Fast vs. Slow: Brewing an Ethiopian Natural Two Very Different Ways
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As we build the Brew Lab at Poets & Prose, I’ve been spending the past few months experimenting with different coffees, brewing methods and recipes. Most of my experiments produce differences that are interesting but relatively subtle.
This one was very different.
I was working with a vibrant Ethiopian Yirgacheffe natural—a coffee that is almost impossible to ignore. It bursts with blueberry, nectarine, florals and black tea, with a touch of milk chocolate underneath. Coffees like this can be incredibly expressive, but they can also be less forgiving. Get the extraction right and you get layers of sweetness and fruit. Get it wrong, and those same flavours can turn sharp, bitter or astringent.
So I decided to put two very different cold-brew approaches head-to-head.
On one side: the Fellow Aiden's 90-minute fast cycle, using a hot bloom followed by a slow cold drip.
On the other: a 13-hour, room-temperature immersion using the Toddy Cold Brew System.
Same coffee. Same water. Two very different approaches.
Here’s what happened.
The Setup
Coffee: Natural Process Ethiopian Yirgacheffe
Tasting notes: Blueberry, Nectarine, Floral, Black Tea, Milk Chocolate
Water: Clean, carbon-filtered water
I kept the coffee and water consistent, while allowing each brewing method to use its own recommended approach.
Method A: Fellow Aiden — 90-Minute Cold Brew with a Hot Bloom
For the Aiden, I used a 1:12 coffee-to-water ratio, with the machine's automated hot-bloom phase followed by its 90-minute cold-brew cycle.
I ground the coffee on the Ode 2 at a coarse setting of 10.
The result was clean and relatively light-bodied, but it wasn't what I was hoping for from this coffee.
The cup had some of the expected brightness, but the finish leaned sharp and slightly bitter, with an astringent quality that seemed to suppress the sweetness and fruit that I knew were hiding in the beans.
To be fair, I'm still relatively new to using the Aiden for cold brew. I absolutely love it for hot coffee, and I'm continuing to experiment with different coffees, grind sizes and profiles for cold brewing.
My takeaway wasn't that the Aiden can't make good cold brew. Rather, this particular combination of coffee and profile didn't work for me.
Method B: Toddy — 13-Hour Room-Temperature Immersion
For the second brew, I went in the opposite direction.
I used a 1:8 ratio and immersed the coffee for 13 hours at room temperature, around 20–22°C, using the Toddy Cold Brew System with its organic cloth filter bag.
For this brew, I ground the coffee using the Mazzer Philos with i200D burrs.
The difference was remarkable.
The coffee became much fuller, sweeter and more expressive. Instead of the sharpness I experienced in the Aiden brew, the cup had a lush, almost syrupy texture.
And then the fruit showed up.
Fast Drip vs. Overnight Immersion
The two cups tasted like they came from completely different coffees.
Body & Texture
The Aiden produced a lighter, and more tea-like body.
The Toddy produced a heavy, velvety and syrupy mouthfeel that coated the palate and carried the flavours for much longer.
Fruit
The Aiden brought out brighter, sharper notes, with a citrus-like quality.
The Toddy unlocked something much closer to what I had hoped for from this Ethiopian natural: ripe blueberry and juicy nectarine, with a roundness and sweetness that made the fruit feel saturated rather than sharp.
Finish
This was probably the biggest difference.
The Aiden finished with a noticeable bitterness and astringency.
The Toddy finished smoothly with black tea and sweet milk chocolate, and the flavours lingered well after the sip.
So, Which One Wins?
For this particular coffee, the answer was clear: slow and steady wins.
The Fellow Aiden's fast cold-brew cycle may absolutely have a place in my brewing rotation. I'm still learning how to get the best from it for cold brew, and I plan to keep experimenting with different coffees and profiles.
But this experiment reinforced something I love about specialty coffee:
The brewing method can completely change the way a coffee expresses itself.
The Ethiopian natural that tasted sharp and slightly bitter through one method became juicy, sweet, heavy-bodied and incredibly expressive through another.
If my goal is to showcase the intense fruit, sweetness and body of a beautiful Ethiopian natural, I'll be reaching for the room-temperature Toddy immersion.
And that’s exactly why we’re building the Brew Lab—to experiment, compare, taste and discover what makes each coffee shine.