Brewing with The Bird

Weber workshops released a novel device for making coffee, The Bird. Like everything they offer, it’s insultingly expensive and alluringly beautiful. It promises to make coffee in a new, fun way, with a device that looks like a cafetière and works more like an AeroPress. Maybe. A bit.

How does The Bird work?

The Bird is an immersion brewer, that uses a vacuum for separating the grounds and the coffee. It’s made out of thick, heavy glass (I haven’t broken it in months of use), with brass and steel fittings.

After assembly, with the basket at the bottom, one adds coffee, then water. The stirry bit is great fun, and goes in after, agitating the coffee grounds and water. It later doubles as the device to generate the vacuum.

What’s the coffee like?

The coffee has the merits of a well-made pour-over: clean extraction, bright clear flavours, a good mouthfeel.

Due to the efficiency of the extraction, the coffee has a stronger flavour than I’d expect with a pour over, so I reduce the coffee by 2g off the ratio I’d be using otherwise, eg 18:300 becomes 16:300.

What’s its selling point?

Aside from the looks and novelty, very efficient brewing appealed to me. Sometimes I enjoy the sedative meditative process of making a pour over, but most of the time I just don’t have the time to. Enter vacuum extraction and clean it up later.

How do I make coffee with it?

I also don’t vary the grind size for any of the coffees that I brew, sticking to about 440µm.

What I do vary is the water temperature: 97º for a light roast, 94º for darker or decaf.

1. Set kettle to boil to temperature.

2. Grind coffee at 440µm.

3. Assemble Bird, with one filter paper, not two. I can’t see the point of using two, except to buy more paper.

4. Pour in coffee.

5. Pour in water.

6. Agitate.

7. Wait, probably 5m, maybe 5m 30s. Probably 5m. Very little good came of the longer interval.

8. Extract (which you can see in the video).

OK but it’s still very expensive.

It is, however I worked out that, due to the reduction in coffee usage, it’ll amortise over two years. A point I feel Weber could make, but then can you imagine? Talking about price? Admitting it’s ridiculous? So gauche.

Which got me thinking…

I enjoy the brewing workflow of the Bird, but I do not enjoy the washing up workflow. It’s a lot more annoying than a V60. What if, I could have the ease of brewing of a Bird, with the ease of cleanup of a V60?

My V60 is the Hario Switch, a steep and release brewer, that also works as a V60 (very similar to the Clever). I mostly use the Switch for pre-heating, because anything else has been unsatisfactory, but I wanted to experiment.

Bringing Bird bird brewing ease to a V60

My worry about immersion brewing in a V60 is over-extracting the coffee due to choking as it runs out via gravity. After reading The Physics of Filter Coffee, I had a better understanding of the most important factors that go into the finished cup: extraction, based on the ratio of coffee to water, and water temperature. After a certain point, only so much coffee can dissolve into the water, so as long as you have the appropriate ratio to start with, it’s very hard to over-extract.

It took me 7 cups to get there, but for the same coffee, if I decreased the grind by 40µm, I had a delicious cup, with no more effort than the Bird, and a lot less cleanup.

1. Set kettle to boil to temperature.

2. Grind coffee at 400µm.

3. Preheat Switch.

4. Pour in coffee.

5. Pour in water.

6. Wait 5m.

7. Switch.

I was able to maintain the same reduced coffee ratio, too, meaning that I’m brewing with fewer beans, for the same delicious outcome.

Which all feels rather anticlimactic, really.