"Welcome to Five Senses Coffee"

Long term readers will remember me banging on about different brewing methods in my critically acclaimed, but often misunderstood, ‘The plunger is back!’ story last year. Australian coffee is dominated by espresso-based drinks (ie from an espresso machine, not necessarily drunk as espresso). Some of the world’s best, and often most expensive, coffees have finely nuanced flavours which are totally overwhelmed and lost in espresso.

Filter coffee gets a bad rap, as it’s usually done terribly at a dodgy smorgasbord or ‘function’. I would rather drink well-made filter coffee than bad espresso any day!

The same golden rules apply to making filter coffee as to all the other brewing methods. Make sure you grind fresh coffee just before you are ready to use it, use clean equipment and good quality water.

You can store filter coffee in a vac pot of some description, but don’t leave it on a hot plate as it will ‘stew’ and get bitter very quickly.

Our Ethiopian Yirgacheffe is brilliant through filter, with a stunning floral, candy character that is totally seductive. Generally, the more acidic coffees will perform best through filter (Kenyan — Gathima Wet Mill ‘AA’, Papua New Guinea — Purosa, Costa Rica — Tarrazu etc). Our Direct Trade coffee from Banda Aceh is also intriguing, with a heavy mouth feel and forest floor and root vegetable flavours which offer a more savoury experience. Go forth and filter!