Clever Dripper showing new colours!

Clever Dripper

The Clever Dripper is a great coffee maker using an immersion brew method (a bit like the method used by a French Press or Cafetiere). You’re in control of how long you let your coffee brew for, and when you’re ready you place the vessel ontop of a cup and the Clever valve underneath releases the brewed coffee directly into your waiting mug!

The Clever Dripper uses filter paper to give you a clean brew and makes it easy to clean and dispose of your used grounds into compost or for the acid loving plants in the garden.
The Clever Dripper has been around for a while now, but what’s new is the solid blue colour for the 2 cup device, or the solid red colour for the 1 cup version.

See more about this clever coffee maker at artistry coffee in Duck Farm Court, Aylesbury or online.

The stunning, innovative Trinity ONE coffee maker is an exquisite piece of design.

Trinity ONE coffee maker

One of our most extravagant favourite products is an incredible coffee maker from a talented designer and coffee fan in Australia. We supported Mark Folker’s Kickstarter campaign to develop the Trinity ONE a couple of years ago and have admired Mark’s commitment and search for quality as he has pursued his idea.

We received a small number of the first batch of this device just a matter of days ago, and are taken aback by the result – it’s a beautiful yet functional design featuring kitchen grade stainless steel and American black walnut heartwood timber.

The Trinity ONE can be used to brew coffee by press, immersion, or drip filter method. The unique design and approach is unlike any product we’ve seen before – and if you’re interested in handbrew coffee making it’s worth looking at our feature page on Trinity ONE to see what it’s all about.

It is genuinely original! Yet the Trinity ONE works with what we know about coffee making to produce an excellent device. It is a large item and that can be a bit of a surprise when you first see it – but this can take centre stage and do its 3 different jobs: drip, press, or immersion.

We’re very impressed with Trinity ONE – it will be an elegant addition to any serious coffee shop or be a stunning home coffee making station.

Trinity ONE
Trinity ONE in press coffee making mode

The baby of PourOver makers has a good style

Cafe Stal coffee maker

The Cafe Stal is a lovely little coffee maker and really good value too. It has almost 600ml capacity in the brewing and serving vessel which also features a stainless steel removable pourover filter. The heat resistant glassware is really simple and a delightful compact size. It has an acrylic neck for helping with your serving.

You simply add your ground coffee to the mesh filter which sits in the top section of the pourover vessel. Slowly wet the coffee grounds and let the coffee ‘bloom’ for 30s to 45s, then pour hot water very slowly in spiral or zig-zag motions over the ground coffee for a couple of minutes or so.

The coffee grounds will release their flavour as both aroma while your making the coffee and as the coffee itself which collects in the lower part of the vessel.

Once you’re done, remove the steel mesh, and sit down with a friend to enjoy your coffee – or on your own for a double dose of caffeine! You can later discard the grounds for compost, rinse the steel mesh and the vessel well and it’s ready for use again.

As an introduction to PourOver coffee making this device would serve really well – as it already has a steel mesh filter and is like a tiny version of a Chemex which feels like the granddaddy of pourover makers!

See more about the Café Stal from Rayware here.

Cafe Stal from Rayware
Cafe Stal showing mesh filter and glass chamber

A simple solution to having great coffee wherever you go.

Kalita Kantan

Do you ever go a way for a few days and get really disappointed with the quality of coffee that you can make for yourself to start your day? Our new stock of Kalita Kantan single cup filters could provide an answer!

There’s 30 in a pack and they’re easily transportable so you can have a way to rely on your coffee wherever you go. They come folded flat – you just pop them into the shape below and put them on top of your mug – scoop some ground coffee into the filter area and pour water slowly through the coffee grounds. They will fit most mugs, but not the very largest. Simple, quick and compact.

Perhaps you want a fun way for guests at and event to enjoy their coffee – how about a sample coffee pack and a Kantan filter to let them enjoy a bit of handbrew coffee making in their places.

Kalita Kantan on top of a mug
Ready for use – Kalita Kantan in situ atop a coffee mug

 

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.

The journey gets more serious? ….starting to discover pour-over coffee!

Hario Buono, and V60 Ceramic Dripper from Artistry Coffee

So for many of us coffee is a part of our life whether we think about it or not!

The question do you want a coffee has probably already been said to you or by you today, even if only in your mind to yourself!

However, to start to pay more attention to what your cup of coffee contains can be the beginnings of a journey that gradually increases in intensity.

There was a point when – rather than using drip-filter by accident (i.e. without realising) or french press because it sat there (thinking it was just a cafetiere: which of course it is!) – the idea of hand-brewing coffee became more than a means to an end, it became an enjoyment in itself!

This started with a V60 Ceramic pour-over: a cup-like thing with a conical shape and a hole in the bottom. You place a filter paper within it then add ground coffee and pour hot water over the coffee which then drips through to a mug sitting below.

This is a slow coffee making process to savour: not perhaps the best method to use if you’re in a rush!

But this is where a real enjoyment in coffee making started for me and my wife. The process of thinking about the coffee and what it was doing as you were making it became interesting, and the time taken in the pour-over coffee making started to be a relaxing routine.

Starting with the same ground coffee we were using from the supermarket, we enjoyed “blooming” the coffee by pouring a small amount of hot water for about 15 seconds to let the Coffee grounds swell; then pouring hot water gradually over the coffee for another 2 to 3 minutes whilst seeing gasses from the coffee bubble up a little.

Hario V60 Pour-Over Coffee Maker available from Artistry Coffee
A V60 Pour-Over Coffee Maker
Pour-Over Coffee Making Equipment available from Artistry Coffee
Making Pour-Over Coffee

The aroma from the coffee when making it, as the coffee interacts with the hot water and then drips though, adds to the pleasure – and this is heightened because of the slow process of the pour-over coffee making. We found that the coffee was much more pleasurable as black coffee than we had ever experienced before: which then took us to a new place in coffee appreciation.

Discovering pour-over coffee making was a great find, and we recommend it to all – when you have time to savour the process!

Water Temperature Experiments for Coffee (6): …

Recording Temperature of Poured Water

This series of posts started from a fairly simple question in my head – what is the rate of cooling of water from boiling – to have some sense of what temperature coffee making is conducted at when there are no thermometers to hand! It has turned into a rather more complex investigation than first thought – but has been at least a little fun along the way. Here, were close to the end of my write-ups!

We’ve already covered that when transferring water after boiling from an electric kettle into another vessel such as a Buono kettle (in order to achieve greater accuracy for pour over coffee making) there seems to be about a 3 or 4 degree Celcius loss of temperature straight away.

So this post is about the expectation that as the water is then poured from the Buono onto the coffee grounds themselves there is likely to be another (notable?)drop in temperature.

That was the expectation and indeed has been exactly what I observed in my experiments.

In order to attempt to measure this effect, I rigged up a set-up (imperfect, but trying to get close to something realistic) where I could pour water from the Buono spout directly onto the bulb of the thermometer. That’s the closest I’ve been able to construct to something reasonably meaningful.

I conducted most of my previous efforts over a 10 minute observation window – however the idea of pouring water from a Buono kettle for 10 minutes was never going to be achievable – I did try and control it well, and managed around 5 minutes each time, which I think was a good achievement (also meant my rate of pour should have been similar on each attempt).

Chart of Observed Temperatures (time from Boiling Point)
Top Line (darker) : Observed Temperatures in Electric Kettle
Next Line (mid-tone): After being poured into Buono Kettle
Bottom Line (lightest): Temperatures of the Pour

The temperature within 30 seconds had dropped to 90 degrees Celcius, but took till almost 6 minutes to drop the next 5 degrees – by which point it was almost equal to the observations of the temperatures achieved in the Buono kettle itself(with no pouring).

That line on the chart that resulted did puzzle me at first – although the greater initial drop in temperature made sense, the slower rate of decline in the following minutes than observed in the kettles did seem odd ( I haven’t worked all the way through this yet, but I think one of Newton’s Laws does help – I need to look into that a bit more, and will try and write something in a few days).
What also seemed odd is that the water poured from the Bouno (having been poured in the Bouno from the electric kettle) was at a lower temperature in the earlier moments of observations than the water in the open-top vessels.

Observed Temperatures from Boiling Point
Top Line (darker): Temperatures in Electric Kettle
Next Line (mid-tone): After being poured into Buono Kettle
Bottom Line (lightest): Temperatures of the Pour
Yellow Line: Temperature in open-top container

OK – only for 30 seconds, but that it crossed the line, then crossed back again made me think that this science lark was just far too complicated!

But here could perhaps be the most important thing to understand from these experiments – that the pour itself is where the temperature changes the most (pouring from the kettle used for boiling, into another vessel in the first place, and from the pouring vessel onto the coffee).

And therefore different styles of pour, durations of pour, or methods of dealing with the water will mean that the temperature, in effect, on the coffee is different.

This is where the water is coming into most contact with the air (or perhaps more importantly (scientifically) the much lower ambient temperature) and so is losing the most heat.

So I guess one of my biggest conclusions is that when we’re talking temperature we may or may not be talking the same thing – the temperature of the water can change greatly quite quickly depending on how it is transferred from the boiling vessel to the coffee.

Water that is the same temperature for 2 different coffee making techniques at the starting point could actually be at very different temperatures when hitting the coffee grounds seconds later.

This coffee making really is both an art and a science!!

please note: boiling and hot water can be dangerous if not handled with care!
(despite the haphazardness of some of my approaches above, I did take some care and would suggest anyone else does the same: and children should be accompanied by an adult)

Water Temperature Experiments for Coffee (5): ….

Hot Water onto Coffee Grounds

Interim Conclusions …?

Instead of being one simple set of experiments to while away an afternoon and get the brain cells working – this little exploration has actually turned into a set of experiments and blog notes and pseudo scientific activity that has occupied rather more than the initial expectation!

Where we’ve travelled so far, I think, is that the temperature of the hot water as it hits the coffee could vary perhaps rather a lot – affected by all that can happen between the boiling of the water and the drips hitting the coffee.

What I seem to be able to conclude so far is that if the water remains in the kettle it retains its temperature much better than if poured into another vessel. If this other vessel is closed top (e.g. Buono kettle) the temperature will perhaps drop 3 to 4 degrees on the initial pour from the kettle, then hold at a slower rate of decline than if poured into an open-top vessel (where over a few minutes the temperature difference may easily be 10 to 15 degrees Celcius).

All of that fairly logical (and some would say obvious or a matter of common sense perhaps), but I’ve found it rather interesting to be able to place some (amateur) quantification on what’s going on, and helpful to think through what may be affecting the readings.

But the key issue is perhaps what temperature the water is as it hits the coffee. And for my own normal coffee making at home, this involves first pouring the boiling water from the electric kettle into the Buono, and then pouring from the Buono onto the coffee grounds themselves.

So the idea that there might be a second heat loss as poured from the Buono kettle seems to be a logical expectation, and that’s exactly what we get – but the results did puzzle me at first.

(I’ll write that up next post…..)

please note: boiling and hot water can be dangerous if not handled with care!
(despite the haphazardness of some of my approaches above, I did take some care and would suggest anyone else does the same: and children should be accompanied by an adult)

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.

How I wished I’d paid more attention….

drip filter for one

My weekend coffees in the noughties facilitated then by supermarket bought ground coffee – of such better quality than my weekday ones facilitated by instant coffee – were also made to a better method than I realised at the time.

Actually it was a fairly simple and very plasticy mechanism, but one where hot water dropped slowly through a plastic container with holes in it onto the ground coffee below, and then through a mesh into the cup at the bottom. So even though I never described it as such this was genuinely a Drip Filter coffee which gave a good chance of getting the best out of the coffee that I had bought.

Oh how I now wish I had paid a little more attention – attention to the coffee I bought, the different blends I tried, the way the device made the coffee. Had I done that I might have progressed through the coffee journey more quickly, and appreciated the views along the way a bit more too.

Coffee this way was surprisingly straightforward to make – it kind of made itself while getting breakfast ready, or seeing what the kids were getting upto. Pop the grounds in, pour the water into the top container, put the lid on – then pick up the coffee in a couple of minutes. The little device still sees the light of day occasionally!

Easy for a busy Saturday morning before taking our youngest son to music school. Or now and again with the luxury of breakfast in bed on Sunday before heading off to church.

At the time the fact that the coffee tasted better than during the week seemed good enough.

Only more recently have I really appreciated how much more it’s possible to learn about coffee – and realised that if you’re interested enough you may never run out of things to learn – and that its a bit like wine: the more you know, the more you discern, the more you appreciate, the more you realise that there is still more to learn.

So journey fast or journey slowly, journey a short way or a long way – but enjoy your coffee journey.