If you’ve been following updates from us closely, you would know that we take our coffees seriously. Our aim is to make freshly roasted coffee beans from some of the most celebrated roasters around the world easily available in Malaysia. As such, we recently started offering options from 2 different roasters every month. With average waiting time between 1 to 2 weeks once you place your order, you can count on us for your freshly roasted coffee beans supplies. For this round, lets have a look at some coffee brewing guides and espresso recipes by April Coffee roasters.
If you’re not familiar, April is a coffee roastery, rooted in Copenhagen with the vision to progress the way we roast coffee. April is founded by Swede Partick Rolf Karlsson who is an alumnus of prestigious European roasters da Matteo and Five Elephants. Karlsson is a Coffee Masters tournament finalist and a Barista Guild of Europe CoLab featured speaker. He was also name checked as a coach by competitors in both the 2016 World Brewers and World Barista Championship.
Espresso Brewing Guide
April suggests that you use a 1:2.4 brew ratio or espresso recipe as a starting point for their espresso roast coffees. In other words, this means that if you use 18g of coffee, you should aim for an espresso output of 43g.
April recommends that you first identify that size of you filter basket, and preferably use the brand VST of the “Ridgeless” variety. For this particular coffee, the optimal dose would be -2g from the basket size, using a 1:2.4 ratio, and aiming for a target TDS of 8.5. Depending on which grinder and set-up you’re working with, the result will be varied however their recommended total brew time is still between 27 – 29 seconds.
For those wandering what is TDS, this stands for Total Dissolved Solids. Its basically the amount of soluble solids in a liquid, and in coffee TDS reflects the level of extraction of the coffee. This is measured using a refractometer. For more details on TDS, we recommend you read article by Perfect Daily Grind here.
Filter Brewing Guide
April recommends that you use a 1:16.1 brew ratio using the V60 brewer from Hario, aiming for a TDS of 1.31 or slightly higher for a clean and transparent yet rich brew. When working with this coffee, April recommends experimenting with a coarser grind than you may usually use rather than a traditionally finer filter grind setting.
We begin our brews with a blooming process, which indicates saturating your dry grounds with brew water, in this case roughly twice the volume of the dry dose. For this coffee, we are not agitating the grinds but resting the bloom for 40 seconds from the initial pour.
After the bloom stage of the brew is complete (40s), begin to pour once again whilst agitating the coffee grinds, pouring in clockwise circular motion and creating turbulence within the brewer. This will help to increase the strength of your brew and this method pairs well with the coarser grind setting mentioned earlier. Pour in intervals, with a maximum of 6 pulses per recipe. Calculate the appropriate amount of brew water for each pulse pour for the size of your brew, and maintain consistently timed pours and intervals.
For example, a recipe with a 18g dry dose and 300g of brew water would require pours of 50g of brew water per pulse pour, with an appropriate pulse pour interval of 30 seconds (Bloom, 0:40, 1:10, 1:40, 2:10, 2:40).
Happy Brewing 🙂
Do take note that above are just guides and not the absolute method of brewing their coffees. For more coffee brewing guides and espresso recipes, visit April’s Youtube channel here.
We’re also taking pre-orders between 14th October till the 21st October for April’s roasted coffee beans. If you’re interested, you may place your order below.
