Good Coffee is Easy

I told you I was going to teach how to make good coffee. Here we go.

There are a handful of things to keep in mind when making coffee, so I'll give you a list. Can you tell I like lists?

The beans need to be freshly roasted. Coffee beans go stale within 10 to 14 days after roasting. The flavor will not be the same after this amount of time. Some beans become downright rancid in smell after extended storage, they won't make you sick if you make coffee with them but they smell pretty bad. There are ways to extend bean freshness but I'll talk about that later.

You must use the right grinder for the method of coffee preparation. The goal here is uniformity of grain size. It doesn't matter whether the grains are large or small, we want even extraction from the grounds. A burr grinder of some kind is the best way to achieve this goal. The grain size is completely up to the user, within limits imposed by the prep method.

Grounds go stale 20 minutes after grinding. Grind your beans right before making your coffee.

The water you use must be the right temperature. No hotter than 204 degrees f and no cooler than 190 degrees f. The only coffee prep method that I know of where water temperature is super critical is espresso, as in to the tenth of a degree. But all the others are pretty forgiving. Use the temp that creates the flavor profile that you like. That's really what it comes down to, user preference.

The water should be good water, without obvious flavor contamination. Using filtered water or bottled water are all valid options. Just don't use crappy tasting water, it's the foundation of the cup of coffee.

As you've noticed I have not given any advice that is specific to any one type of coffee preparation. That is for a reason. There are too many methods to go into any detail in this post. Each method would require one or more posts of it's own.

There are many different methods of coffee preparation. From a simple pan on the stove to $10,000 espresso machines. I've got seven methods in my house right now. I have three at work. I have burr grinders in both places. The one I have at home is a rather large commercial model.

The advice I've given above has certain implications. For example, the drip machine likely sitting on your kitchen counter may or may not measure up. The two most important considerations when choosing a drip machine are water temperature and how the water is mixed with the coffee grounds. Many machines don't heat the water hot enough. Most of the machines you can find at a typical Wal Mart will be of this type. Many machines have one water outlet into the filter basket. This single stream of water drills a hole into the pile of coffee grounds and over extracts the grounds in the middle and under extracts the grounds around the edge.

There are drip machines out there that heat the water hot enough and have a spray head that evenly saturates the pile of coffee grounds in the filter basket. Most Bunn coffee makers fit the bill very well and are easy to obtain in the US. Another maker is Technivorm, they build machines that are the pinnacle of the drip method coffee maker but not so easy to get in the US. Various models amongst the other drip maker manufacturers will fit the bill as well but definitely not all. You would need to do some research to find out whether any particular one does a proper job.

http://www.coffeegeek.com/
This site contains many many reviews of coffee makers of all kinds. The regular readers of that site know all of what I've just told you. Most any review you find there will tell you what you need to know in order to judge any machine you are currently evaluating.



If I remember more I'll post it here later as I remember it.