PAPER FILTER vs COTTON FILTER -TASTE TEST
While Cotton filters have been around longer than paper filters, the affordability and convenience of using paper filters have contributed to the rapid growth in popularity of paper filters.
Paper is largely used to make pour over coffee all over the world, paper produces a clean tasting cup of coffee and is very consistent. But while paper is popular, there are so many other options to filter coffee. In this blog post we are exploring the taste differences between paper filters and cotton filters, more specifically a high quality paper filter made by cafec and our Aji Filters made from Hand loomed cotton.
Details of the experiment:
To test the taste differences between paper and cotton we need to brew two as close to identical brews side by side so we can compare both and taste the differences.
The Coffee
I used 15g of a washed Ethiopian coffee in this experiment as we wanted to be able to taste as much of the coffee as possible without so much intensity from the processing, this desicion was mainly due to my preference and how I can best taste coffee. For a more scientific experiment we should test this with multiple types of coffees but for the purpose of this article one coffee was enough.
The Water
I used 95ºc distilled water and mineralise using Aquacode water minerals at a 5L dilution (118tds).
The Set Up
2x Hario V60 dripper (plastic)
1x Aji Filter
1x Hario V60 Filter Paper Box 40 (No Tab)
2x Identical tasting cups
The Brew
I first pre wet both filters using hot water, this helps to bring the brewing apparatus’s up to a hot enough temperature.
I ground the coffee for both brews and proceeded to brew a 5 Stage pour over, with a small swirl for agitation after the bloom and second pour.
In total I used 15g of coffee and 5x 50g pours of hot water, I used slow concentric pours with low agitation and a consistent flow throughout.
The Results:
Both brews returned a 1.50% TDS, The Hario filter paper as predicted drew down slower at around 3 minutes in comparison to the Aji Filter which drew down at 2:30 minutes. Aji Filters are faster flowing and this was not unexpected for the Aji Filter to flow faster at the same grind size.
The Taste
This coffee was amazing, it was a high scoring washed coffee with lots of fruity and complex notes. Overall both coffee tasted great, with neither one showing any negative tastes such as burnt, sour or astringency.
The Paper filter was rinsed and the Aji Filter was also rinsed using the same amount of hot water, we did this for a couple of reasons; When rinsing your Aji Filter you help to seal the cotton to the walls of the dripper, this closes the gap between the dripper and the filter and helps to lower the amount of bypass when brewing. For the paper filter, rinsing helped to remove any ‘papery taste’ in the final cup of coffee as well as helped the cotton filter to stick to the walls of the brewer.
In hindsight after blind tasting each cups the paper filter was cleaner tasting, this clean taste helped the coffee shine through and I felt best represent this particular coffee. The Aji Filter had a thicker and creamier body and while it did mask some of the coffees acidity and sweetness the overall body, and creaminess really stood out in the cup, particularly for this already super clean tasting cup of coffee.
The Post Experiment Thoughts
This test was really great to do, tasting both filters using the same grind size helped to see how the Aji Filter stood up to the more traditional paper option.
The 30 second difference in drawdown also helped to confirm the Aji Filters inherently faster flow, while this experiment in particular used the same grind size we know that if we were to grind finer on the Aji Filter to achieve a similar drawdown time we would have an even higher extraction and more contact time compared to the paper filter.
