There is a reason for Everything / Part 4 |

So lets review the basics.

When you order any hot coffee at Portola Coffee Lab,

We grab a tin with a pre-weighed dose of coffee (to a tenth of a gram) and place it into our Marco Uber grinder.

We grind the coffee and immediately place it into the brewing apparatus – be it the V-60, Trifecta, or siphon.

We then proceed to brew that individual cup of coffee just for you – which is anywhere from a 3 to 8 minute process – the Trifecta being the shortest and the siphon being the longest overall. Your mind is then blown by the freshness and flavor quality of the coffee!

We never go to a dispenser to fill your cup.

You simply cannot have the ultimate in quickness/convenience AND absolute quality.

We do not want you in and out in 60 seconds. Gone in 60 is a phrase for car chases and Nicolas Cage, not our coffee.

So after emphasizing that we brew coffee fresh, it raises the question:

Why did you choose to use the brew methods that you currently use?

I love that question, and I am actually going to take 2 posts to answer it so we don’t feel rushed.

First up, the Hario V-60 cone dripper. This is not your grandfather’s Melitta. As a matter of fact, I never liked single-cup dripped coffee until I experienced the Hario. The Hario did what others failed to do – brew a flavor-intense, fully extracted, non-bitter cup of coffee.

How does it do this? The Hario’s pointed cone design slowed the passing of water over the grounds (without having to grind excessively fine or double-filter), which increased the amount and quality of extraction. You end up with lots of “origin flavors” (resulting from where the coffee was grown) along with great body in the cup. It is a method that really utilizes the idea of “movement” while brewing. It is a paper filtered drip method so you do not get any sediment in the cup. Pour-over bars seem common when talking about 3rd wave coffee, but not all cones are created equal and we think this cone definitely stands above the rest.

Next up is the Bunn Trifecta.

This is a single-cup, “profile” brewed machine. It is commonly compared to the now debunked, Clover machine. Some think that this was Bunn’s answer to the Clover but the fact of matter is the Trifecta and Clover went into development at the same time. The Clover was rushed to market quicker while the Trifecta underwent a lengthier R&D period. Which paid off.

What I love about the Trifecta is the ability to tweak the brew profile to the “Nth” degree for each individual coffee. My baristas and I have the ability to affect 10 variables in the brew process to enhance the flavors coming off each coffee we offer.

We create a custom profile for our Brazil, which is different from our Guatemala, which is different from our El Salvador, and so on and so forth.

With the Trifecta, there is no such thing as a “broad brush” approach to brewing coffee. No one size fits all. No government issue brew profile. Each coffee takes work and skill to make it taste amazing in this machine. We typically spend hours dialing in the Trifecta whenever we add a new coffee to our lineup.

Do these 10 variables matter? Without question!

I was astonished by how much the brew variables changed the resulting cup flavor. It creates both a nuanced and full-bodied cup, creating a flavor quality superior to other full immersion brew methods such as the French Press – (in my opinion). At the end of the brew cycle, the Trifecta applies 12 pounds of air pressure to the brew liquid and presses it through an extremely fine metal mesh filter. Some coffee solids make their way into the cup, which gives it a heavier mouthfeel, but not enough to interfere with the cups flavor clarity. What happens with some brew methods that allow a higher degree of coffee solids in the cup is those coffee solids combine with the flavor oils to form what are called “Brew Colloids” – which essentially hinder the detection of the most delicate and subtle flavors in the coffee. The design of the Trifecta avoids this shortcoming.

With all of the calibration at our fingertips, and the ability to repeat the processes countless times with just a push of a button… This machine has become the clearest example of our brewing standards. And it looks like it is from the future.

It uses technology to put us more in touch with coffee rather than neuter it and make it into a new version of a vending machine.

I will take time in the next blog post to go through more of the methods we have here and give my personal opinion as to why we chose them, but in the mean time feel free to look around this blog to learn more about each method. Even before we opened, we were writing this blog as a resource to help people understand a bit more as to why we are doing what we are doing and why we chose the equipment we chose.

Till then, support good coffee.

Jeff Duggan.