How is it Brewing?

Lame title, but I have been brewing coffee on the TipsyBrew as my exclusive coffee making device for a bit now and I wanted to share my thoughts so far.

To the victor go the spoils.

First off, what you see above is the end of a fantastic bag of beans that was my bounty from winning the infamous bet. TipsyBrew made some amazing coffee out of those beans. They will be missed and I thank my friend for honoring the bet in such delicious fashion.

I am in no way disappointed by the coffee that comes out of the TipsyBrew, but I do think I can do better. Let's take a look at what I believe is the weakest point at the moment.

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What you see here are a few viewpoints of one of the best coffee beds I have seen from the TipsyBrew. It is tough to get a picture of the coffee bed that really conveys the flatness. As I said, this is one of the better beds resulting from the TipsyBrew. I admit, I have been tinkering around with pour speed and spoon movements and I have seen some really bad channeling. Tinkering is the fun of the TipsyBrew though and more importantly the coffee still tasted great.

Note: For some reason, and I have no concrete documentation of this, but it seems that the bet bounty coffee had a better bed than others. Same grinder and settings were used as others. It wasn't old, but it also wasn't the freshest roast used. Comparing coffee types and their effect on the bed may be a good experiment later.

You may be thinking, "that bed doesn't look that bad, what is Tipsy uppity about?" Well if you take a closer look, you may notice that there is a notch on the edge of the bed. This occurs when a few drips of water during brew fall down the handle of the spoon and drops pulling the grounds down the cone. This is exactly why when hand pouring a pour over (pfff so last month) you are supposed to pour a perimeter ring. The spoon simply doesn't move the water that far to the perimeter. The spoon also doesn't do much of a circular pattern. It is more circular that simply moving the spout back and forth, but... well, here, just watch this,

This video was taken a while ago and can't remember the settings used. The pour rate seems a bit high and the spoon movement was purposely jerky. Other parameters that can be changed is the distance that the spoon moves, if it stops under the spout, timing, servo easing, yada yada yada.

So that was just a long way of saying, I think I the next best change should be the pour arm. Remember to stay strong, social distance, and support your favorite local coffee roaster if possible.