I've been thinking a good deal of how to best prepare a solid cup of coffee that will succeed at the Counter Culture Coffee Brewdown in Durham, NC on August 12. I have a long-standing love for the ABID Clever Dripper brewing method, which I first encountered in the fall of last year while I was working/learning at Chinatown Coffee Company in Washington, DC.

The Clever gives you a lot of reasons to favor it as a brewing method. To spare myself the task of writing an introduction on the Clever, I'll refer you to an earlier post from my blog written while I was in DC, and to a post on Gimme! Coffee's blog.

I especially favor the Clever dripper for commercial use. When using any other standard pourover technology (e.g., V60, Beehouse, etc.), the coffeemaker must work to maintain a specific bed-depth of coffee and water at all times, which requires extra time and attentiveness - things that might be scarce in a high-volume or under-staffed shop. With the Clever, and with a small initial investment of attentiveness to the setup (coffee mass, water mass, brew temp), the brewing operation takes a cue from the famous Ronco infomercial: "Just set it, and forget it!" (at least until the timer goes off), freeing the barista to do other shop tasks or help the next person in line.

Commonly, two things about the Clever Dripper are constantly referenced by industry professionals as drawbacks to this brewing method. Drawback #1 is that the device is made of plastic, which isn't widely regarded as the matter of choice to be pouring and steeping hot liquids in, due to some perceived toxicity of plastic that I am unfortunately not very informed about. This isn't so much of a drawback to me, as plastic is a substance with a very high specific heat, which means it will be drawing very little heat from whatever you have brewing in it.

Drawback #2, which poses much more of a threat to good-tasting coffee from the Clever, is the constant complaint of a papery taste. I think that this is not so much because there are not widely available good filters for the device, but merely because the paper filter is present for the entirety of the coffee's steeping time. Intuitively, if you're going to throw a big piece of paper into your brew for 2 to 3 minutes, there are going to be some notes of paper in the finished product.

In order to get at the direct immersion results of the Clever brewing method but doing so without involving 3 minutes of contact time with a paper filter, I devised the following "Brewdown method candidate #1" to do Clever-style brewing without the penalties of Drawbacks #1 and #2.

The obvious workaround these drawbacks is to do the brewing by steeping in an alternate vessel without the presence of paper, and to use a filter only at the end of the steeping time to capture fines from the finished brewed product. For this, I turned to an unlikely device: the French press. I've been working in a "French Press As Drip" shop here in Philly and I've warmed up to this brewing method a little more (but not much). It's also quite possible I was inspired by Mr. Hoffman's recent blog regarding iced coffee via French press, which is also widely done here in the city of brotherly love.

To do the removal of fines, I'll use the Hario V60 pourover cone, as it has a bottom opening capable of passing more volume per unit time than any other pourover device: I'm not looking to restrict flow through the filter any more than I have to!

Nonetheless, here goes!

We'll start with a pre-heated french press and 23 grams of coffee ground as you would for the Clever Dripper, just a bit finer than press grind.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we'll soak this filter and heat up this Hario V60

Helloooo Buono!

After a couple minutes of dwell time in the French press, we'll dump the brewing mixture (slowly as not to break the filter!!) into the v60.

We'll let this drip out, as if we're dropping our Clever onto the cup. Shouldn't take any more than a minute.

The filters I used, just in case you were curious.

Regrettably, I'm still waiting on access to a Refractometer/MoJo to fully evaluate the quantitative side of results... But subjectively with respect to taste, I'm fairly pleased: the resulting brew was balanced, bodied, and lacking in the papery taste!

I'm a novice though, so your feedback is more than encouraged! Thanks in advance!