Brewing Guide
Brewing great coffee shouldn't be mysterious. No matter your method, you can achieve your best at-home cup with these brewing basics.
The Essentials
- Fresh Coffee. Buy whole bean coffee. In general, brew within 30 days of the roast date on the bag.
- Burr Grinder. There are two types of coffee grinders: blade and burr. And between the two, burr grinders have the clear edge. These grinders will break your beans down into relatively consistently-sized pieces, producing a grind more capable of yielding even extractions.
- Filtered Water. If your water tastes off, so will your brew. Notes of chlorine, sulfur, or iron don't belong in your coffee. Use filtered tap or spring water to get the best flavors. Oh, and don't use distilled; it won’t yield a full extraction.
Brewing Rules of Thumb
- Filter. Choose a clean filter that won't taint the flavor of your brew.
- Metal filters can retain funk and detergent taints. Use extra-mild soap, hot water, and elbow grease before use.
- Paper filters can give off papery notes. Try rinsing them with hot water poured through the filter and into your brewing vessel. (This also preheats your vessel, which is nice.) Dump out the rinse water before starting your brewing cycle.
- Temperature.
- Coffee should be brewed around 200-205°F.
- Preheat your brewing equipment with hot water. This will minimize the loss of heat when your water meets room-temp ceramic, glass, coffee grounds, etc.
- If you don’t use a thermometer, use water right off the boil to brew close to 200-205°F.
- Brew Ratios. For pour-over or drip-style brewing, start with these ratios of coffee to water. Once you've established a baseline, you can play around with the ratios that taste best to you.
- Volume: 1 tablespoon of coffee to 3 ounces of water
- Weight: 1 gram of coffee to 17 grams of water.
- Time. This will depend on the brewing method. French press takes 4 minutes, while a drip method should go for around 2 1/2 - 4 1/2 minutes.
- Grind. Use a burr grinder to select a grind/particle size appropriate for your brew method. And please, grind right before brewing.
- In general, coarser grinds correlate with longer extraction times (how long the water is in contact with the ground coffee). Think French press and other full-immersion brewers.
- Medium to finer grinds correlate with slightly shorter extraction times, like Kalita and Hario drippers and Aeropress brewers.
- Experiment! Dial in to balance sweetness, flavor clarity, and body without over-extracting and introducing bitterness and astringency.
Brew Recipes
| Flash Brewed Iced Coffee |
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Ingredients: 30g coffee, ground on the slightly finer side of your usual pour over Total ratio = 1:15 coffee : water Yield: 15.8 oz. of brewed coffee
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Method: Add ice to your coffee carafe or other server. Bloom with 50g water, using small circular motions to evenly wet the coffee grounds. |