On a brilliant Spring day in Cobble Hill, British Columbia I drop into The Drumroaster Cafe (owned by Patricia, Geir and Carsen Oglend – arguably the coffee masters of Vancouver Island)
I am enjoying a Chemex pot of an exotic single origin coffee and one of Patricia Oglend’s marvelous baked creations when Geir suggests… “Want to roast some coffee?”
Do I?
Within minutes we are in the roaster room firing up a 60 pound Deidrich coffee roaster – It is a gas powered drum roaster that I have a passing familiarity with – but Geir plays it safe and assumes (correctly) that I need some hand holding – good thing because we are about to play with hundreds of dollars worth of coffee over the space of a half-hour or so.
During cooling cycles he pulls out this wonderful little coffee maker – it looks like a Melitta #4 coffee filter holder… with a twist. It has a spring loaded valve on the bottom that stays closed unless the coffee maker is sitting on top of a mug.
So. When one is brewing coffee by a.) dropping in a gold filter or #4 paper filter and b.) Putting some fresh ground coffee into the filter and c.) adding some water directly off the boil into the filter – and then counting down about 2 minutes…
and then placing the Clever Coffee Maker onto the mug – which opens the valve which allows the coffee to flow through into the mug.
Sure you could do this with a regular #4 filter holder (like the Melitta) but you have no brew control other than the grind of the coffee and your ability to finesse the right amount of hot water into the basket at precisely the right rate. This is called Brew dwell – and no, I did not just make that up.
The Clever Coffee Maker is clever for several reasons. It allows for a degree of French press type immersion and allows you to control the amount of time the ground coffee comes in contact with the water.
Clever? I would say brilliant!
And at $20 (Tax-Incl.) dollars for this delightful little coffee gadget, I would say…
Get smart and get the “Clever”. Want more info? Visit the Drumroaster online.
You can get your own Clever coffee brewer from The Drumroaster Cafe on the Island Highway on Vancouver Island at the Cowichan Bay turn-off – visit in person or contact them on their website online.
Comments
One response to “Rites of Spring #16 – Gadgets – playing with the Clever Coffee Brewer”
It’s day 4 since you roasted that coffee and you knocked it out of the park dude.
Someone said the spro today was exceptional, go figure.
I’ll save you a pound.
BTW we sell the clever for $20 taxes in.