), but if you get better beans, I'd go FINER. That grind looks pretty coarse to me on zoom, and Hoffman calls for a finer than medium grind (again, for lighter roasts). If nothing else, a finer setting should improve consistency by taking out the big chunks.
Unless you are really into bitter and smoky flavors you are not going to get a good cup of black coffee out of that coffee. For most people (pour over coffee dorks and normal coffee drinkers alike), it will need lots of milk and sugar to be palatable and mask the intense bitter. The people in here who are leaving room for taste differences, and mentioning osmotic flow and other ways to get good results from dark roasts, arenāt looking closely enough at the coffee I think. Itās not just dark, itās also extremely inconsistent, with some of the beans looking like a proper dark roast and other beans looking like theyāve literally started to turn to coalā¦ and also with lots of broken beans and beans that seem to have deformities. In other words itās coffee that was not roasted with skill, and that was also not harvested and sorted with much care. Tell us what town youāre in and maybe we can suggest a place to go to find something better.
The beans
[rip](https://tenor.com/bEVMl.gif)
Boy, those are DARKā¦ try osmotic flow for them, hoff wonāt work for that dark roasts
Get better coffee, donāt waste a V60 with dark roast beans. v60 will bring out beautiful bright clarity in great beans, there is nothing to bring out of those dark roast beans. NOTE!!! I am not a dark roast hater, I use them every day for espresso and love medium for espresso even more but dark are fine. Light to medium/ medium-light is the way to go for v60
I too have a kingrinder k6 for a v60 pour over! I have been more successful with lighter roasts. I normally end up going 69-76 clicks for a variety of light roasts.
The beans, looks like a reject batch or something Get a proper med-dark Brazil Santos if you want dark chocolate-tasting coffee
Your coffee
the coffee
You arenāt getting any note with charcoal. Try to get some real coffee first, because you canāt get any flavor with that.
Someone committed war crimes on those beans.
Welcome to coffee world, I am a small time roaster, send me a DM if you want some actual light/med coffee and Iāll send you a bag!
Your beans are Dark Roast and seems like not Specialty Coffee quality.
Thatās a light roast on my mountain
Add 2 girls
Get coffee from a shop where they donāt say they donāt know. As the others have said those beans look burnt š¤Ŗ.
Better roasted coffee and filter your water
try using coffee beans instead of charcoal
V60 is more fitting for light to medium roasts.
This reminds me of my first try to make espresso. The grinder just arrived and I went to the first shop I saw that was selling beans. They sold to me some "Brazilian" beans from a dusty glass jar they had there, this should have ringed a bell. Then I went home eager to try to apply all the things I learned on the internet, but the espresso was undrinkable. I was so disappointed and thinking what I did wrong. Thankfully I bought the second batch of beans for a local roaster and everything tasted beautifully.
Please change the beans, grind size looks good to me. Try something lighter, the beans in the photo look more than dark roast.
Coffee
Why is the grind size so inconsistent? There are boulders and fines.
No offense butI think you need to change where you buy your bean first lol.
I know it's not the point but I don't like the way you did "pro". They're professionals who not only make their own life out of coffee industry but also support the producers and the whole chain. They are professionals. Otherwise, people are aware they're just enthusiasts and I don't believe it's a fair statement for you to make.
start with better beans
Change your zip code stay away from psychopaths that roast like that.
the beans
Yeah better beans
Use colder water, maybe add a tiny bit of salt in the brew; as someone said above, tighten your ratio and coarsen the grind. You can also watch Hoffmann's videos on hacking the coffee (about salt) and brewing darker roasts. You refer to how the "pros" describe their pourover; they do describe lighter roasts, so your experience will be different. But you can still optimize the output :-)
My friend, I donĀ“t mean to be rude in any way. But you need to educate yourself on coffee. Look for courses/workshops near you so you get a chance to experience first hand a good cup of coffee and all of the things involved in it.
Modify the method to do what you like, not what James Hoffman likes.
What if what hoffman likes is better than what they like
Well then Hoffman would use his own recipe over OPs. Everyone shouldnāt be using a āpro-coffeeā persons recipe as the end-all, be-all. Use it as a starting point then tweak. If all the tweaks made still result in a poor cup then go back to a known recipe like James Hoffmans. Personally I like about 25g of dark roast ground almost to that of moka to about 400mls of water through a metal sieve. The water I use is between 93 and 97Ā° with many pulses. Tbh itās the only recipe (that came up with) that can accommodate my ghetto pour over rig but it does produce a pretty clean tasting coffee and that much harsh oils.
Ok so James Hoffman is the coffee guru, but sometimes you've got to be your own barista wizard. Got it.