I can buy a range of filter brew coffee gear at just about any local specialty coffee cafe here in Melbourne. As of yet, only a very select few actually offer a filter roast. A filter roast is coffee that has been roasted with a roast profile specifically geared towards delicious filter brew coffee, and thus tends to be a lighter roast. The trick is roasting said coffee in a way that it is not grassy or under-developed. I have always felt that filter roast is more difficult to nail than espresso roast, at least in my own amateur non-professional and quite limited experience.

Since filter roast can be tricky to find, it leads me to believe that most coffee drinkers are probably using espresso roast through their filter gear. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily bad, but a filter roast could be a little more delicious, perhaps. Espresso roast can work well in filter coffee, but (for my taste) only if it's on the light side of 'espresso'.

I have an e-61 espresso machine at home, and i brew filter coffee at work using chemex or aeropress. I prefer the aeropress because i find the 1-3 cup chemex has such a long narrow shape that it is difficult to get an even extraction. I use a hario hand grinder and it's simple, clean and pretty easy to get a delicious filter brew coffee going at work. But despite the ease with which anyone can pick up a Hario v60, a chemex, an aeropress or even a Hario syphon, it's still difficult to find filter roasted coffee.

Where I get filter roast coffee

Because of the difficulty in finding filter roast, i've been either using my own filter roast ... (which i don't like doing because i find filter roasts done in a real roaster such as a Probat are superior - my espresso roasts on the other hand, i can live with and they are actually pretty good when i get things right) ... or, i've been getting filter roast from Market Lane or Proud Mary. 

Theory why filter roast is hard to find

I can understand why most cafes would shy away from adding yet another option to their roasted coffee line-up. Good cafes that only sell freshly roasted beans inevitably end up with some left-overs, and adding filter roast could mean more of this.  It's also another batch of roasting to be done, another batch of roast cupping to be tracked, etc. It's not as simple as just popping some filter roast into bags.

Maybe it's a good thing that there are a select few with the focus to do filter roast - and they are doing it well.

Ministry Grounds soon to offer filter coffee

I was also delighted to read that Ministry Grounds are also now going to begin offering filter roast Australia wide through their web store. I've always found their espresso roasts to be around the right roast level for my own personal taste, so it will be interesting to see what they come up with on the lighter side. I'll try to secure a sample of their filter roast to examine shortly, and see how it goes up against a typical espresso roast. 

I find that 9 times out of 10, a filter roast tastes way sweeter and has a lot more flavour clarity than the equivalent espresso roast when brewed through a filter device.

Know a cafe that sells filter roast?

If you know of a cafe who sells filter roast (I know Cup Coffee in Brisbane does a pretty awesome filter roast, for example), shout out in the comments.  I'd love to compile a list of filter roast locations!

This has puzzled me for a while. Filter brew devices are now so common that an IT dude at work came to me the other day and told me he'd picked up an aeropress. Just about every specialty coffee cafe is selling some sort of filter brew device, whether it be hario v60, chemex, syphon, clever coffee dripper or some other paraphenalia. And now it seems just about every other cafe is selling them too.

And people are buying them! Which, I think, is great.

Are people using the new filter brewers as replacements for their old plunger devices, and using the same coffee as always? If not, then where are they buying their coffee?  I would like to think that in Brisbane, a lot of filter brew drinkers would order online from places like Ministry Grounds, or Market Lane. Cup Coffee sell great filter roast, but are they the only ones here in Brisbane?

Where is all the filter roast coffee in all of this? Sure some people might not mind espresso roast used in a filter brewer (with a shorter brew time i'd assume?). But if a filter roast tastes so much better then why settle for anything else?

Perhaps the problem is not just lack of availability, but also lack of awareness of the treasures that filter roast brings. While most consumers would have a vague concept of what roast depth is, they may not know that it correlates to a particular brew method. And I would doubt they would have an understanding of how roast depth affects flavour. Can we teach them? Should we? Do they want to be taught?

I think we can't insist on everyone caring as much as we do about such trivial matters as coffee flavour. But we can try to offer a better choice, if it's viable to do so. If filter brewers continue to sell, at some point it should become financially viable for cafes to stock filter roast for their customers.

I also think that filter coffee is easier for the average joe to get right than espresso. Expensive machinery not required, and if you know the recipe, have technique and practice a little, chances are you can hit the sweet spot. Of course having a good grinder helps too.

No kenyan coffee was harmed in the making of this pour over...

I recently ordered a nice glass hario server in red (to match my cups) and it came with a cheapy plastic V60 pour over cone, so I thought i would do a quick, albeit unscientific test. 

I wanted to see if the plastic cone could hold heat as well as my glass chemex. Obviously, glass and ceramic are far better conductors and retainers of thermal energy, so i was not expecting the plastic to be anywhere near as good. Turns out i was right... although with a very thorough pre-heating of the plastic cone you could probably still serve up a fairly decent pour over beverage and the temp difference was marginal.

Hario clearly advocate the pouring in the middle technique:

I would throw away this little plastic scoop... i weighed out just 10g of ground coffee when filled to the brim - not nearly enough for a 12oz beverage as per the marking on the scoop. I prefer 15g of coffee for around 250ml, but it depends on the coffee.

Water was allowed to cool to 96 degrees before beginning the pour sequence... as you can see, there is quite a lot of thermal loss involved in pour over. We are nowhere near 92 - 96 degree espresso temps. Both chemex and plastic v60 were preheated with 300ml of boiling water.

Plastic @ 86 degrees first pour - thermal loss of 10 degrees already:

End of second pour, coffee bed has dropped to 81 degrees:

Glass chemex @ 88 degrees first pour - thermal loss of 8 degrees (slightly better than plastic v60):

End of second pour, coffee bed has dropped to 83 degrees:

 

Both the v60 and chemex lost 5 degrees throughout the pour over, though the chemex retained more heat at the start. 5 degrees lost during the pour isn't too bad, but you really need to preheat the plastic v60 more thoroughly, and i think if you waited around before beginning the pour the plastic would lose heat at a faster rate than the glass.

So plastic is probably OK if you preheat well, but it's not quite on par with glass.

Taste wise I think technique and the coffee itself will have far more effect on your brew. For this experiment, my technique was pretty awful as i was juggling the camera, and i was only using some rubbish coffee i had lying around.