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(If you thought it was complicated before... but seriously, this is a damn cool print, go buy it at Popchartlab.com)
A fairly common question we’re asked is from people who really want to try BP coffee but are a bit intimidated by all the bits of equipment needed to get started. It doesn’t help that coffee nerds like ourselves love showboating and talking about our latest aeropress / syphon / pour-over.

(My coffee armory - definitely a coffee nerd :-S )

How did we become coffee nerds to start with? Well i put myself through uni working at various cafes and restaurants as a barista, but i’ve actually learnt most of my coffee nerdiness from my brother. I taught him to pour his first cappuccino but he’s since surpassed me and now runs his own cafe in Canberra (Canberra folk should go check it out - Hideout in Barton - while you’re there tell him how much he should be stocking upgraded coffee ;-) ). Every x-mas i get a new coffee related gift like a aeropress / syphon / pour-over and I love it, totally hooked on being a coffee nerd.

However, that doesn’t mean everyone needs to be one to enjoy a bulletproof coffee. We’re here to help you figure out how to get started and run through each of:

    Brewing methods

    Grinders

    Blenders

    Storing your beans

    What to drink your coffee out of

We’ll cover stuff like travel options (I fly ~50 times a year with the day job and don’t feel like myself without bulletproof coffee - blending butter with coffee is always a good icebreaker in client meetings ;) ) and how to select equipment and hack the process to fit your budget.

One thing to bear in mind with a bio-hacking mindset towards coffee is that we drink coffee to optimise health and performance whereas other hipster types (sorry bro...) want to drink coffee optimised for taste instead. So we have to do things slightly different to those guys.

Brewing methods

Bio-hackers want to make sure that they are brewing with a metal filter so that we don’t end up filtering out the potent anti-neuro inflammatory compounds Cafestol and kahweol. Keeping that in mind the various brewing methods are:

    Espresso- the big machines in your local coffee shop. These are metal filtered and awesome for cafes because they can afford awesome La Marzocco ones and maintain and tune them up regularly. For us mere mortals the consumer grade ones don’t really cut it and end up producing pretty rough coffee over time.

 

    Stove pot- these are a low tech version of an espresso machine and probably better for at home use, but they need a bit of supervision otherwise you can burn your coffee real good (bad)...

 

    Pour-over- These use paper filters in general so they are not ideal if you want to maximise the anti-inflammatory properties of the coffee. Upsides are that they are either all glass or ceramic in construction so you skip BPA related concerns. I still use pour-over occasionally but it is not my primary method of making coffee. If you were drinking a really expensive single origin type coffee then this is what you’d use, but then your coffee would be mouldy and you’d be a dirty hipster (can’t help it bro). The kings of pourover are Chemex and the Hario V60 (travelling) or V80 (at home/office).

 

    Syphon- this is a less common method and there are various European or Japanese style machines. Watch a youtube video to see these things working, it’ll take me a page to describe it and it’ll still be confusing... These are a step above the pour-over in terms of coffee tasting status (they are very controllable wrt temp and time of extraction). Hack them by retrofitting with a butane burner rather than an oil one. I’ve got one of the Hario units but it doesn’t get much use because it takes too long to make a cuppa and has a cotton filter. I will crack it out at dinner parties and use little beakers to serve the coffee if I feel like showing off (must have a recessive version of the H gene somewhere)

 

    Cold Drip- iced water is used to drip extract the coffee over 8-12 hours. This can be used with a metal filter so would be a good option if you are organised enough to plan ahead. The coffee from this method has a unique taste that borders on a liqueur. Its delicious on its own but you’re going to struggle blending it with butter if you can’t melt it! 

 

The top two

    French press - Portable, metal filter and glass construction. Dave Asprey is an advocate of this method. Downsides are that they can break when packed in luggage (I’ve lost a couple this way but metal construction ones exist). It is a very simple process to make your coffee and a good starting point. You would probably want to get a Bodum french press but you can hack a cheaper one by unwinding the spring that supports the filter to make sure you get a good seal and avoid getting gritty coffee. Hack number 2 is that you can “blend” your butter and MCT by plunging the press in these guys - just make sure you get the grinds out of there first (transfer the coffee into a different container after you’ve brewed it).

 

    Aeropress - After you retro-fit these with a reusable metal filter (hack) this is my preference. They’ll produce a stronger flavoured coffee than a french press which helps to balance the butteriness of a BP coffee. The downside is the plastic construction and non-BPA baddies risk (Aeropress are made from BPA free materials but this isn’t always a guarantee of health effects). These guys cost ~$50 so won’t break the bank and are a good option for both travel and home use. There are plenty of trick videos on the net of tricks with brewing these guys but all I do is let the thing gravity drip itself a bit while brewing before i top it up and plunge it. This gives me more mls of coffee out of the thing.

 

Grinders

The basic requirement here is that you get a conical burr grinder this will give you the best uniformity of your grind (all the grains will be the same size). The other options are the herb chopper type machines which aren’t good enough if you ask me (but if you’ve already bought a chopper type grinder its not going to kill you). From there you’ve got a couple second order optimisations.

The mobile/budget conscious option here is a hand grinder. These will be cheaper than an electric powered one but do take a bit of effort to do the work. Couple of options are:

    Hario Mini Slim and Kyocera CM45-CF are both fairly common suggestions for the smaller travel type units. There is nothing particularly wrong with either of them, they’re both a solid start and my Hario from 2.5 years ago is still going strong! But there is another option...

    The Mini Porlex is the best option in my book, its made from stainless (less BPA risk) and actually fits inside the barrel of an aeropressso it makes a really neat travel kit. Also the handle is slightly longer than the Hario one so it gives you a bit more leverage on it.

Electric grinders are what you’d have as part of your “daily driver” setup at home though. As well as being easier to use they perform a lot better for coarse grinds. A couple of examples are:

    This Sunbeam unit is a good example of one that is not too expensive, has solid build and comes with a great little funnel to stop from getting your grinds everywhere  (http://www.sunbeam.com.au/products/kitchen/em0480/)

    We have also since discovered the Baratza Encore. The Baratza is a much better grinder in our opinion. We have put several of the sunbeam units through their paces at conferences and other events and wore them out. We're on our first set of Baratza units and they're still going strong. The theoretical benefit of a better grinder is to avoid burning the beans with the heat from the grinding process... But there aren't many people who could legitimately pick the difference (i don't think). So the practical benefits of the Baratza are:

  • Its a lot heavier - so it moves around less on your bench and the hopper doesn't vibrate loose
  • The hopper fits very well and the mess of loose grinds is fairly minimal You can buy a hopper extension if you want to fit more beans in it.
  • Baratza are a great company that focus on coffee equipment only - so we're happy to rely on their more specialist equipment, and the pricepoint is pretty reasonable too!

    A couple of examples you should avoid are:

(The Bodum unit is a chopper type and will not give a uniform grinder, the Delonghi unit is conical burr but the vibrations from operating it will loosen the hopper and get grinds everywhere) 

What to drink your coffee out of

Again we have some ongoing themes here to consider here wrt BPA and other nasties that you might contaminate your coffee with, but also in a more day to day sense you want to keep your coffee warm while you drink it. My top suggestions are:

    For travel you can’t go past Klean Kanteen. The wide mouth dual wall units are awesome and the TAD gear collaboration one has a cool print on it. The product is BPA free and 99% stainless so has a v. low risk of contaminating your coffee.

 

    There are other BPA free dual wall options (e.g. http://www.bodum.com/int/en-us/shop/detail/11041-01/?navid=61) but I would steer away from any plastics/polymers regardless. BPA isn’t the only bad thing that you might be exposing yourself to.[2]

    At home you can’t really get anything cooler that the Bodum double wall glasses, but they’re expensive. While they’re more robust than they look, when they break you end up with two glasses worth of broken glass pieces (bonus) and whenever you have a house party your friends will want to use them because they look awesome - seriously, lock em up. Try to get the ones with the rubber strip around the outside, this is there as a vibration dampener and does a decent job of protecting them.

 

(Bodum dual wall glasses are cool for coffee and, in a previous life, beer too... *tear*)

    If you want to take it to the next level (like Dave Asprey) you can fit your house out with laboratory grade glass (http://www.labdirect.com.au/). Even glass can contaminate your food depending on what type/grade it is and lab grade is much higher quality than food grade.

Super Hack Alertyou can almost eliminate the need for blending your coffee with a Klean Kanteen. Here’s how:

Put your coffee, butter and MCT in the Kanteen, then seal and shake.

This will give a result that is comparable to using a hand blender but not as foamy as using a good quality standing blender. I’m not going to lie to you and say its as good as using a Blendtec but I guess the best endorsement is that I don’t travel with a hand blender anymore and if I’m running late for the train in the morning then this is what I do (unfortunately this is most days...).

Blenders

Like i’ve said above hand blenders are pretty much redundant as long as you have a sealed container with which to shake the crap out of your BP coffee. However there are a range that people will use from milk foamers through to 700 Watt stick blenders. I haven’t noticed much to differentiate the brands aside from:

    Getting the blender attachments on and off can be effortful if the buttons are too small - have a play with the demo units in the store. Its a minor annoyance but its worth having a look at.

    The food processing attachments are where its at. I don’t use my stick blender for coffee anymore but i still use the food processor attachments for cooking.

For a standing blender the Blendtec is the cream of the crop. However for those of us(I’m not spending $600 on a blender either) who aren’t going to buy one of them I don’t think that your coffee is going to know much of a difference between your selection in the $50-$100 range. The trickwhen blending coffee is that you want to pop the insert of your lid off the blender before you start blitzing your coffee otherwise the hot air will expand and you will explode hot buttery coffee all over the place (yes, I am speaking from experience, the office tea room will never smell the same again). Cover the hole with a folded up piece of paper towel or similar and be careful you don’t burn your hand.

Also - don’t use a magic bullet because the plastic they use isn’t very high quality at all. I can actually feel the difference if I use a magic bullet for my coffee.

Storing your beans

There are a few options for storing your beans. Ultimately you don’t want to be buying the small bags of coffee for everyday use so invariably you’ll end up on the 2.25kg bags (which don’t work out too bad per cup compared to typical high quality, single origin coffee). You don’t want your coffee to go stale so here are your options in order of priority:

    Split your coffee into weekly portions, vacuum seal and freeze. When you defrost make sure you let the beans get to room temperature before you open the bag.

    Hackof the above is to double sandwich bag pressing the excess air out (to avoid condensation upon defrosting). Then when defrosting: Make sure you keep your freezer door closed because defrosting and refreezing can allow for extra condensation in the bags which will be detrimental to your coffee (water -> mould). Do a 2 stage defrost where you go from freezer to fridge overnight first and then fridge to room temperature the next day (let the beans get to room temperature before you open the bags - v. important)

    Keep your weeks worth of coffee in a vacuum sealed airtight container like the Airscape which protects your beans from light, air and moisture.

Summing up

Lots of people ask us about coffee so I hope this has been helpful for you. Please comment or msg/email us if we’ve missed anything and we’ll revise this as somewhat of a living document as our taste/knowledge develops.



[1][2]

Guest Author
Guest Author

This article was contributed by a guest author with expert knowledge in their field.


14 Responses

jem
jem

March 25, 2014

top job leon thanks heaps. im travelling atm and thought i could find enough good fats to keep me BP but its not happening. so hunted down a klean kanteen today whilst in japan and am getting a friend to bring over some MCT and my Bp beans when she visits next week. just got to find a shop to grind them for me :)

Jane Smith
Jane Smith

March 18, 2014

The coffee brewers used in commercial coffee shops barely resemble the Mr. Coffee that you use at home. Your business needs coffee brewers designed to make and store the large amounts of coffee that your customers will buy. Give your shop an extra touch of class with good coffee mugs for customers who want to drink their coffee in the shop. Grinders designed to grind large amounts of coffee will allow you to grind your coffee quickly, as well as sell it to customers who do not have a grinder at home.

Alex steward
Alex steward

January 30, 2014

As expected you are able to just cut down on the alcohol intake. Through the Archives of Internal Medicine.i m weak to these kind of hot drinks

Leon
Leon

March 08, 2013

@Vanessa – We’ve got a shipment on the way, give us 2 weeks and we’ll have it in stock for you! :-)

Vanessa
Vanessa

March 08, 2013

I saw that Bulletproof Exec now does DECAF upgraded coffee… When is that hitting our shores? As a pregnant lady who misses her daily bulletproof coffee I’d jump at the chance to buy it!!

Dan
Dan

February 20, 2013

Thanks for the mental model projection of how those anti-inflammatory properties might lead to a possible ephemeral false-positive cholesterol marker (…at least that’s how I’m currently picturing it). So I will be very keen to hear your paper v metal filter findings, in particular, when those goodies arrive.

Re pour-over, I normally make about 800-1000ml every morning (along with a big slice of grassie-butter and mct oil) to be shared with the lovely lady and find it quite an enjoyable technique for producing that many cups. But then rumour has it I’m partial to a good tea ceremony and the like, so… :)

Re: Beans. I’m curious about the absence of roast-dates on the Upgraded Coffee (or did I miss it?) and any discussion of staleness. I was under the impression we should follow the 2m/2w/2h rule for green/roastwhole/ground regarding bean freshness? Also, is there any public domain info on detecting mycotoxins?

Leon
Leon

February 19, 2013

Hey Dan,
Honestly, I’m a bit conflicted too. What my “mental model” of my biology says to me is that your body uses cholesterol to fight inflammation etc so potentially the increased LDL numbers are just the Kawheol and Cafestol stimulating an anti-inflammatory response from your body. There is “good” LDL and “bad” LDL after all (gross simplification), i’d be really interested to see what particle size LDL is stimulated by the metal filtered coffee… I think that this is the hypothesis being followed by the BP diet at the moment (originally they were anti metal filters).

I love my pourover and have recently found these bad boys

http://ablebrewing.com/collections/products/

Probably do a follow up post when they get here!

Dan
Dan

February 19, 2013

Leon, agree completely with your follow-up points. I guess I’m just trying to determine which brew method to lean — I currently use pour-over w/ paper filter. :)

Leon
Leon

February 19, 2013

@Dan
Yeah i think that unfortunately the jury is still out wrt pretty much everything to do with health. You can go to different Doctors and they tell you totally opposite things, and there is so much conflicting studies coming out every day… I think the only thing you can do is find a paradigm that you believe in and that makes you feel good. Its kind of ironic that the information is so conflicting that you just have to go back to trusting your gut!

Having said that then testing your blood etc is a good way to do due diligence on your approach, but even then there is conflicting information about how you should interpret your results. You’d think that it wouldn’t be that hard to figure this stuff out!!

@Ben
You can get a caffeine tracker app on your phone to manage your blood levels of caffeine. Its based on some fairly general assumptions but might be good to use to get a feel for how to manage your levels throughout the day…

bshann
bshann

February 18, 2013

Nice article… Thanks for the frost / de-frost tip. As the BP Coffee is pretty flavour neutral (not too acidic, not too caramelised) I don’t think it matters a whole lot freezing it. I recall reading about blind testing of frozen vs unfrozen beans with nothing concluding frozen beans were more worse off flavour wise. Also obvious but probably worth noting that you should only freeze and unfreeze once.

I just purchased a CUISINART DBM-8 conical burr mill for $100 on eBay which I’m pretty happy with so far. Uniform grind, takes 4 seconds versus 4 minutes of my ceramic hand grind which is still awesome and vital for travel.

The thing I personally struggle with in regards to coffee is managing caffeine tolerance. Aside from the differences in caffeine content across different bean types its tough to balance limiting myself to one morning coffee a day with getting enough that I don’t feel flat without permanently increasing the dose. Perhaps I should take Sundays off? Wow, I sound like a proper junkie.

Dan
Dan

February 16, 2013

Great post! Would it be fair to say the jury is still out on the cafestol/kahweol cholesterol bad v anti-inflammatory good debate?
source: http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Health_Letter/2012/January/what-is-it-about-coffee

Leon
Leon

February 16, 2013

Thanks for commenting guys

@nathan – thats a really cool hack that you’ve figured out! I like the idea of drinking a hot buttery coffee milkshake :-)

@jay I have been to the Campos cafe in fortitude valley (i think – down an alleyway etc) and its a pretty cool spot! You’re right that the storage option is not quite ideal – you’ll lose a bit of the flavour profile from freezing the beans – but its a lot cheaper drinking the big bags than the small bags!

At home i make everyone upgraded coffee! But i don’t force them to have butter (although i might sneak some into their food) :-)

Nathan
Nathan

February 15, 2013

Great post im liking these mate

For BPC at work I use a SS milkshake cup http://www.getprice.com.au/Stainless-Steel-Milkshake-Cup-Gpnc_487—35173265.htm and a $10 milk foamer works a treat and keeps a nice big BPC hot for a decent amount of time

Jay Killeen
Jay Killeen

February 15, 2013

This is an awesome post Leon! I’ll be sure to share this with my karate crew for when people are looking to get into the art of coffee. We have a huge trend at karate for all the martial artists to be coffee artists aswell. Anyway, try out that Rok Espresso maker. It is meant to be comparable to the Aeropress but with more pressue, more sturdier design and coming in at $210 delivered from the UK to Australia it doesn’t break the bank. I think it gets up to 10 bar and I tend to opt for a very fine grind (I am running with the sunbeam grinder aswell). Glad we are on the same wavelength with this stuff. I might try and get a video of me brewing with the Rok aswell as there aren’t that many videos of amatuers giving it a go.

My brother is pretty up to speed on coffee. Check out Campos here in Brisbane if you ever get a chance. He was a little concerned about me buying 2.25kg bags from you but your suggestion of storage at the end might be a good option. Also I will probably ration the beans amongst the Brisbane Goju Karate crew so I will probably run through them faster.

What is your suggestion for social use of the beans at home? Do you run two grinders? One for the biohackers and one for the people who add 3 spoons of sugar and half drink it (they get the shitty gloria jeans stuff right ;)

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