Our first leaf of 2015, courtesy of Grace Bishop, a barista at Huckleberry Roasters in Denver. (Emilie Rusch/The Denver Post)
We’re documenting our hunt for the best latte art in the Denver coffee scene, as well as expert tips on how to do coffee better.
Location:, 4301 Pecos St., Denver
Barista: Koan Goedman, founder and head of coffee operations; and Kevin Nealon, head of wholesale and green coffee
Pro tip: When hand brewing coffee, don’t pour the water in all at once, Nealon said. Instead, for better flavor, pour in a little water first to fully saturate the grounds and allow the coffee to “bloom.”
“Talking about ground coffee, every little particle has a bunch of little cracks and lots of air pockets and lots of different compounds trapped in there. Before you can really start brewing coffee, you need to force out the gases and let the water seep into those particles,” Nealon said. “When we brew coffee — manually at least — there’s a period of that brew called the bloom where you’re just getting the coffee wet. You’re not really diving into the pour-over — you just want to pour enough water over the coffee, let that gas escape, let the coffee become fully wet and then after you stop seeing bubbles of gas come out of the coffee, then you can start pouring in the rest of the water. At that point, itap absorbed water and you’re ready to extract the good stuff out of the coffee. Before you force that air out, you’re not able to pull anything out of the coffee itself.”
“Fresher coffee — more freshly roasted coffee — has more gas in it still, so you’re going to need to give it a little longer time to bloom than you would with coffee that’s a week and a half or two weeks or even longer off roast,” Nealon said. “For me, if I’m making a pour-over of coffee that was roasted three to four days ago, that bloom might be 45 seconds to a minute. If the coffee is getting closer to two to three weeks off roast, then that bloom is going to be 30 seconds or shorter. There’s not a set bloom time — you just have to pay attention, look for those big bubbles escaping. When they stop escaping, thatap when you start the rest of the pour-over.”
“The rule of thumb is to use twice as much water as you use coffee to bloom,” Nealon said. “So if you’ve got 20 grams of coffee in your pour-over, pour 40 grams of water onto that coffee and let it soak in. A little bit will come through the bottom, but most will stay in the pour-over cone.”
Added Goedman: “If you’re doing it visually, just make sure it’s covered. Go a little bit so all the coffee is covered but not so high that there’s a lot of excess water.”
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