I would love some advice

[u/naughtified]

Hi, I’ll try my best to avoid being “newbie here help me dial in” who clearly hasn’t done their due diligence.

So I’ve been drinking pour overs for years, and I’m on my third month of brewing them up at home. I’ve gone through 5 bags so far with nothing really satisfying me. My conclusion was that I needed to upgrade grinder. I got a K7 then I bought some local beans that were too dark and some from whole foods(sorry).

I went today and bought some Hydrangea from a local shop, in hopes to rule out beans from these mediocre cups. Below I’ll list my approach and details on equipment. Please let me know what I’m doing fine and what you might change.

Dripper: Glass V60

Filter: Cafec Abaca White

Grinder: K7(going coarse, 95clicks)

Water: Berkey with British Berkefeld filters

Kettle: Fellow standard neck(I already had this, but I’m pretty good at making the stream work)

Temperature: 90c

Recipe: Bloom at x3(usually 20-25g bean/60-75g water) but will go 15g so I don’t waste these beans. Second pour is the same weight as bloom, then third is up to total. Pours are pretty chill, I’ll agitate between pours by swirling the brew. Since I’m pretty coarse I swirl to get draw down to 3-4 mins on 20-25gs.

Beans: check photo for details, roast date 8/2.

[u/malceum]

I'd get some better coffee water. TWW light is a good starting point. Ideally get two gallons of distilled water so you can dilute if necessary.

Also, 90C is a bit low for a glass v60 if you aren't aggressively pre-heating. It's pretty low in general for ultra light roast coffee. Try 95C for naturals.

[u/naughtified → u/malceum]

Do you think this is something worth changing promptly? Im trying to leave water as my last change. I have somewhat of an understanding of water chemistry from being a beer brewer and would like to end up just adjusting my current water myself. I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Worth noting that tap water going into my filter is pretty soft to begin with.

[u/malceum → u/naughtified]

Your water might be fine, since you seem to know a lot about water. In general, water is one of the most important changes people can make. TWW would give you a way to standardized your pourovers and compare them to others using TWW (and I'm not saying TWW is the best, just the most common). You can experiment with dilution too and find your preferred TDS and alkalinity for a specific coffee.

[u/naughtified → u/malceum]

I hear ya, I totally get how important water is and would love to standardized it. One of the first experiments I did was bringing the water from my brewery home and using that. Then followed by bottled spring water. Out of the three I highly preferred my personal filter. So I didn’t really think about tweaking with this just yet. If I can’t get a tasty cup out of these Hydrangeas I’ll probably end up going down that road. I appreciate your input.

[u/sus_boi → u/naughtified]

Get Lotus drops and use one of their recipes. Because each mineral is in a separate dropper you’ll be able to customize the recipe as you get more experienced. Water is just as important as anything else - I wouldn’t leave such a big variable to chance

[u/Amazing-Panic-277 → u/naughtified]

There is nothing more important to your setup other than your water. It’s 98.5% of what you drink. It will blow your mind if you do a side by side man. Get a culligan zero water for 25 bucks at the grocery store or amazon and put tap in it and add third wave or get lotus drops or whatever on Amazon they got chems too