Today, we're gonna be talking about what might be
my favorite type of filtration for coffee brewing.
That's using a cloth filter for coffee.
Broadly speaking,
there are three types of filtration for coffee.
There's actually more, but we'll just go with three for now.
The most common one,
the one that most people are familiar with
is using a paper filter,
something like a V60 or a Kalita or an AeroPress.
And paper does a really good job
of filtering out all of the fine pieces of coffee,
all of the big pieces of coffee
and usually all of the oils as well.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have metal filters;
something like a French press.
That's a big metal screen.
And that will typically let through more,
especially more very fine pieces.
Cloth for me is the best of both worlds.
It sits right in the middle.
It doesn't let through any fine pieces of coffee.
So you have crystal clear looking coffee,
but it does let through
I think a little bit more of the oils.
You have a different texture when it comes to the brew.
Cloth filters are very common around the world.
You'll see things like this often called Nel drippers
in places like Japan.
You'll see things like coffee socks
in lots of parts of the world
which is just like a long bag that you brew coffee in.
The reason I love it is this perfect
kind of hybrid of clarity and texture.
And while you might think
you'd wanna use it for heavier bodied coffees,
I actually like using lighter bodied coffees in there.
Things like washed Ethiopian coffees
or washed Kenyan coffees,
because it gives them this extra kind of richness,
and heaviness and makes me wanna use all the words
that give people like me a terrible reputation
for just talking nonsense about coffee.
But I can't stress enough
how much I love cloth filtered coffee.
So you might be thinking, if it's so good,
why wouldn't I just use it all the time?
They have a bad reputation.
For kind of a good reason,
it's not that they can't brew coffee,
it's not that it's difficult to work with,
it's difficult to clean and to keep clean.
Maintaining a cloth filter
is annoying, frustrating hard work.
And for many people,
it's not the return on investment that they want.
For that extra work,
it is the improvement in your coffee enough
to justify how much work you have to do.
Now, many people don't do the work and have a bad experience
because it's really easy to make a cloth filter taste bad.
You know what happens
when you forget your washing in the washing machine
for like a day and it smells terrible.
Well, that's the growth of mildew inside your laundry.
And that's what gives it that bad smell.
Mildew loves to grow in wet cotton basically.
That's like a perfect breeding ground.
This right now is wet cotton.
It's really easy to have that taste,
to have that smell appear in a cloth filter.
It's really easy to make them taste disgusting;
because they trap little pieces of coffee,
bits of oil in there, no matter how much you rinse them.
Well, they taste like old oxidized coffee
and forgotten laundry.
And that, that is not what you wanna taste
in your morning cup of coffee.
I've talked about this
being a lot of work to maintain a filter.
Well, what exactly is involved?
The worst thing you can do,
is just use it, rinse it out
and then leave it to dry on the side.
That slow drying process seems to be
when most of the bad smells and bad tastes
appear in the cloth.
So don't do that.
Immediately after using it,
let it drain out as much as possible,
and then dump as much as you can of the grounds inside
into the rubbish bin.
Just get rid of those.
Then you're gonna take it to the sink
and wash out as much as you can from the filter.
It's unlikely you're gonna do a perfect job here.
Chances are, there'll be a few little pieces
you just can't quite get out
that look just embedded in the fiber.
Don't freak out too much about that.
It's gonna be okay.
What you need to do now,
is keep that wet until you use it again.
If you're gonna use cloth every single day,
then I would store the cloth in a glass in the fridge
keep it cold, keep it completely soaked in water.
And when you're ready to use it again,
obviously throw that water out,
give it a very good rinse, a preheat,
and then you're good to go.
If you wanna use it now and again,
wash it as much as you possibly can
and then put it in a bag, put it in the freezer.
Leave it frozen until you need to use it again.
And again, just run it under hot water to defrost it.
There is some theory that freezing repeatedly
will slightly degrade the quality of the cotton.
I haven't had so many issues with that over the years.
One last tip is that over time,
you will slowly stain the cloth;
and there is a way to undo that and actually give it
a really, really really good clean.
This stuff, this isn't necessarily a brand endorsement.
I just know that this particular brand does work quite well.
I spoke to someone from Onex many years ago,
and asked them about what was the best thing
to clean coffee.
And they said, "Use this;"
because this formulation for espresso machine cleaning,
was actually based on their original formulation
that they use to clean the cloths in giant earn brewers
that people used to use back in the day.
A teaspoon of this into hot water,
leave your filter to soak in it,
and it will come back shockingly clean.
Like it does a really good job of getting rid of stain.
You will have to rinse that a life out of it
to get rid of any traces of smell
or odor over the soap basically.
But once you've done that, it's good to go.
And it's really, really, really good
at bringing a cloth filter back
to looking good and tasting good again.
To talk more about brewing with them,
what I'm gonna do in a minute is brew one of these.
And I'll also brew a V60
to talk about the difference in taste
between those two things.
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So let's brew some coffee.
I'm gonna brew this almost identically
to how I brew a V60.
If you don't know how that works, look up here.
So bloom two to one to that of V60.
I'm gonna give it a gentle swirl
just to mix everything together
and make sure we've got no pockets
of dry coffee causing trouble.
Now, a lot of the time in different parts of the world
you see a lot of different techniques.
Some people like to keep a very low bed,
that doesn't bother me as much.
I don't mind filling the filter up a little bit more
like I would do a V60, I like that higher thermal mass.
And I don't worry about water leaking
out of the sides of the cloth.
If you look at it, you can actually see
very little is coming through the cloth.
Mostly it's filtering through the coffee
and out of the bottom.
Now, a cloth filter has a little bit less resistance.
That means your brews will be a little bit quicker.
And obviously it has a little bit less resistance
because it lets through a little bit more.
It's literally bigger gaps between the fibers
than there are in paper.
As such with the same grind they would produce,
say a three minute 30 brew for 30 to 560 on V60.
Well here, it might brew in three minutes.
That doesn't really encourage me
to change the grind that much though,
because it doesn't really have a massive impact
on the extraction, the way that a changing grind would.
However, if you do wanna go a little bit finer,
that may just bring out a little bit more texture
and up your extraction a little bit
if you feel something is missing.
So that brew finished just under three minutes, like 2:55
which is about what I'd expect for the same grind size
that would produce a three minute 30 brew
in a V60 with one of the quicker V60 papers.
Generally speaking, I would let this cool down enough
to touch before I try and clean it up.
I don't worry too much about staining
or that kinda stuff 'cause that's easy to fix later.
So just leave it in the sink, leave it in the spare mug,
leave it somewhere, drink your coffee,
and enjoy it and then deal with this thing afterwards.
So it's time for taste comparison.
I have a delicious brew of coffee here;
and conveniently, I have a delicious V60 here as well.
So we have two brews.
They are the same coffee, same grind setting,
same dose, same water, same technique really.
The primary difference is filtration method though,
this brew did take maybe 20 seconds longer to filter
than this one.
Now this is quite a light roasted coffee.
It's quite a light-bodied coffee.
It's a washed Ethiopian coffee.
It's very floral, very pretty, not a ton of texture to it
but it's bright and clean in a V60 and very lovely.
What about cloth?
So good!
It just feels really lovely to drink.
The texture and mouthfeel of cloth filtered coffee made well
is a thing of beauty.
It's my favorite filtration method for this reason.
You get all of the clarity of a paper filtered coffee,
with this extra layer of pleasure and delight on top.
It really is so lovely to drink.
If I'm gonna get just very pretentious,
I would say it's like drinking coffee as silk,
your coffee turned to velvet.
I'm aware I sound ridiculous
talking about coffee this way to most people,
but I'm having a good time.
So yeah, broadly speaking,
if you're someone who loves ritual and routine,
you can probably make a cloth filter work.
It's all about not forgetting to do something.
It's all about remembering to rinse it properly,
remembering to keep it damp
and kind of wet and cold the whole time
or remembering to put it in the freezer,
remembering to get it out at the right time.
Remembering all these little pieces.
If you're very good at building habits and rituals,
then I think it's a very rewarding thing.
If you're like me
where you're barely functional before coffee,
and you're quite chaotic and forgetful at times,
you'll annoy yourself.
'Cause you'll have just left it out for a day
and you'll be frustrated
at the amount of work you have to do
to bring it back to being a good tasting filter.
It can always be brought back
unless it's growing mold or something truly disgusting,
but it can usually be brought back
to being a good filter again,
if you're willing to put in the work.
How much it returns on that,
is really down to how much you enjoy your coffee this way.
I really do enjoy coffee this way.
And so it's right on the cusp
of a return on investment of my time.
I use paper.
I like paper because I like the brew and it's easy.
And actually that matters to me.
And I'm okay with that.
The results from cloth, are wonderful.
If you have the chance to try it, please do;
but just know what you're getting yourself in for.
But with that extra work,
there are definitely wonderful rewards.
I'd love to hear from you, are you using cloth at home?
Have you tried cloth?
Did you love it for a while,
and then just gave up because of the work involved?
Did you come from a family that brewed
with a kind of big old coffee sock that just brewed
really nasty, dirty tasting coffee the whole time?
Did you know there was a better way
and that it could do beautiful things to coffee?
I would love to hear thoughts.
I'd love to hear from you down in the comments below.
But for now I'll say thank you so much for watching,
and I hope you have a great day.