I’ve done some more experimenting with the Hoop in the last few days. Firstly, I’ve changed my opinion on grind size. I previously said I didn’t want to go much finer and just wanted to play around with other variables. Well, that was with the original papers because of the clogging risk. With the Next level papers, i’ve ground quite a bit finer without clogging and have had some good cups. I need to try this more on some light roasts to see if this is enough to get a good extraction or if I still need to pre-heat / extended bloom / wet WDT.
I have brewed what I consider to be light roasts (Ethiopian from Sweven and Milky Cake from Dak) with an original coarser grind size (4 on ZP6) with 98C water, pre-heating, direct bloom for 1 min and wet WDT at 2 mins with really nice results. Probably the best the Milky Cake has tasted! Will try these with the finer grind size using ZP6 and see if I can match these results. If I can just pour and forget about it, that would be preferable.
Lastly, I tested the Niche Zero (admittedly… only once) and didn’t enjoy it too much. I set it at about 60 on NZ (where it says ‘calibrate’) but got the grind size all off. All finished by 2 mins even with a WDT half way through! Maybe I’ll try again sometime.
