Specialty Coffee Brewing 101

Five steps to elevating your morning brew

IN THIS GUIDE:
- Step 1: Select the Best Coffee Beans
- Step 2: Invest in a Digital Coffee Scale
- Step 3: Use Filtered, Spring, or Mineral Water
- Step 4: Say No to Blade Grinders
- Step 5: Get in Touch with Manual Brewing

1. Select the best coffee beans you can find.

 

  If you’re an adventurous soul on a quest for the best cup of morning Joe, I highly recommend you start with green coffee beans. If you’ve not yet reached the point of roasting your own beans, select whole coffee beans from a grocer your trust, one that has high quality products.

When you search for a good bag of whole coffee beans (yes, I’m stressing whole beans), here are a few tips to pick the best coffee:

• Decide if you’ll use this coffee primarily for coffee or espresso preparation – this is crucial because you may want a darker roast for espresso, while buying a medium to light roast for coffee (remember lighter roasts tend to let the sweetness of coffee naturally shine).
• Look for coffee that shows a “Roast Date”. The optimal cup will be from beans purchased within 2-3 weeks of the roast date. Even though coffee can last for up to 3 months from the roast date, I don’t recommend using past 3 weeks. Trust me on this one.
• Just saying this for emphasis, buy whole beans. Grinding coffee right before brewing lends to better flavor.

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2. Invest in a digital coffee scale.

 

If I have a chance to use acronyms I will. The easiest way for me to realize the value  of a scale is to remember this: CPWr (I pronounce this as C-Power or Coffee Power). What does it mean?

• C – Consistency: The core components of a cup of coffee are water and coffee. The ratio of these two components are critical to get right, cup after cup. A scale helps to measure our the right amount of coffee per cup. The golden ratio, if you will, is 1:15 – meaning 1 gram of coffee per 15 milliliters of water. For a deeper dive into the math of this see my post “Coffee Brewing: Using The Golden Ratio“.
• P – Precision: Let’s say you’re feeling daring, and you want a stronger cup of coffee, maybe you want to tweak your golden ratio to your liking. A scale will allow you to do this precisely. Maybe you want you coffee weight to be more like 1.15 or 1.25 to 15 milliliters of water. Well, if you’ve got a scale, this is work.
• Wr – Waste reduction: I’m sure you’re an either and eco-conscious person or one who doesn’t care to waste money. Using a scale helps you keeps costs in check and possible get a cup or two more out of your bag of coffee.

3. Use filtered, spring, or mineral water.

 

 There’s not much to say here other than put good in, get good out. Don’t skimp on the quality of water. I travel, A LOT! For this reason, I’ve learned to avoid tab water at all costs. I like to introduce as few variables as possible into my brewing system, so I use quality water.

4. Say no to blade grinders.

 

 

Let me preface this by saying, you’re probably going to drink coffee 365 days out of the year for the foreseeable future. Invest in elevating your coffee experience. How? By investing in a quality grinder. Not just any grinder, and for heaven’s sake, please, do not use your spice grinder.

Grinders with blades have so many negatives. I’ll give you two:

1. Blade grinders produce heat which can negatives impact the coffees overall flavor.
2. Blade grinders do not last, typically, as long as burr grinders.

Here are a few recommended burr grinders (but don’t take just my word for it, I encourage you to find the grinder that works for your needs). These are ordered by prince from high, mid, budget.

• The Baratza Encore – $169
• OXO Conical Burr Coffee Grinder – $99
• Supreme Grind™ Automatic Burr Mill – $59

5. Get in touch with your coffee with manual brewing.

 

  There are many devices with which to brew coffee. My favorite, by far is an oldie, yet a goodie – the French press. Some would say I’m simple. To that I’d say, “thank you” 😂.

There are 2 main types of French press – in my opinion. There’s glass, and then there are all others. Why not try out both.

Again, there’s a eco-friendly approach to this, no disposable filters. I absolutely love this.

I hope these five steps to brewing helps. No matter whether you’re just starting off on your specialty coffee journey, or you’re well on your way to connoisseur these five steps are foundational. The sea is your oyster from here, right? As always, keep elevating your coffee experience. Until next time.

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RELATED READING:
→ How to Tell If Your Coffee Is Actually Fresh
→ Mastering the Daily Grind
→ The Golden Ratio
→ Decaf Coffee Reimagined