GroundLevelCoffee

After plunging my coffee at work for close on two years now, I’ve sprung for another SwissGold one cup coffee filter. I’ve had a SwissGold at home for over two years with intermittent use but hadn’t used it too much until on and after our holiday last month.

SwissGold filters don’t seem to be readily available here. I bought my first one at a slightly up-market homewares store, but they don’t stock them anymore. The latest purchase came from The Coffee Company.

So how does a SwissGold compare to a plunger?

• Slightly easier clean up.
• Not as portable (I’ll need to brew in the kitchen then toss the grinds).
• The grind seems to be a touch more critical. A bit too coarse and the coffee is noticeably weak. A bit too fine and the coffee easily overextracts and the brewing stalls.
• It’s a different tasting cup. The SwissGold gives a cleaner brew.

So what sort of grind setting is appropriate? In my Zassenhaus, I turn the nut one full rotation open from where the burrs bind. For the Macap a setting of around 5 seems OK. That equates to a grind similar to drip - which makes sense since that’s what the SwissGold is.

Is the SwissGold a permanent feature of my work coffee brewing? No. It’s different, and I’ll use it for weeks-months-years; but one of the facets to coffee brewing is that different brewing methods yield different results in the cup - not necessarily better, but different.

As mentioned, I roasted up a batch of Indian arabica ‘Catimore’ last week. The roast hit the beginning of second crack. I rarely take my roasts far into second - early snaps for a few beans is the usual maximum.

I’ve sampled the Catimore as a plunger and in my standard latte-style drink since then. As expected the plunged lot was a little over-roasted for my taste and I lost a fair bit of the varietal character of the bean. A subsequent roast to a full city (well clear of first, but second nowhere in sight) brought out some of that character. The shots I pulled from the first roast were a bit odd. The pour from the Macap on its standard grind setting was too fast - maybe 15 seconds for 50ml and blonding into the bargain. Next time I dialled in a dent finer and the pour was about right. A touch of brightness, perhaps, which I thought the longer roast would burn off. Haven’t tried it since, but I’ve got a couple of kilos on the way.