Brew with ORIGAMI by Mary Halbrooks of All Beans Considered
We are excited to have another coffee professional who joined us to share the experience and brewing recipe with Origami!
In this blog, Mary Halbrooks of All Beans Considered, Educator and Sensory Consultant shares her brewing tools and tips! We hope they will be helpful when you pour over or brew coffee at home! Let's get into it.
It’s nice to meet you!
Hello, my name is Mary Halbrooks and I’m a certified coffee taster and specialty coffee consultant. I started my company, All Beans Considered, in 2017. I enjoy sharing my knowledge and skills with other coffee enthusiasts. My expertise is in tasting, or what we call in the specialty coffee realm, sensory analysis. When I taste coffee I’m looking for certain attributes such as flavor, sweetness, mouthfeel and acidity. I taste a lot of coffee because I write a blog called Specialty Coffee Reviews and I also analyze coffees that producers send me for sensory evaluation and analysis. I am passionate about specialty coffee.
Basic Brewing Equipment for Your Home
When I’m brewing coffee I use manual pour-over methods that are pretty simple and easy to learn for your own brewing at home. All you need to brew at home is a good grinder, a brewing kettle with a gooseneck spout, a dripper such as the Origami, a carafe or mug and filter paper.
Here’s a simple but complete set up for brewing at home: a good quality burr grinder, a scale for weighing the coffee, a gooseneck water kettle, a dripper such as the Origami, and a carafe.
Tips for Brewing Better Coffee at Home
I’ve brewed thousands of cups of coffee and there are a few simple guidelines I recommend for people who are just getting started brewing coffee at home or need some tips for more reliable results.
First, buy good quality coffee from your local roaster or cafe that sells retail bags of whole bean coffee. Check for the roast date and buy only coffee that has been roasted within the last two weeks. Once opened coffee begins to stale so the shelf life of bagged whole bean coffee is limited. Do not buy coffee that has already been ground as it will have lost a lot of its flavor components already. Buy one bag at at time, close the bag tightly after each time you open it and try to use it all up within two weeks.
Use filtered, not tap or bottled, water for best results. Measure the whole beans before grinding and grind within 15 minutes of brewing. Once ground, the coffee compounds that impart flavor are volatilized quickly so great flavor depends on a grinding just a few minutes before you brew. Bring the water in the kettle to between 203 and 205 degrees F, then wait about 1 minute before first pour.
Rinse the paper filter with hot water before brewing to rinse any residual paper taste out. This also warms the dripper and carafe making for a better brew. Remember to empty the water out of the carafe before brewing.
Begin brewing with water at 203 degrees F and do not reheat the water on the heating element. Pour the water in a steady circling motion over the grounds, being careful not to pour the water into the space between the grounds and the paper, keeping the water on the middle part of the bed of grounds. This ensures that the coffee grounds are fully saturated rather than washing the water down the sides of the filter. Whatever recipe you use for brewing, your brew should finish within 3- 4 minutes, at most 4:30 minutes for a 10-12 oz cup of coffee.
Next time, she will share her recipe for brewing great pour-over coffee at home and share her thoughts on why the Origami dripper is a great choice for brew-at-home coffee! Stay tuned.
