Aesthetically Pleasing Coffee Videos
Published on 14 September 2024
I love coffee — not just drinking it, but also brewing it, along with all the rituals that come with it. I also appreciate the unique aesthetic of the coffee world. For the pleasure of the eyes and ears, here are four coffee videos I find particularly pleasant to watch and listen to.
Idobata Coffee
I love this video — the way it’s filmed, its pace, the sound atmosphere (especially the subtle city and trains sounds), and the music that goes with it… everything!
It was produced by Dan Williams. The place is called Idobata Coffee and it’s located in Kamakura, Japan. Here’s a shot of the place:
Some personal coffee nerd notes about this video (click to expand)
I think the way this man brews coffee is pretty interesting. The pour over method he’s using is also the one I use the most when brewing coffee (with a Hario V60), but I noticed some interesting points.
- He doesn’t rinse out the filter paper, which is a common step in the pour over ritual. It’s supposed to remove the papery taste of the filter and preheat the brewer to avoid thermal shock.
- The bloom is massive and lasts throughout the entire brewing phase, not just during the pre-infusion. This might be due to a dark roast. I’ve noticed my blooms are bigger in that case compared to using a lighter roast. Also, the grind seems coarser than what I usually use. It might also be due to the darker roast. Grinding a bit coarser tends to work better with dark roasts, whereas a medium-fine grind is recommended for lighter roasts.
- Speaking of the pre-infusion phase, he’s not doing it directly over the coffee pot, and only places the brewer on it once the pre-infusion is done.
- This man clearly cares about what he’s doing. He’s meticulous about the coffee ritual, and I really like that.
Hario V60 Pour Over by Matt Perger
This video is special to me. I think it’s one of the first I discovered when I started getting interested in (not to say obsessed with) the “third wave” coffee world, and was looking for learning materials on how to brew coffee with my brand-new red Hario V60.
I was captivated by what I saw: the staging, the ritual, the precision of each step… I could almost smell the coffee through my screen. At the time, all of this was new to me, and I tried to meticulously reproduce what I was seeing in the video.
Since then, I’ve calmed down a bit and become less obsessive with my ritual, though I still like to follow certain guidelines and conventions.
Unrelated to coffee, but each time I launch this video, the first few music notes always remind me of the first notes of Summer, a piece composed by Joe Hisaishi for the movie Kikujirō no Natsu.
A Cup of Coffee: Vol. 2 – Glitch Coffee & Roasters
Besides the cheerful atmosphere of the video, this place, Glitch Coffee & Roasters, is special to me. A Japanese friend of mine happens to be a friend of the owner, who’s brewing coffee in the video. A few years ago, I was in Japan, and he took me to that place in the lovely area of Jimbōchō, and introduced us to each other. We had a quick chat, and he showed me around the bright, cozy, and pleasurable café. He brewed coffee for my friend and me. That was the day I drank the best coffee I’ve ever had to this day.
I noticed that, in this video, he also doesn’t rinse out the paper filter. After a quick search, I found that there are two schools of thought on this.
There are two separate believers in Japan coffee community: Wet filter believers (濡らす派), and the non-wet-filter believers (濡らさない派). Depending on which family method they are following and which dripper material/filter they’re using, there’s no exact answer for this in Japan.
[…] some major owners of the Japan coffee company are non-wet-filter believers. This might explained why the Japan coffee association didn’t mention about wetting the filter on their instruction page, and why this is a norm in Japan.
“A Damn Fine Cup of Coffee”
And finally, as a conclusion to this post, two scenes about coffee from the famous TV series Twin Peaks.
Coffee takes a serious place in the show, especially in the heart of Dale Cooper, whose days are always better with a good olʼ cup of Joe. I’ve always loved the aesthetics of Twin Peaks, and how the coffee is a character of its own — just like the Cherry pie.