Caffeinate Your Expectations
Coffee is one of those things that either is a designated need or simply an experience you wake up to enjoy. Either way, millions wake up every morning to make their cup of coffee. Most Americans use the drip coffee makers they got from Walmart, Target, or the god himself Jeff Bezos. However, I think you should devote a small amount of time to thinking about other ways of making coffee.
It’s not that I don’t like drip coffee makers or a well-known brand that injects a needle into a plastic container filled with coffee; they are quick, easy, and a simple push of the button to make coffee. I just think that these coffee makers produce coffee that, well, sucks for the most part. Unless you get a $200-300 coffee maker, then your experience will improve, if you got that kind of money burning in your pocket. In my limited time of adventuring on the coffee grounds, I have found methods that make better coffee with low investments.
The best ways I think to make coffee are poor overs, french press, Moka pot, and the Aeropress. If you have a $300-1000 espresso machine, I am jealous of you and please give me one! Anyways, the four methods are all unique, inexpensive, common, and used for different purposes. For example, Aeropress is used when you need a quick cup before a meeting or late to class. The French press is for long immersion brews that deliver the body and soul of the coffee grounds. Moka pots are great for fake espresso! Yes, Moka pots do not make espresso, but damn good strong coffee for lattes or cortados. Lastly, pour-overs are, as my fiancé says, the queen of all coffee methods. You get a wonderful cup of coffee that has the flavor profile, body, and without the silt of the coffee grounds. However, first, we need to have a talk about the coffee beans or grounds themselves.
When I was an undergrad and grad student, money for coffee equated to getting the cheapest coffee grounds I could find. Throwing it into the drip maker or French Press, and away I went. Coffee was just a routine. Make decent coffee, throw some creamer in there, and the routine is done. I did this for most of my undergrad and grad experience. It was until getting some income and free time, I realized coffee beans are superior to coffee grounds. If you buy coffee grounds that suck, you can’t do anything to make it better.
If you are young, the word value is relatively difficult to compute. What does it mean to have value in material goods? The best way to explain it with coffee is an example! Cafe Bustelo is absolutely one of the best coffees that you can buy and is under $5 hands down. Compared to most well-known brands, it will kick their coffee ass any day. For me, I love to find value in anything, the art of the deal. How much am I gonna pay versus what I am getting. This brings us to what I would refer to as the value of ounces of coffee to grounds bought. Your diminishing returns.
If you don’t have a coffee grinder, this becomes more important. A topic we will discuss in this section. Grounds have limits to what you’ll experience. You will never be able to find coffee grounds in a store that tastes better than freshly ground coffee. Period. I would rather take Starbucks coffee beans and ground them myself than buy a bag of expensive coffee grounds in a grocery store. If you have a grocery store that has a coffee grinder, that is fantastic! You can buy coffee beans and grind them without owning a coffee grinder, what a bypass! A coffee grinder sets you free, allowing you to buy any kind of coffee; like single-origin, espresso, and light/medium/dark roasts.
If you are trying to find good coffee beans, look online at places like Trade, Atlas, etc. More importantly, buy coffee at your local roasters, or go there to drink coffee. My fiance and I love to go to Rothrock Coffee. They have amazing coffee, and their value is out of this world. We love the selection of single-origin coffees for pour-overs. If you live in State College, PA, please go check them out! I am not affiliated with any of these companies, just really enjoy their coffee.
Yes, I now know this post at this point, the article may seem a bit posh, and I am a coffee snob. However, your perspective and my perspective are different on coffee. What you drink daily is your favorite, and that is perfect. You drink coffee the way you want to; just like how you drink your whiskey! This article is just to introduce you to other ways how to make, think, and drink coffee.
Milk, sugar, and lovely delicious foamy milk are easy ways to curb the bitter or harsh flavors of coffee. The bitterness, sourness, or harshness of the coffee can come down to a few technical things in how you make your coffee. Something we talk about later on. If you like milk and sugar, I challenge you to use less. You will notice some changes in the flavor profile, but if you like it, continue to use it less and less until you are now drinking black coffee! If you hate it, use the milk and creamer. Coffee is one of those things that pretty much bring joy to adult lives.
One paradigm that is likely widely overlooked, and a key factor in how your coffee taste, is the ratio of coffee to water. This is how much coffee to water you use to make coffee. If you look up any coffee ratios using google, you will get a spectrum of suggestions. Anything you find is useless to you because the strength with which you brew coffee is based on what you like. This is very vague, but the strength of coffee does not fit anyone, and you will need to experiment to find the perfect ratio for you. The word strength is commonly used to describe coffee. James Hoffmann (please check his YouTube channel, most of my insight was gained by watching his videos and learning from them) goes into great detail about this.
Strong coffee is a result of using a higher dose of coffee to a lower amount of water. A weaker cup of coffee is the opposite, a higher amount of water and a lower dose of coffee. However, other factors include the roast type and the extraction of coffee. In my opinion, the darker the roast, the stronger the taste. Lighter and medium-roasted coffee will taste much different compared to darker-roasted coffee. In a light roast, you will find more citrus, apple/pear, and overall experience the uniqueness of the coffee bean. Think of it like the spectrum of taste with chocolate. Extraction is how much goodness you pull out of the coffee grounds when making coffee. Not to get too nerdy, but typically the smaller the ground the more extraction you will get. Different methods will lead to different extraction rates, and therefore alter the strength of the coffee. Simply as, the more extracted the coffee, the stronger the taste. Does this make a difference in your experience of making coffee, yes, but this is for the coffee nerds at this point who are still reading.
As an example, I used to make with a french press in graduate school using 30 grams of water to 700 grams of water. This resulted in a ratio of 23.3 water to coffee. To me, this was fine as I used creamer to mask the taste of the coffee. My fiancé drinks black coffee and always has. When we moved in, she made fun of me for putting creamer into my coffee. One day she challenged me to drink it straight with no creamer, and I consumed the coffee and thought that this wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t satisfied with how it tasted.
This is when I began to research how much water to coffee you should use, a ratio. Again, James Hoffmann talks about this topic in great detail so please go check out his channel. The ratio is about perspective and what you like. In the video, in which he talks about ratios, he landed on a ratio of 1000 grams of water to 60 grams of coffee, or a 16.67 water/coffee ratio. When I watched his video, I became intrigued, because at the time I was moving from a 23.3 water/coffee ratio to 20. One day, I tried 1000 grams of water to 55 grams of coffee, an 18.2 water/coffee ratio. The result was perfect for me, the taste, body, and flavor of the coffee were exactly what I wanted. Again, you will need to experiment to find which you love! If the coffee was too bold and harsh, use less coffee. If your cup was too weak, use more coffee!
I can not tell you how important it is to use a scale when making coffee. Alton Brown (in his amazing show called “Good Eats”) and James Hoffmann talk about the importance of repeatability. Let’s say, one day you make an awesome cup of coffee using a french press. You didn’t measure, just added a bit of this and a bit of that and brewed away. You want to do that again tomorrow, but you have no idea how much coffee and water you used. Now you will spend hours or days to find that magical recipe you made, and you may never. With a scale, however, you can. Every day, you can make the same cup of coffee with no guesswork. You can repeat your coffee recipe. For example, if the coffee is too strong, you know how much coffee you put in there, and now you know to add less tomorrow. Taking the guesswork will improve your experience. Plus, scales with or without timers are included or cheap. I have two, for the total cost of $35.00, well worth it!
To tell you the truth, I have grown an obsession with coffee products. However, I do not know or have tested all coffee products in the world. I am now just sharing with you my favorite coffee products that I have bought and really enjoy. First is the french press by Secura found on Amazon. I got this for Christmas in 2019, and it has been an amazing product for me. Has not rusted, makes great coffee, is stainless steel which is important if you live in a cold area, and is on sale as of 11/12/2022! Highly recommend this french press brand. The next coffee-making product is the pour-overs. I have two, the Bodum and Hario pour-over starter kits. Both are great products to make coffee. Next, is a unique coffee-making method product called the Aeropress. This makes a quick cup of delicious coffee on the go and before a boring meeting. Next is the Moka Pot. This makes very strong coffee or fake espresso. Also, it makes these lattes and cappuccinos much cheaper because you are making them. The two scales I have enjoyed using are from Etekcity and KitchenTour. Lastly, the coffee grinder, which is very important as I have discussed, is the SHARDOR conical burr coffee grinder. The coffee grinder has been terrific since I bought it in January, as it is tough, rugged, and reliable every time I use it.
Thank you for taking the time to read through this longer-than-needed article/blog about coffee. I really love coffee, and it is a big part of my life. Plus, it is a really cool experience to go through with your partner. I wanted to share this with anyone who has the time in this world to read about coffee and open anyone’s mind a bit to the other ways to make coffee. Full disclosure, some of the links are Amazon affiliate links that will take you to coffee products I have listed. Amazon gives me a small kickback if you click the link and buy the product. Additionally, the Atlas Trade Coffee link is also an affiliated link in which you and I will get $10 off your purchase if you sign up for their subscription. If you love single-origin coffee or want to explore coffee outside your grocery store, I highly recommend you do!