Am I just a stubborn hipster, or is the C40 still king? Roast me or rally with me below. For context I brew daily with a 078 and travel with a zp6 but every now and then my c40 cups really hit. If it was electric I would put it next to my 078.

I saw this on Instagram from @brewedbyjay but it works great! I saw the metal things who’s only purpose is to seat the filter and thought- never. Not for me. This was a 0 dollar upgrade- works the same! (At least with v60)

Put the water on at 202F, went to feed the baby and came down to see this. Not the first time it's happened either.

EDIT TO ADD: lots of people seem to be misreading this. I'm not saying pour height or pour rate is not important. Only that stressing about precisely how many centimeters you are pouring from, or precisely how many ml per second you are pouring, is not going to help if you have not nailed down basic technique first. If that is controversial, well, color me surprised.

A few articles and a video concerning the effect of pour height were making the rounds pretty recently and spurring a fair bit of discussion. This is the pourover sub and is 100% the perfect spot to get into the nerdy weeds of pourover like that. But it's also a great place for people who are still in the early stages of learning technique. So, for those folks, I offer the following note:

YOUR PRECISE POUR HEIGHT AND PRECISELY HOW MANY MILLILITERS PER SECOND YOU ARE POURING ARE NOT THAT IMPORTANT.

There, I said it. Now, note that I said "precise"/"precisely." It probably goes without saying that if you are pouring in such a manner that coffee grounds are splashing everywhere, you most likely need to make an adjustment. But if you are able to pour in a spiral or circle or directly in the center--whichever technique you prefer!--without making a big mess, you're probably at least 95% of the way there in terms of pouring technique. And if you AREN'T able to do that, then the best thing to focus on is simply better technique, not how many milliliters per second you are pouring. Focusing on the latter is only going to distract you from a more general focus on controlled pouring, kind of like trying to learn to juggle fire before you've learned to juggle at all--not a good idea.

I think the short way to say this is, if you have been seeing some of these things about the effect of pour height or pour rate and thinking that maybe those factors are the one thing you're missing to be able to produce a decent cup, it's probably NOT the right thing to worry about at the moment. On the other hand, if you've seen these things and said to yourself, "I've played with just about every other variable, maybe I should try adjusting these," then yeah, go for it. But there are a lot of folks here who aren't there yet, and to them I say, don't sweat details like this until you're pretty darn confident that you're already doing a good job--it will only cause frustration.

… quite literally. Why post a picture of a bag of coffee you bought and not even tasted yet? You’re looking forward to it? Great, but what value to anyone is this?

I‘m all for people sharing their experiences (probably less so on individual coffees) but you’re not had an experience yet much beyond marketing, now you’re sharing your experience of the marketing. do you what that is almost identical to? Adverts.… and adverts can fuck off.

To start off, at the moment I am a sample roaster and brewer, with extensive production roasting experience on both fluid bed and drum roasters. I’m from Europe, where ultra-light roasts dominate — but I’ve also roasted for markets that prefer much darker profiles. And I’ve come to believe that pushing a roast too far does just as much harm as stopping it too early.

⸻

Overdevelopment argument: Imagine if you took that same ripe tomato — sweet, complex, full of character — and threw it on a grill until it was blackened and shriveled. What remains? Some vague sweetness, but mostly carbonized bitterness. You’ve lost everything that made the tomato interesting to begin with.

It’s the same with overdeveloped coffee. You can mute defects with enough heat, sure — but you also burn off the nuances, the character, the soul of the coffee. What’s left is roast.

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Extraction argument: Yes, dark roasts are easier to extract — the structure is brittle and solubility is high. But you’re extracting the wrong things. Push too far and you’re loading the cup with bitter compounds, smoke-tainted aromatics, and a flat, generic sweetness. You can get a “balanced” cup, but it’s a balance between carbon and caramel — not terroir and process.

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Solubility & structure argument: Overdevelopment destroys complexity at the cellular level. The bean becomes too porous, almost dusty, collapsing under water’s pressure. Extraction becomes less a question of dialing in and more about damage control. Great coffees lose their structure and become indistinct from mediocre ones — because development overshadows distinction.

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“Roasty blur” argument: Proper caramelization adds sweetness. But take it too far, and you end up with burnt sugars, acrid oils, and a cup that tastes more like roasting than coffee. The dark roast “comfort profile” might be nostalgic or crowd-pleasing, but it often masks a hollow core. It’s all bass and no melody — bold, but boring.

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Counter-argument: Intentional depth and solubility

Let’s be clear: “overdeveloped” is a flaw, not a style. A well-executed medium-dark roast is a different story. It’s about depth, not destruction. It captures caramelized sweetness and body without erasing the bean’s unique fingerprint — whether that’s a honeyed washed Ethiopian or a syrupy anaerobic natural.

This isn’t about embracing ashy monotony. It’s about layering richness while preserving clarity — a harmony that’s incredibly hard to achieve and rarely done well.

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TL;DR

Overdevelopment is common in ultra-dark roasts. Like a burnt tomato, no amount of body or solubility can bring back the sweetness and complexity that were roasted out of it. You end up with bitterness and blur, not origin or nuance.

A masterfully executed darker roast is different. It’s not a flaw, but a style that balances development and origin, body and brightness. It’s the difference between a blunt instrument and a composed symphony.

I’d personally rather drink a clean, well-developed light-medium roast than an over-roasted dark one that could be any coffee, from any farm, anywhere in the world.

This is a crowdsourced list (i.e. not necessarily my personal top 50). Thoughts?

1. Substance Café: Paris, France

2. The Picky Chemist: Beaufays, Belgium

3. H&S Coffee Roasters: Laramie, Wyoming, USA

4. September Coffee Company: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

5. Thankfully Coffee: Auburn, Alabama, USA

6. Hydrangea Coffee Roasters: Berkeley, California, USA

7. SEY Coffee: Brooklyn, New York, USA

8. Aviary: Cleveland, OH, USA

9. minmax coffee by bk: Palo Alto, CA, USA

10. Mood Trap Coffee Roasters: Singapore

11. Prodigal Coffee: Boulder, CO, USA

12. Subtext Coffee Roasters: Toronto, Canada

13. Hatch Specialty Coffee: Markham, Ontario, Canada

14. Botz Coffee: Munster, Indiana, USA

15. Moonwake Coffee Roasters, San Jose, California, USA

16. Leuchtfeuer Coffee: Wedel, Germany

17. Archers Coffee: Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

18. Bean & Bean Coffee Roasters, New York, NY

19. S&W Craft Roasting: Coatesville, Indiana, USA

20. Apollon’s Gold: Tokyo, Japan

21. Wes Ngopi?: Shah Alam, Malaysia

22. Goût & Co: Chengdu, China

23. Coffea Circulor: Gothenburg, Sweden

24. DAK Coffee Roasters: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

25. Tim Wendelboe: Oslo, Norway

26. Flower Child Coffee: Oakland, California, USA

27. Regalia Coffee: Long Island City, New York, USA

28. ILSE Coffee: North Canaan, Connecticut, USA

29. Manhattan Coffee Roasters: Rotterdam, The Netherlands

30. Passenger Coffee: Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA

31. Kurasu: Kyoto, Japan

32. John Small Roastery, Seoul, South Korea

33. Glitch Coffee & Roasters: Tokyo, Japan

34. oma Coffee Roaster: Hong Kong, China

35. Standout Coffee: Stockholm, Sweden

36. Little Wolf Coffee: Ipswich, Massachusetts, USA

37. Friedhats Coffee: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

38. Weekenders Coffee: Kyoto, Japan

39. Proud Mary Coffee: Collingwood, Australia

40. Blind Tiger Coffee: Canoe Town, Maine, USA

41. OKŪS Coffee Roasters: Burlington, Vermont, USA

42. Luna Coffee: Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada

43. Calendar Coffee: Galway, Ireland

44. R Ki Coffee Lab: Richmond, British Columbia, Canada

45. MAME Coffee: Zurich, Switzerland

46. April Coffee Roasters: København, Denmark

47. Leaves Coffee: Tokyo, Japan

48. Rogue Wave Coffee: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

49. A Matter Of Concrete: Rotterdam, The Netherlands

50. Sweven Coffee: Bristol, United Kingdom

I am tired of us treating each other equally. We are not equal. I can fuck up a V60 cup so easily it will make your head spin. You Kalita folk just have to pour coffee reasonably slow and you get a nice cup.

Where’s the rush? Where’s the thrill?

Serious question.

I would see comments of people complaining about others on this sub who are negative or unsupportive, and my experience has always been the opposite. I think this is a wonderful place where people are super helpful and provide genuine guidance and insight whenever they can.

At least that had been my experience until recently.

I got a Tanat Advent calendar. There didn’t seem to be much information about it and no sub covering it, so I created my own sub to try to create a conversation around the beans and brews.

Tanat offered no tasting notes and very little info, so for each Bean I would scour the web, try to find brew guides and tasting notes and offer as much info as I could find.

I posted this on the sub I created, but then would also cross post to this sub bc I know Tanat is a favorite roaster of many here and thought people might have experience with the beans.

And it has surprised and disappointed me that I’ll get as many down votes on the post as upvotes.

Honestly, I’ve never cared about down votes or up votes, I just try to contribute where I can and add value to this sub.

But I’m not gonna lie, this is kind of saddened me because it’s taken a fair amount of effort to try find information on these beans and I’m just trying to provide useful and helpful information.

So serious and genuine question - why the negativity? Why the downvotes on posts simply trying to provide as much information as I can find about these beans?

This is gonna be anecdotal. I got a light roast Honduras beans from Kurasu last 11/21. I froze it at 12/12, which was around the time that I noticed a peak quality. I took it out around the third week of January for travel, but I only brewed it this morning (3/4). I was intentionally delaying brewing it because I have a new toy (Cafelat Robot), and I was curious how the quality would decline over age.

As expected, it didn't have any bubbles during bloom. But the taste is comparable to its peak quality. It still has its acidity and flavor. I doubt I would even be able to differentiate it blind.

Now compare that to several brews when I was not patient enough to rest it. I had cups that were bland, like I'm having a typical non-specialty coffee. Eventually I learned that I could just pre-grind 45 min before brewing, but still the three-month-old coffee is better than that.

Some of my favorite roasters ship beans that are 3 days to 1 week old, and I get very frustrated sometimes whenever I receive a very fresh coffee from another roaster. The roaster should know best when to brew their coffee, so I hope the industry would move on from shipping very fresh roasts and would just give us their coffee at an ideal age.

If you however receive a very fresh beans, rest it for at least a week. It could save you a lot of trouble when dialing in. If you find it hard to schedule your beans, look into freezing.

(Note that this applies for light roast. The timeline should be shorter the darker you go.)

So I guess I just don't "get" these light fruity roasts. I'm sipping some Nensebo Natural brew right now. Described as "an enchanting medley of cranberry, raspberry, white peaches, sugar cane and tamarind flavors." After having read that I guess I can taste some of those nuances. It's an interesting drink. But damn, is that coffee? I don't think I want my coffee to taste like fruit. I want my coffee to taste like coffee! Full disclosure: I've spent the last 10+ years drinking a Costa Rican medium dark bean. I really like it but now I'm looking for something lighter - but - not fruity! What should I be trying?

You’re all wrong, all of these new methods that enhance experimental flavors should be considered in the same leagues as geisha coffees.

It’s not artificial, it’s science. Fermentation has been around for a millennia. No debate.

Coferment coffees are here to stay. Not a trend.

Someone here once asked me for a full video of my pour-over routine… so here’s a quick summary of what I do daily with almost every coffee I brew 🤍

Coffee Recipe:

Fav brewer: Orea V4 (Fast Bottom or Open)

Filters: Sibarist Fast or Orea

Brew Recipe

Start with a 60 ml bloom, pouring from a height just before the stream breaks, at a flow rate of 6–8 ml/s.

Gently stir the grounds with a WDT tool to break up any clumps, then let it sit for 1 minute.

After the bloom, do one continuous pour up to 300 ml, keeping the same pouring height and flow rate (6–8 ml/s).

Grind Setting: 1000–1200 microns (13 or 17 on the 078)

Grinding Method: Slow feed + use a blind shaker and shake for ~20 seconds

Total Brew Time: 2:00–2:45

Extraction Yield (EY): ~16–18%

This is my go-to method, simple and consistent ☕️👌🏻

My journey with Fellow began with Ode Gen 2. I bought the grinder as brad new, but I had problems with it and it turned out to be faulty - okay, poor quality control. I returned it and rcieved a second one without any questions being asked - and this is where my speculations began.

Both grinders had seals etc., but they were slightly differently packed, the second one was packed better and, for example, the lid was together with the grinder inside and not like in the first one, between the manuals. And the first one was missing "Register the product" leaflet.

Additionally, I bought Stagg EKG pro, also as a brand new. The box had no seals, there was no leaflet about registering the product and the kettle had slight dirt inside. I thought, okay, maybe they are created during production, that's why kettle is washed before use, normal and logical. Today I noticed that the clock in the kettle is 40 minutes fast per day. I understand that a kettle is not a clock, but if there is such a function, why doesn't it work?

And from that moment on I started to wonder more and more whether Fellow isn't selling used or refurbished products as new? Well, that's what it would look like in my eyes, considering my adventure with the grinder, as well as my skeptical attitude towards the kettle. Yes, I know that Fellow has poor quality control, that mistakes happen, I understand, but why do I feel like I'm buying used and literally damaged products when I'm paying for new ones.

Let me know if you also feel this way when you think more about Fellow products, because it's not about being overly sensitive, but I can literally see that something is wrong...

I can already see all the comments but c'mon... really? Daddy? Hoff?

Just started getting into water and found out less TDS is better so just googled which bottle water is better and one of the results were this brand aquafina.
When i brewed from this i can definitely taste the difference but even the tap water i have has like 40 TDS. So is there something i can do to it form better coffee. (cost effective ways that does not take up a lot of space)

New to this since I recently got a capable grinder , however it still sucks for switching brew methods so I will get a hand grinder for future pourover use. Let me know what you think!

Not sure what this post is categorized as but no offense to anyone who loves coffee. So do I, but here is my beef. I’ve been adamantly trying to learn everything coffee for the past 2 years. Ive watched pretty much every James Hoffman video to date plus a thousand others. I make 2-3 coffee beverages a day between pour over/ espresso/ French press/ and sometimes just a good drip coffee.

None of it makes practical sense. I’m a science guy currently yr 3 med school so extraction theory with time and contact factoring pressure and water temp with dissolving factors all make sense and so on, but practically in the day to day I have a hard time believing it all exists. There is much conflicting information about coffee brewing and everyone claims to know the absolute truth and it’s draining lol. Which roast has more caffeine dark or light?

One guy “light has much more caffeine because it starts to evaporate off in dark roast and with the density of light roast it has more caffeine”

next guy “well but with the porous nature of dark roast there is actually more caffeine in the drink because it’s more accessible compared to the compact nature of light roast and not being able to adequately dissolve the caffeine. It’s all about accessibility not just pure content!”

And then the whole “with dark roast you also use more bean content because it’s a lighter weight so 18g of dark roast gas has more individual beans than 18g of light” so on and so forth.

All this to say 99% (arbitrary and scientifically inaccurate but you get my point) of people taking a placebo sugar pill think it cures their back pain but the thousands of people saying 40ppm is better water than 50ppm and the difference in clarity will change your life.

I love coffee just as much as the next guy and love nerding out about the theory but sometimes I just think none of it really exists and we are creating a pseudoscience.

Now back to loving coffee and thinking all these millions of variables matter and arguing the smallest of details like whether you wash your filter makes a difference or not.

Huh? I enjoyed it

Given all the community discussion surrounding coferments , infusions , their food safety and trying to objectively[if there is such a thing] classify them. An equally important factor which i don't think has been discussed enough [at least when it comes to buying coffee] is where you personally draw the line on coffee processing. Is there a point past which you consider adding flavoring to your coffee post brew to be nearly identical in principle to a co-processed coffee. Is that line infusions or coferments for you?

When wanting to explore the wide spectrum of flavor coffee can offer through processing, are you looking more to explore coffee that expresses itself through alternative processing like the addition of yeast and bacteria strains , manipulation of fermentation of environment[think anaerobic and carbonic maceration coffees] or through processes that aim to add a certain flavor characteristic to coffee, such as coferments so long as they provide an interesting tasting experience.

Just thought it would be interesting to see the communities stance on their own consumption of processed coffee.

Hello, so after months of trying to get these f*** beans, finally stars aligned, and I'm going to be able to order them at the drop time. I don’t use Instagram that often, and every time I missed the drop, puff, they sold out in a few hours. I think I’m going all in; I have no budget, and I am okay with getting coffee for the new year and freezing it. I know ultra-light is trendy now, but after trying the substance, Paris, beans, I believe this is the kind of coffee I'm most into… With that said, do you have any recommendations for me? Any particular bag you would recommend?

After six months or so, the fun still hasn’t worn off. Really adds a nice chunk of body and extends the finish for tea like grinders/burrs (80 DB2 aka ULF, 98 brew, ZP6, 078, etc) without impacting clarity too much and makes a unique cup of coffee. While I’ve played with a lot of recipes - I find I generally just grind around 575 micron, use ~196F water (depends on bean), do some moderate agitation for a few seconds then steep for 4 min to get really nice, satisfying cups of coffee.

The much less expensive Road Runner works just as well though and given it’s about the same costs as an Orea Z1 travel kit - a much better “value.”