Tag: coffee maker

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The Hario V60 Ceramic set a PourOver standard

Hario V60 Ceramic Dripper

To be fair, most of our products are favourite in some way or other – we love handbrew coffee techniques and like to keep trying all the different methods we can get our hands on.

One of the simple, relaxing, first ways that we embraced handbrew coffee was with the Hario V60 – it’s a ceramic conical device that sits atop a mug or jug. Into it you place a paper filter (which you can wet to remove any paper taste that you might otherwise detect). Into the paper filter you place ground coffee to a medium coarse grind.

Simply pour a small amount (perhaps 40g) of hot water onto the coffee grounds and let them swell, or ‘bloom’ for half a minute or so. This gives the coffee grounds the chance to wet through and ensures more coffee flavour is extracted.

Then in slow swirls continue pouring water onto the coffee and allow it to drip through to the mug or vessel below – take your time in this and enjoy the process.

You’ll achieve a more delicate flavour of coffee and slow down a little while you’re at it!

V60 from Hariohttp://www.artistrycoffee.co.uk/shop/proddetail.php?prod=D0021 is synonymous with handbrew coffee making and this simple well-designed piece of coffee making kit is a standard – literally setting the standard against which other pour-over devices have to measure up to gain worthy credentials.

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Hario’s Drip In Server could be one of the best value handbrew coffee products

Hario Drip In Coffee Server

The Drip-In Server from Hario is a great combination item – it is a drip filter coffee maker, it is a coffee server too – stylishly serving up your favourite beverage! You can also use it for Cold Brew coffee.

If you’ve heard of the lovely classic Chemex pour-over coffee maker, we think of this as a value version – but it’s still quality as it’s made by Hario and has good pedigree as part of the V60 family of products.

As a glass serving jug with cup measures on the side, the Hario Drip-In Server looks good and sits well on a coffee or dining table.

This device can also make your coffee too – using the drip-filter method with ground coffee placed in V60 filters, of 02 size, in a plastic removable V60 frame which rests on the top of the glass server jug. Hot water is then poured-over the coffee grounds at a slow pace – first allowing the coffee to swell (or bloom) and then refilling the V60 frame and allowing the coffee to slowly drip through.

A plastic lid helps the brewing process and a stylish black handle robustly adorns the side of the server.

The Hario Drip-In Server is also great for pour-over-ice coffee making – to the process described above but with ice already placed in the jug – which the coffee pours over, cooling as it goes.

This device from the Hario V60 family is a really versatile coffee maker. If you also consider its the equivalent of a Range Server with a V60 drip filter in-built and it can serve 4 people easily you can see why we think it’s one of the best value handbrew coffee devices.

You can also find it featured as a key part of the Artistry Coffee The Drip Filter Kit.

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The AeroPress :: One of our favourites for great coffee!!

AeroPress Series 5

One of our favourite products is the AeroPress that helped start our journey into handbrew coffee equipment and techniques.

It’s a straightforward easy to use product that creates great tasting coffee.

The AeroPress is possibly the simplest, most consistent, easy, and cost-effective way to make espresso-based drinks at home… without crazily expensive equipment!

The AeroPress is an amazing coffee maker – if you’re used to instant coffee the AeroPress will be an eye opener, as it barely takes more time than making instant coffee, yet tastes many, many, many times better!

The AeroPress is essentially two plastic tubes that fit together – one that you put the coffee and water into, and one that you use to push the water under pressure through the coffee. So the AeroPress creates the ability to get close to an espresso coffee with a simple, easy to use, portable, coffee-maker which is almost self-cleaning too.

(Of course espresso is used as the base for most coffee-shop coffees – so the AeroPress can also be a gateway to americanos – by adding more hot water, lattes or cappuccinos -by adding frothed milk (see our Cappuccino Kit including an AeroPress and a milk frother), and more…. )

The AeroPress is a great coffee maker and can fit with a very outdoors based life, as it’s so portable. It can be used on holiday, at the beach, on picnics, at work, as well as in the kitchen or at home.

There are increasingly opportunities to have your coffee shop coffee made with an AeroPress too. Many baristas do take this product really seriously – and World AeroPress Championships take place every year!

If you’d like to find out more about how the AeroPress was invented (by the guy who created the Frisbee!) then see here

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Gradually Piecing Coffee Learning Together…..

Coffee Making with Artistry

Through accident, experiment, and impediment it’s possible to gradually realise that there are better ways to make better coffee.

Realising not to pour on absolutely boiling water, realising that there are a wide variety of coffees available, realising that there are ways to become more consistent or methodical in your approach to coffee making, and that there is a choice of many ways of making coffee.

Piecing all this together brings an awareness that coffee making can be a bit of an art that you can enjoy for itself aswell as for the caffeine kick!

In fact each part can be made into a bit of an art. There’s the choosing of the coffee to buy, the decision about which way (brew method) to make your coffee, the process itself including the grinding of the beans, the pouring of the water, the timing of the process, and the method of delivery (which can be experimented with and varied to produce discernible, and perhaps sometimes not so discernible results), and of course the sitting down and savouring the result.

Basically you can take your coffee making as seriously as you want. If you know what you like and you know how to make it and don’t want to think any further than that, then fair enough. But if you want to you can explore the coffee and the coffee making process and even turn it into a new hobby! You can explore different tastes and simply enjoy learning the various processes that can be applied to the coffee to vary the flavour.

At Artistry Coffee we became fascinated by the old and new techniques that there are to create hand-brewed coffee: and have enjoyed exploring and collecting together some great products to make coffee with.

My main basic learning came about in the last decade through blundering around with various cafetieres and a simple one-cup drip filter maker. Gradually coming to some of the realisations above.

In the last couple of years I have:
– discovered the art of the pour-over method and greatly enjoyed taking time over the process of pouring and making the coffee
– discovered hand grinding, and explored various grind settings that affect the interaction of the water and the coffee grounds.
– and discovered that there really is so much to explore about coffee making. We have favoured exploring hand brewing options rather than anything with machines: as for us it feels closer to the coffee.
Experiencing the AeroPress coffee maker as a way to quickly make a cup of coffee that packs a punch was great, and it still remains a favourite.
As well as the ease and simplicity, and yes cleverness, of the Clever Dripper which has an innovative valve shut-off system to help serve the coffee.

I don’t think you ever end the learning about coffee beans and the growing methods though.

Enjoy making coffee, whether in straightforward ‘just get me the caffeine’ mode, or in ‘fascinated, artistic, exploration’ mode.