April Hybrid Brewer - Our Review
A few weeks back, I purchased an April Hybrid brewer to trial with the most unbiased, open minded approach I could think of. I have written extensively on the April Brewer in the past, I have seen past its quirks and no matter how many other brewers I try, the April Brewer remains my favourite. So why would they release an 800dkk (~$190) version with a silicone base and metal ball attachment? Would this rather expensive cousin really have any major advantages over its $70 plastic cousin? I took on the task of drinking way too much coffee over a couple of weeks, buying the ($60!!!)‘Booster’ attachment and trialling every recipe variation I could think of. What follows is some of the results of my testing and why we chose to stock the brewer.
What we know
The April Brewer in general succeeds with slightly coarser grinds than what you might use for a V60, a pouring structure based around 2 or 3 total pours and a high water level to maintain flow rate. The April Brewer struggles with extremely dense coffee, or specifically washed Ethiopian coffees or washed coffees from 2200masl+. The April Brewer also works excellently with the larger April paper filters, the small ones are more on the slow side. April recommends the smaller papers to go with the Hybrid Brewer, as they nestle slightly more comfortably in the marginally narrower base of the Hybrid Brewer. The April Brewer is one of my favourite brewers due to the consistency of flavour from hot to cold - this is a trademark I would be carefully monitoring during the testing process.
Brewing approaches
I fully appreciate the design aspect of the Hybrid Brewer - full control over saturation makes perfect sense to me, why not ensure a complete saturation of the coffee grounds? I have tried many poor versions of this design in the past, so my skepticism was sky high. Due to my preferred flavour and flow of the larger papers, testing began with those. I decided on a recipe that was as follows:
12 - 12.5g dose, 98c water.
0’00 - Valve Open - Dose coffee and fill up Hybrid Brewer to 100g, using 30/70 pattern of circle and centre pours.
1’00 - Close Valve - Fill up to 200g, using 30/70 pattern of circle and centre pours.
2’00 - Open valve and let the coffee drain fully. Brewing time ranged from 3’20 - 4’30.
For grind size, I used my standard approach with the April Brewer - by the end of the first pouring pattern I am looking for a significantly sunken bed of grounds, either fully drained (as close to the 1 minute mark as possible) or with minimal water in the bed at the 1 minute mark.
I ran with just this recipe for about a week. The results were excellent - more full bodied than brews from the standard April Brewer with the same characteristic consistency from hot to cold. I had no issues with flow rate either, the brews were very consistent and anything that encountered issues due to clogging or slowing still finished way shorter than 5 minutes. Grind size felt extremely forgiving, due to my recipe approach giving a minute leeway rather than a ~40s leeway. Still, any astringency was dealt with by grinding coarser and any lack of sweetness was dealt with by grinding finer.
I had been becoming increasingly impatient making an unholy amount of tea at home and wanted something with a much faster water flow rate, so after this week, I put my Stagg EKG aside for the new Varia Aura kettle. I don’t love the Aura for pour overs, although it can technically handle it, but it made me think of a different brewing approach. I remembered my old internet/Instagram buddies @wallacecoffee and @alcheng88 used to brew with the Hario Switch by filling it up with water first, then adding the coffee, stirring and letting it steep before agitating once again and opening the valve to let it drain. I remembered these magnificent brewers remarking the flavour profile was much cleaner, the draining rate seldom clogged and the grind was very forgiving. So keeping my grind size the same, I adapted to the following recipe:
0’00 - Rinse filter with hot water either from the kettle or the tap, with the valve open.
0’00 - Valve Closed - Fill up brewer with 200g water*. Add 12g coffee, stir gently and let sit for 3’20 - 4’00.
3’20 - Stir thrice, open the valve.
This has easily become my go to recipe. Not only is it extremely forgiving on grind, the flow rate is super quick and the cups are extraordinarily juicy. You really can't fuck it up. The sweetness is excellent, cups hot to cool are tasty as and I really felt this brought out the best of all the coffees I had lying around. The only thing was I wasn’t loving the way the frilled papers were sitting. The larger size papers were losing some of the shape a bit, flattening to the sides of the brewer. I had not tried this recipe with the booster, but due to the flattering flow rate and the extremely tasty cups, I really didn’t see much point.
In the process of moving house, I found a stack of the 102 sized Trapezoid papers from Cafec. I folded them as per usual, held the sides down and used the tap to fill up the brewer with the valve open. The paper stuck perfectly flat, with one small crease down the base which seemed necessary to have the rest of the paper fit. I repeated the above recipe with those large trapezoid papers and… well… I haven’t looked back since.
The brews have been among the most balanced I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting. Visually, the combination of coffee and paper is extremely satisfying. The drawdown is excellent - coffee stays at the bottom in a flat even layer and the clear water passes through very happily - it looks like a perfectly extracted cup of coffee. The brewer drains super quickly and the flavours have been extremely well pronounced, sweet, juicy and almost completely lacking in astringency from my standard filter grind sizes. Not only that, but you don’t need any gooseneck kettles or anything like that. It really feels like cheating. Just filling up the brewer, adding the coffee, stirring and letting it drain. Like… that’s crazy to me. I just fill with boiling water, never need to change the temperature and the coffees always taste extremely good. Also, bye bye bypass! These papers sit flat and allow a really even extraction with no water being wasted in the brewing process.
You can see above the slight creasing in the paper filter, but you can also see how flush these papers can sit - which is even more flush if you fold the base line of the paper in the opposite direction to the side crease (which is not what I did above... whoops)
The final recipe variation I tried was with the Cafec 102 Papers following the original pouring structure of 100g open, 100g closed. Results there have been excellent as well - visually appealing, sweet, forgiving and consistent from hot to cool. To be perfectly honest, many of those brews tasted almost indistinguishable to the above ‘steeping’ recipe, which led me to prioritise the steeping recipe for simple ease of use. That being said, the results were still very excellent.
Overall, I had been so satisfied with my coffees that I ordered twenty units for retail.
Limitations
The ‘Booster’ hasn’t yielded much in the way of significant results, but I will continue to test.
The actual batch sizes of this brewer are quite small, still optimised for less than 15g coffee in my opinion. Perhaps a different approach would allow the brewer to handle larger sizes, but I find the usual range of 12 - 15g to be enough for me.
The Large April Papers fit a bit awkwardly, and the smaller size give quite a limitation as far as recipe options go, despite fitting better. The difference in base diameter is extremely marginal, but it does make me wish there was another taller, narrower frilled paper.
This leads me to the 102 sized Cafec Papers - the fit is very good and I have noticed no real downsides from using them. Fitting them is slightly awkward and I would recommend using the tap on hot to rinse them properly and fit them at the same time. The crease down the bottom is a bit annoying but again, I haven’t found any detriment to the flavour. This has been somewhat mitigated by pinching either side of the base of the Cafec Trapezoid paper after folding. This allows a more flush sitting with less creasing.
April has a range of papers from Sibarist available, however we will stock the Cafec Trapezoid papers alongside and sell the two as a ‘set’ so you can have the same experience as us. I will purchase some of the Sibarist papers to compare in the future.
Lastly, the price tag is on the hefty side, a $160 filter coffee maker is definitely a prohibitive price for some.
Do you need this brewer?
I for one hate the cycle of hype and demand and the illusion of ‘necessity’ for coffee products that might have a *slightly* improved flavour. I know this is in complete contrast to our position as a seller of coffee goods. But a quick google search will yield a major network of people digging deep for answers - is this brewer better than that? Does this brewer have a marginally better flavour profile? At the end of the day, coffee choice is most important, and a $20 Flower Dripper or a $10 V60 is just as capable of making an exceptional cup of coffee as a $70 April Brewer or a $160 Hybrid Brewer.
What this leads to is a combination of preferences that I believe are integral to mitigating when deciding what products to purchase. Aesthetics in the kitchen make a big impact on your choices, availability of papers, suitability of brewers to coffee choices and your own internal biases as well as budget will play a big role in your decision making.
With these things in mind, I have not thought about another brewer for weeks - I have had nothing but extremely delicious coffees brewed with absolute ease, whether it’s a dense Ethiopian coffee or a partially decaffeinated enzymatic processed coffee from Colombia. I have loved not using a gooseneck kettle, I have loved how forgiving the grind sizes have been and I love the lil button on the side. I have the Hybrid Brewer set up in the corner looking like a real cool twenty-first century coffee brewer next to my hand grinder. There’s really not been much I don’t love about this brewer and I find it hard to imagine what could ever take its place. I can take it travelling, never concerned about the availability of gooseneck kettles, and of course I find these cups of coffee to be among the tastiest, easiest and most convenient I have brewed over a manual brewing journey spanning over a decade.
The ball is in your court. It’s a fantastic coffee brewer that really handles anything.
