The Drake deep cuts were bumping as freshly crowned NW Brewers Cup champion Brandon Paul Weaver of Slate Coffee Roasters prepared his award-winning brew method. We’re huddled up in a two-story converted house / apartment in the very heart of Capitol Hill, just a block east of Cal Anderson Park. The music blasts. The mescal flows. BPW and his best friend / training partner Nik Virrey offer up a kind of “swag hospitality”, warm and brimming with welcome, while the speakers thump-a-thump along with our conversation. The topic is coffee nerd core realness.

Weaver explains his winning brew theory to us as he puts together his brand-new Baratza Vario W (first place prize at Brewers Cup). “If you stick a cloth in a water bath it sinks,” he tells us. “But if you stick a sponge in one, it floats. Why? Density. It’s all about density.”

Someone pours more mescal and BPW continues talking, as Drake fades in to Lana Del Rey. “Where this applies to brewing: fines are not dense enough to sink. Meaning that if you fill the brew vessel really high at the end of the brew, all your saturated particles will sink and all your fines ...