Recipe Creation Process

[SpicyRiceTea]

A bit of context: Today marks the first time that I ground my own coffee and the first time that I brewed with a Chemex.
I'm in the process of creating a recipe and I would like some advice of how to proceed next.

Here is my equipment list:
1-Baratza Encore
2-Chemex
3-Hario timer-scale
4-Gooseneck kettle with built in thermometer

Here is the process:
-Encore grinder at suggested 20 grind setting
-44 grams of Columbian medium roast coffee to 616ml of water (1:14 ratio)
-Water temperature at 200F (93C)
-I bloomed the slurry for 45 seconds
-I poured in the rest of the water for an additional 1min 20 sec

Result:
The resulting coffee I felt was a bit watery and sour.

Take-aways:
1- I was initially aiming for a 1:15 ratio, but I forgot to reset my scale before I started pouring the water, so despite me stopping at 665 grams, there was actually 621 grams of water (665g total weight-44g of coffee)
2- The grind seemed a bit too coarse, this, coupled with the sour taste makes me think I under-extracted the coffee.

Next steps:
1-Adjust the grind one level finer
2-Aim for a 1:15 ratio

Questions:
1-When blooming the coffee, what speed should I be pouring it at?
2-When blooming coffee, what quantity of water should I put?
3-How long should I take to pour in the rest of the water after the bloom? How will this affect my coffee's taste?
4-When I put the beans on the scale, after about 45 seconds, it got lighter by maybe .1 gram. Why is that?


This is all very new to me, if you find some glaring mistakes in my process, please let me know.
Thank you very much in advance for the help!

 

[211bma]

Have you ever seen James Hoffman's YouTube channel? He's your man in my opinion, he probably has a tutorial on most popular coffee preparation methods.

 

[Musicphan]

Here is your problem...

-I bloomed the slurry for 45 seconds
-I poured in the rest of the water for an additional 1min 20 sec

typically I bloom 30-45 seconds and then add 4 more minutes for total brew time of 4:30-4:45. Your coffee is not ground fine enough. Shoot for those numbers and I think you will drastically improve the cup. And make sure you are using fresh coffee.

 

[Musicphan]

Questions:
1-When blooming the coffee, what speed should I be pouring it at? Slowly...
2-When blooming coffee, what quantity of water should I put? Usually 50-75g of water is sufficent. This will be part of your total water weight
3-How long should I take to pour in the rest of the water after the bloom? How will this affect my coffee's taste? 30-45 seconds. It has little effect on taste... coffee is little like a sponge.. it extracts best when wet so the purpose of a bloom is to get all the grounds pre-wetted and they will swell up a bit.
4-When I put the beans on the scale, after about 45 seconds, it got lighter by maybe .1 gram. Why is that? just the scale... .1gram is probably less than 1/4 of a bean