CoffeeSoldier

A couple of years ago I purchased a Melodrip to see what the fuss was about and experimented with it quite a bit to justify what I think is a fairly hefty price point for a simple device. I tried using it for all my pours, for the last two pours, and for just the last pour. I tried it on flat bottomed drippers, on immersion brewers, on conical brewers. Tried it with single cup brews and multi-cup brews. I lean towards a pretty fine grind typically, and I was enticed by claims that this device could push the grind size even finer without hitting bitter notes. While I think there is some truth to that, I always found that my brews came up a bit more “tea-like” than I preferred. If “tea-like” is your jam, I highly recommend this product! Me, I prefer more “coffee-like” body that comes from the gentle agitation of a good spiral gooseneck pour. I all but shelved the Melodrip, but it remained on a 3d printed stand staring at me daily on my countertop. There was one experiment I hadn’t tried. The Melodrip instructions recommended not using it for the bloom as did many of the recipes I came across online. I had not considered doing anything anti-dogmatic, but in an act of defiance a few months ago I cranked up my kettle (I always like to bloom on the hot side, and I had previously calculated that the aeration from the Melodrip device caused about an instant 7F drop in water temp) and wet my bed. I have been using the Melodrip now for almost all of my blooms and only the bloom! I think it’s perfect for this despite going against the grain of what has been recommended. For a good bloom you want a nice even rapid moisturization of the grounds. There is a high risk of compaction and channeling as a water stream hits the loose grounds with a conventional pour. A controlled, even sprinkle allows for CO2 to escape and minimizes channel formation. I’ve been very happy with the results and have been brewing more consistent cups since using this technique. If you have a Melodrip, and you are not already in love with how you’re using it – give this a shot! Would I buy one just for blooming? That’s a tough one. If you are feeling a bit frustrated with your brew consistency (there are so many factors that can cause this of course) and you like to tinker, I think I really might consider it.

Curious to hear your thoughts be they theoretical or practical.

TLDR;

• Consider trying the MeloDrip Device exclusively for a bloom pour. Crank your kettle temp up 6-7(F) for this.

As a specialty coffee apologist one of the most challenging yet most important parts of recruiting new brethren is convincing people that coffee is more than a solvent for cream and sugar. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve cringed once or twice watching a fine cup of coffee desecrated by “extra cream” or “extra sugar”. To clear the air sooner rather than later, there won’t be any follow up article by this author defending adding any sweetener to coffee. Coaxing out and appreciating the natural sweet notes inherent in well roasted coffee is one of the pleasures of specialty brewing. Modern diets are drowning in added sugars anyway; I just don’t see any place for this. As an aside, if you’re faced with a lousy brew and just need to make it drinkable, try a pinch of salt instead.

Alright, so when is a bit of cream/milk a benefit to specialty coffee? That’s ultimately for you to decide, but consider adding your cream in a metered fashion for the purposes of either weaning down how much you’re using or discovering just how little is really needed to change the body of the cup without washing out flavor notes. First, I would be weary of using any in more floral or acidic brews. It’s likely to curdle and those notes typically get best emphasized with less body, not more. I never add anything without tasting a brew as is first. Most of the time, I add nothing, but I don’t hesitate with cream for a medium or darker roast if I feel like I’ve missed the mark a bit on the body of the cup. I use whole milk, but choose whatever you prefer, just avoid things with flavor or sweeteners already added in. The key is adding very small amounts and doing it in reproducible way. If you already use milk and want to try backing down a bit, start at 5-10 mL and slowly wean your way down to 1-3mL per cup. You’ll notice some change in the body of the brew with as little as 1mL added, and you will not mask the flavor profile of the coffee with this small amount of milk added. I have tried doing this with a dropper, but the milk doesn’t last long in a dropper bottle, so I tried using a wine thief I had. Dipping this directly into the milk jug worked well, but it was far too large. I’ve switched to using a long glass pipette, and it’s worked very well for small amounts. I use it just like a wine thief (finger over the end of the glass pipet to siphon out a bit of milk directly from the carton). It is fragile, so be careful, but I’ve grown comfortable also using this as a stirring stick to mix the milk in after depositing it into the coffee. A hot water rinse out typically does the trick for the glass pipette and soapy water every once in a while keeps it pristine. You’ll need to find a good way to store it; I’ve been placing mine in a universal knife holder that consists of thousands of plastic strands that deform when you slide something in instead of conventional knife slots. Next time you have a jammy or chocolatey brew that tastes like it could use a bit more body, try playing with very small metered amounts of milk added in. It might be just the thing to salvage what might otherwise have been a mediocre cup.

Edit: TLDR - - consider adding a very small amount (1-5ml) of milk if your brew seems to lack body. If you use large amounts of milk/cream and are interested for health reasons or to better taste the flavor profiles of the beans you brew, using a precise measured wean can help tone down the amount you are using.

Just wanted to share a little delight that might breathe a little excitement back into your dripper if you haven't tried it before.

I don't recommend it on the daily (the cleanup can get tedious and the cafestol / kahweol probably would get to be a bit much), but for an occasional weekend treat I like to put a #4 Coffee Sock into my Moccamaster (or dripper of your preference). You may need to adjust your grind size just a little bit coarser, and you'll wet and squeeze excess water out of the sock beforehand. Otherwise, ratios, process, etc. should be about the same. Expect a little richer, sweeter cup with more body.

Cleanup: If you are new to reusable cloth filters or have given up in the past due to issues with cleanup, please consider the following which is derived from trying many different techniques - all of which have been disappointing save this. If possible leave the grounds to cool and dry a bit after brewing (1-2h). Invert and empty grounds, then give the sock a good rinse out. Squeeze out excess water, fold it up, place in a ziplock and minimize air while sealing. Hash-mark each use with a sharpie onto the ziplock and put directly into the freezer. I've tried half a dozen non freezer based storage methods and they have all led to weird, presumably mold-based flavors sadly introduced into my brews. It's surprising to me the coffee sock manufacturers do not recommend freezing (note: freeze/ thawing may wear down the fiber structure of your filter faster, but c'est la vie). After 10 or so brews or if you are getting any unexpected bitter notes, it's time to boil some Cafiza (or urnex, or whatever you prefer) and let your sock soak in that for 10 minutes before giving it a thorough rinse-out.

I purchased this primarily for calibration purposes. I knew I wanted my grinders in the 500-700 micron range for pour over and this was not as expensive as the more well known Kruve sifter. The included 500um and 800um filters seemed perfect. In addition to helping me to calibrate across grinders, I was curious to see what my fines and boulder amounts looked like. In short, for $30 I was able to accomplish this fairly well. I had tried eye-balling my grind sizes (there are laser cut guides you can use, but with a high-res printer you can also just download pdfs and print these guides for free which is what I did) before, and found it really difficult to tell if something was 400um or 700um even. Immediately after filtering the boulders and fines with this thing it was so much more obvious what my grind sizes actually were. The irregularity of the raw grinder output really threw me off before this, even though, as you’ll see below, the actual noise in the mix was relatively low. After faffing around as a calibration tool was done (didn’t really take long), I threw it in the dishwasher (nice) and later decided to play with it to see if it had any longer-term value.
The next thing I did was to see how much fines a couple of my grinders were producing on typical pour-over grinds. With a 20g bean load in the ode gen 2, I had a surprising 2g of fines (10% by mass, much higher by particle number). My Commadante did better with about 1.5g per 20g. I typically only use the ode for bigger grind volumes though, and interestingly when I tried 60g in it and ran that through the Shelbru, I only came up with about 3.5g of fines, so it seems the fines production does not ramp linearlly. Now for the big question: Is there any value in the effort of sifting for brew-taste? Let’s start with an easy answer – at least with my equipment, for bigger brews (60g grinds), both academically due to the lower fines ratio produced, and emperically from brewing with it a few times, no way – it’s just not a noticeable difference as compared to brewing without sifting. From here, read with skepticism if you will as I didn’t do any proper blind taste testing. For single cup brews I had done enough sifting at this point that at least for the beans I was using, I was getting a pretty consistent 2g loss with the sifter, so I simiply weighed out 2g more beans at this point. I did feel like I lost a little bit of depth with sifting on the ode gen 2 grinds. I am an avid subscriber to the concept of grinding down to the penultimate grind size of what Hoffman refers to as the “wall of bitter”. I found that sifting let me (or almost forced me, due to the taste profile) grind down a click lower on the ode. This was very theoretically attractive to me as I felt like I had just pushed the wall back, and my cups were turning out nicley, but I’m not so certain I had achieved an obvious level of taste superiority. The effects were, as expected, more subtle on the Commadante, and the Shelbru didn’t really allow me to push the grind-size wall back here. Ultimately, it has not become part of my brewing routine; it’s pretty next level faff, and will take you a good extra minute or so to integrate into your workflow not to mention cleaning (dishwasher is nice, but there is a rubber seal that would eventually wear down a bit) and storage.
I did not try this with lesser grinders, but I will leave you with this thought. If you currently have a mediocre grinder, and are hesitant about the value of investing in a better grinder, or simply have a bit more time than you do money for such an investment currently, I think I would consider giving this a try as something that might genuinely do a decent job of immitating a more consitent grinder at a low cost. If brewing competitvely, I think I might employ this in an effort to really maximize my brew with less boulders and fines, but it’s not a daily driver for me.

~ the coffee soldier φ