Freshly-Brewed Coffee With Every Varia Device There Is

Before I started here at Whole Latte Love, I was a drip coffee drinker. I had my Mr. Coffee machine and my pre-ground, store-bought coffee and that was that. “Espresso?” I scoffed, “No thanks.” Since starting here, I’ve learned a lot, and my palette has developed immensely. Even though I’ve learned to appreciate a well-pulled shot of espresso, I honestly still prefer the clarity and subtle flavors of a fresh cup of pour-over, and almost always prepare my espresso as an Americano. So, when the topic of a comprehensive blog on all the various ways Varia offers to brew coffee came across my desk, I legitimately got excited. 

If you’re not familiar with Varia Brewing, you probably should be. Check out my brand overview blog, review of the VS6 grinder, and interview with Varia founder Ramsey Gyde for a crash course on all things Varia. The TLDR, however, is that Varia makes affordable yet excellent brewing equipment designed to maximize modularity. 

To write this blog, I set up my workbench with a small army of Varia brewing equipment: their FLO Dripper, PRO French press, STEEP cold-brew bottle, and PRO Moka pot, as well as the AKU Pro scale, Aura Kettle FLUX edition (coming soon), a couple of VS6 grinders with specialized burr sets installed, and an assortment of SIP mugs and carafes. 

It’s been quite a week, and I’ve drank a lot of coffee (I prepared more than 30 pour-overs in my testing, plus several French presses, Moka pots, and cold brews). But now that my fingers and eyeballs have finally stopped vibrating, I’m ready to tell you all about it.

Equipment Overview

The bulk of this blog is a report on my experience using Varia’s different coffee brewers. But, in order to do that, I also used a lot of other Varia equipment, and that all deserves its moment in the spotlight, too. So, before I dive into the FLO Dripper, French Press, Moka Pot, and STEEP bottle, here’s a quick rundown of the heroes that worked behind the scenes to help ensure I got delicious coffee, no matter how I was brewing it. 

The VS6 Grinder

For a full rundown of the capabilities and features of the most modular grinder I’ve ever seen, read the review I published last week. For here, I’ll be brief: the VS6 is a versatile single-dosing grinder built from space-grade aluminum and steel. At the moment it can be upgraded with up to eight different burr sets (four flats and four conical) and uses a variable-RPM motor to allow users to optimize their grinding for the coffee and brew method they’re using. I used the VS6 exclusively in my testing for this blog, primarily with the Supernova Gold Titanium flat burrs and the Kilonova Conical burrs (I’ll talk more about those later). 

AKU Pro

The AKU Pro scale does just about everything you could ever hope a versatile coffee and espresso brewing scale would. It’s small enough to fit under most portafilter spouts, yet large enough to accommodate pour-over carafes as well. It’s also programmed with all the functionality you need, no matter how you choose to brew, including dedicated espresso and pour-over brewing modes. I used the AKU Pro in all of my pour-over preparation in researching for this blog, and, in all honesty, I doubt I’d want to brew a pour-over again without access to the AKU Flow mode. 

Aura Kettle FLUX Edition

You can’t brew coffee without hot water (cold-brew aside, of course…but we’ll get to that later); one of the best ways I can imagine procuring said hot water is with Varia’s Aura Kettle. Like everything Varia makes, this thing is a real stunner, but what I really love about it is how easy it is to use. Simply turn the dial to increase or decrease the water temperature, and the Aura quickly heats and holds that temp. The handle is comfortable to hold and the goose-neck precision-pour spout makes hitting your brew ratios easy. 

SIP Mugs & Carafes

There’s nothing particularly modular about Varia’s drinkware offerings—they’re just really nice. Stylish, yet durable, their double-walled design makes them easy to hold, even with piping-hot coffee inside, and the wide mouths allow for the full aromatic experience when drinking. 

Pouring Over

I’ve always felt like the intensity and complexity of a shot of espresso makes it hard for me to pick out the most exciting flavors in coffee—I know, I know: I’m working on refining my palette. (Please don’t email me.) Anyways, for me, the allure of pour-over is the opportunity to taste clean and vibrant flavors in my cup. 

Needless to say, the opportunity to spend a week testing the FLO Dripper, Varia’s flat-bottomed entry into the arena of pour-over devices, was one I very much looked forward to. Before I get into the testing, however, let me tell you a bit about the FLO Dripper: 

Double-walled and made of brushed stainless steel, the FLO Dripper is cool to the touch, even when full of hot slurry. But its defining characteristic is its swappable flow screens. It comes with three—fast, medium, and slow—but there are several others you can purchase for further experimentation. Each screen changes not only the rate at which water moves through your coffee, but the flow pattern as well. Doing so changes the in-cup flavors you’ll experience in a way that’s truly remarkable. 

Going into all this testing, I had some grandiose fantasies. With eight different burr options and a wide range of grinding RPMs on the VS6, plus all sorts of different screens on the FLO Dripper to choose from (not to mention grind sizes and water temperatures to adjust), I imagined myself in a sort of coffee cockpit with a complex array of knobs and dials I could manipulate to cultivate different flavors in the coffee I was brewing: flip this switch to turn up sweetness, dial back this knob to increase clarity…engage the citrus booster! You get the idea. 

That’s not exactly how things shook out. 

As it turns out, no amount of burr geometry or flow pattern adjusting can give a coffee a flavor it doesn’t have inherently, and brewing a medium-dark coffee as though it were a light roast was akin to forcing a square peg through a round hole. My first attempt or two involved just that: brewing a medium-dark, naturally-processed Rwandan as though it were a light roast, using the VS6’s Kilonova flat burrs (designed to emphasize clarity and sweetness in light roasts) and the slow flow screen.

So, if the modularity of Varia’s brewing gear isn’t a magic wand you can use to make any coffee taste any way you want, what is it? Well, it’s more like one of those screwdrivers with the swappable heads: the adaptability means that no matter what type of coffee you like to brew, you can set your Varia equipment up to optimize the outcome.

If I wanted to drink light and zesty coffee, I was going to have to brew a coffee that was light and zesty. So, I ordered a bag of our Colombian Tolima single-origin, which is bright and fruity, with promised notes of apple, orange, grape, caramel, and toasted almond. I swapped the Kilonova burrs for the Supernova Gold Titaniums, which emphasize clarity and brightness in light roasts, particularly when ground for filter brewing at low RPM. I kept the fast screen in the FLO Dripper to hedge against over-extraction, cranked up the temperature on my Aura kettle to 203°F and took another crack at this. 

The results were absolutely delightful. The coffee was bright and clean-bodied, with enticing fruity aromas. The coffee had a light, pleasant sweetness up front with a lingering tartness on the tip of my tongue, as though I had just barely dipped it in some limoncello. 

Frustrated (and, to be honest, a little embarrassed) with my initial attempts at brewing a darker, bolder coffee, I sought help from my good pal and colleague, John. He’s been a cafe manager for upwards of 15 years and is a legitimate pour-over expert (you may recognize him from his review of Varia’s FLO  Dripper on our YouTube channel). His recommendation for successful dark-roast-brewing was to swap over to the Kilonova conical burrs and shoot for a draw-down time under 3:00. I did as instructed, keeping the fast flow screen in my dripper, and ground out a dose of Crema Wave. 

Now, Crema Wave is designed to be brewed as espresso, so I was curious what results it would yield in a pour-over device. Given the modularity and flexibility of the FLO Dripper, I was confident I could get something worth drinking out of it. In the name of science, I forged ahead. 

I had to coarsen my grind significantly, but I got my 1:15 ratio in two minutes and 37 seconds and the results were quite surprising. I was immediately hit with the sweet aroma of honey and almond—more than I’d ever smelled those flavors when brewing Crema Wave as espresso (which I do daily). In terms of the actual flavors, they weren’t exceptionally profound or anything like that, but I did get an almondy sweetness at the finish, and the cup was clean and quite enjoyable. 

Even though I mostly brewed with the fast screen in, there are definite use cases for the medium and slow screens as well. Alas, time (and publishing deadlines) wait for no one, so I wasn’t able to fully explore the FLO’s modular capabilities. But I did get a few brews in with the slow screen during all my testing, and the distinctions in flavors were absolutely noticeable. 

Extending the draw-down time when brewing the Columbian Tolima yielded a much more powerful cup of coffee, flavor-wise. It was richer, and the nutty almond flavors took over in place of the light, fruity ones; however, there was an even more pronounced citric aftertaste than when brewed on the fast screen, which surprised me quite a lot. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for from a light-roasted coffee, but it was by all means an excellent cup of coffee. 

Overall, I had a lot of fun with the FLO Dripper, and (more importantly) I drank some of the best coffee I’d had in quite a while. 

A Pressing Issue

More than satisfied with my FLO Dripper experience, I switched gears and set up to brew on Varia’s French press. Now, my previous attempts at brewing with a French press have been less than intentional and anything but precise. Mostly, I dumped unmeasured pre-ground coffee from the grocery store into my press and filled it up with water just off the boil. (This was before I was a professional coffee writer—I’ve learned a LOT.) 

The French press is simple: it’s just a carafe with a filtered plunger…what innovations could possibly be made on a brewing device that has been essentially unchanged since its inception nearly two centuries ago? Well, the designers over at Varia thought of a couple things. 

The main complaint I’d had (and heard) about French press coffee is that it’s often gritty—some grounds inevitably find their way into your cup. To solve this issue, Varia designed an ingenious dual filter system which features a super-fine metal screen that can be augmented with paper filters as well. The result is the cleanest cup of coffee I’ve ever had from a French press.

The first press I prepped using our single origin Colombian Tolima coffee. I installed a paper filter into the screen assembly for an extra-clean cup, ground coarse (four full rotations away from the zero point) using the VS6’s conical kilonova burr set, and prepared a 1:13 ratio using 20 g of coffee. 

I was astounded at how clean this cup was—not a single particle of coffee made its way into my cup. It also lacked some of the body I tend to associate with French press brewing…it wasn’t quite as light as a pour-over, but it wasn’t far off. The fruity notes I associate with this coffee were somewhat muted, but I got a distinct vanilla and almond flavor and a lingering sweetness that was thoroughly enjoyable. I don’t think French press is the ideal preparation method for a bright and zippy coffee like our Colombian Tolima, so I thought it best to give it another shot with a darker roast. 

Lucky for me, I had a fresh sample bag of some Brazilian Yellow Bourbon from Untold Coffee Lab. This medium-dark roast sports delightful notes of roasted nuts and citrus. I brewed a few times, all using the kilonova conical burrs four rotations away from zero, and the best result I got was using water heated to 201°F on the Aura kettle. 

With this configuration, the coffee brewed was mellow, and more full-bodied than my initial attempts (partially due to my forgetting to add the paper filter).. Even the last sips, which, in my previous experience, have skewed sandy, had nothing in the way of undissolved coffee particles. Flavor-wise, the coffee was nutty, as promised by initial sniffs, with a subtle lemony finish. 

I can confidently say that these were the best French presses I’d ever experienced in my life. While I don’t think it’s reasonable to totally attribute this to Varia’s prowess at designing brewing equipment, one thing is for sure: their French press produces the cleanest cup of coffee out of any immersion brewing system I’ve used before. 

Steeped in Cold Brew

I am not a big fan of summer because I don’t like being hot (don’t even get me started on beaches). There is, however, one thing about the warmer weather I particularly enjoy: drinking cold-brewed coffee. It’s delicious, refreshing, and so, so easy to make. 

Varia’s cold brewer, the STEEP, is a triumph. It’s got a large basket, capable of holding up to 60 g of grounds, and the super-fine mesh allows absolutely nothing to pass through (except water, of course). 

Even though it’s winter in Rochester and temperatures had been dipping into the single digits for a week or so, I prepared a bottle of cold brew using the STEEP system. I coarsened the grind just slightly from what I’d been using to prep French presses and ground out 47 g of our Colombian Tolima (Varia’s recommendation for a medium-strength brew). 

I will admit, transferring grounds from the VS6’s dosing cup into the STEEP basket was not the smoothest operation—the rim of the dosing cup is designed to fit snugly in a 58mm portafilter, and the basket on the STEEP is just shy of 50mm in diameter. So, I would be lying if I told you I got the full 47g dose in the basket. I also tried grinding directly into the STEEP’s brew basket, which was somewhat helpful, although it doesn’t quite fit under the grounds chute on the VS6, so I still ended up with some grounds on the table. Grinding into a frothing pitcher is another workaround, as the spout allows you to “pour” grounds a little more accurately. 

From there, I filled the bottle with filtered water, screwed the cap on, and put it in the fridge to…well, steep overnight. 

The next morning, I shared the results with the video team, and everyone was thoroughly impressed with the results. The cold brew was bold and smooth, as expected, but also bright, fruity, and strong. Despite being a “medium-strength” brew, I really felt the caffeine kick, even though I only had a sample sized cup. 

Taking a Shot with the Pot

Right before I was about to tie a nice bow on this blog and ship it for publishing, I was made aware of a glaring oversight in my assessment of Varia’s non-espresso brewing accessories: I made no mention of their Moka pot. 

First, the obvious: this thing does not look anything like the aluminum carafes I imagine when I hear the phrase “Moka pot.” It’s sleek and modern (like everything Varia makes) and comes in two colors: black or white. It’s also quite a lot heavier than the Moka pots I’m used to. I weighed it and it came in at 799 grams (200 grams heavier than the Bialetti we have in our studio). 

What does that mean in terms of brewing performance? Well, the Varia Moka pot does take a little longer to heat up than your standard aluminum one, but, other than that (and the fact that you could use it as a blunt object to deter home invaders), it does what you want it to do: brews coffee. 

Contrary to my expectations going into brewing, I actually enjoyed the coffee I got out of Varia’s Moka pot. I brewed a few pots of that Yellow Bourbon I had left over, and it was smooth and bold, totally drinkable, no cream or sugar required. It also wasn’t gritty—a complaint I’d had about previous Moka pots I’d used before. So, big shoutout to whoever designs the filter screens for Varia products. 

The experience didn’t exactly make me want to bring a Moka pot home (whereas I definitely will be getting a STEEP), but it did convince me that it’s entirely possible to get good coffee from one. 

Final Thoughts

After using a full-Varia setup to make my morning coffee for a couple of weeks straight, I have to say, I’m a fan of the brand. They’ve absolutely nailed the intersection of aesthetics, performance, and value. This stuff is also fun to use. I’ve legitimately enjoyed getting to brew with Varia’s equipment, and I’m not looking forward to having to pack it all up and send it away now that this blog is done. 

If I had to give an MVP award to one of the pieces of equipment I got to use in researching this blog, it’s got to go to the AKU Pro scale. Math has never been my thing; so, completely eliminating the need for me to do ratio calculations thanks to the Flow mode on this thing has been an absolute dream—I honestly don’t think I would want to brew a pour-over without it. 

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the SIP glasses. I love the look of them, but (more importantly) they might just be my favorite glassware to actually drink from. The wide mouths make it really easy to appreciate the aromatics of your drink, and the smooth, rounded lips are really nice to sip from.

At the end of the day, from a price-to-value standpoint, I honestly think Varia is hard to beat. Speaking of which, it’s about time I wrapped things up—I’ve got some online shopping to do. 

Photography by Grace Walker. 

 

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