Advice for extracting fruity flavours.

ponchobyrneus

Hows it goin,

Im fairly new to home coffee brewing and was wondering if you guys could help me.

Ive been using a chemex with a porlex hand grinder. When recently using the Konga bean from HB I managed to get one or two amazingly fruity cups brewed. Most of the time its tasted more like a standard coffee with just a hint of fruitiness.

What would be the best way to try extract a more fruity cup?

Ive been going mad trying to replicate it!

PPC

Check out http://brewcontrolapp.com/
It has a calculator and timer for brewing and should help you hone in on getting a consistent cup everytime.

The Toff

Chemex can often be a bit tricky to repeat if your pouring method isn't consistent every time. I've had many aeropress brews with that peaberry natural and I can reproduce the fruity funk from it each time. I usually stick to a 2 minute steep, 30 sec plunge, water one minute after the boil, then I only adjust the grind and keep everything else the same. My grind is very fine, setting 9 on a Maestro plus. Closer to espresso than a standard filter grind. This gets me 19% extraction, which is the a nice place to be to get those nice flavours you want.
As for chemex, try to keep your pouring technique as consistent as possible, and just vary your grind. It is very possible to get consistent, delicious results from pourover, but it takes a fair bit of work in my opinion. There's a lot ot be said for the Aeropress as it is just so bloody easy to repeat the same brew over and over.

ponchobyrneus

Cheers for the Aero suggestion Toff, what weight of beans would you normally use?

So far ive just been using 17g with the inverted method a a 30 second steep and coarse enough grind.

The Toff

I use 13g of beans with 215g of water (I don't dilute). That is a 60 gram per litre ratio. I think that the konga peaberry naturalbenefits from upping the coffee dose a bit to 65 grams per litre, so I'd use 200g of water to 13 g of beans.
If you're only doing 30 seconds with a coarse grind, I'd say that you're really underextracting your coffee if only using a 30 second steep. I really doubt that you could produce anything fruity or developed with such a short steep and coarse grind. You seem to be making up for it by really upping your dose (assuming you're using about 230g of water). I find that with the bloom from the fresh beans, I can't put in more than 230grams of water anyhow or it'll over flow.
I often find that it is hard to gauge underextraction when the coffee is still very hot. A lot of times, it'll just taste a bit sour (which might seem like it's strong), but if you let the coffee cool to lukewarm, I often see that that sourness goes and I realise how undeveloped everything is. If I have a 19%+ extraction, even at lukewarm temps, there is still loads of flavour, sometimes even more flavour comes out!
So for now, with aero, do a bit of gambling. Aim for a longer steep and plunge, and try making the grind a bit finer.
I'd recommened heading into 3fe if you're in Dublin and ask to take a look at the grinds that they use for aeropress. My guess is that you'll find that they are much finer than your grinds, and they use a 90 sec steep, 30 sec plunge I think.