5 Tips To Make Better Coffee No Matter How You Brew It
Coffee is all about chemistry, about extracting the right amount of flavor from the bean and no matter how you brew your coffee there are a few things to keep in mind that will help you get a better cup.
Get a Digital Scale
In order to get great coffee, you can either be lucky and get the occasional great cup or be consistent and fine tune your method to get better and better coffee.
All brew methods will have a ratio that will determine how much water and coffee will be used. For example a regular espresso has a brew ratio of 1:3 and that means that for every 1 gram of coffee we get 3 grams of water.
In order to get that ratio you need a good electronic scale, something that has at least 1g increments that you can use to fine tune that ratio.
My recommendation: American Weigh Scales AMW-SC-2KG
Get a Burr Grinder
The grind size will affect how much of the coffee is extracted and if the grind doesn’t have a uniform size it will extract at different rates. That might mean that some of the coffee will be under extracted and some will be over extracted and that never makes a good cup of coffee.
Blade grinders are not able to produce a uniform grind and that’s what most cheap grinders use. A burr grinder is the best choice but whether you use a manual one or electric might depend more on your budget.
A manual burr grinder starts at around $25 and if you don’t mind adding a little bit of elbow grease it’s great way to get a consistent grind.
A good electric burr grinder starts at a few hundred dollars but depending on how much coffee you make it might be a good investment.
Use Filtered Water
If the water doesn’t taste good when you drink it by itself then you won’t be able to get a good cup of coffee with it. It’s a small extra step but filtering your water before you use it to brew will make a big difference.
Use Fresh Roasted Beans
Coffee can get stale and unfortunately, there are a lot of bags of coffee out there that are already stale even though they just hit the shelves.
Coffee has the best flavor between 3 and 7 days after roasting, but you can still get a good cup up to 30 days if it’s properly stored (dark, cool spot, usually the bag it came in closed properly).
You can find great coffee at local roasters and specialty coffee shops and I suggest you look for ones that have the roasting date on them. This will ensure you get the freshest beans and that you use them before they lose all their flavor.
Have Patience
Getting to the best cup of coffee will require a lot of fine-tuning and experimenting. Each coffee is a little bit different and will fare better with one brew method or another and with slightly different ratios.
Taking your time to taste and adjust the temperature (if you brew a darker roast use water that’s a little bit less hot than what the recipe calls), the grind size and the ratios will make the most difference. In the end, the only thing that matters is that you love the coffee you drink and that means that small tweaks even to the best recipe will get you there.
I hope these tips are useful for you and that they take you closer to the best coffee cup you’ve ever had. Please leave me a comment bellow and tell me about your experiments.
