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Equipment:
Coffee: We recommend a light to medium freshly roasted coffee (grab some freshly roasted beans here!). We prefer to brew our coffee between 10 and 14 days after it was roasted.
Water: Good water is critical for good coffee. We highly recommend using a high quality filter or spring water for the best brew. Coffee is primarily made up of water so if the water doesn't taste great, neither will the coffee. Great water will ensure consistency and clarity in the flavor of your coffee.
Grinder: A burr grinder of any variety is highly recommended. There are hand and electric versions depending on your needs and wants. Burr grinders provide the most consistent grind size allowing for better control of your brewing.
Scale: Using a scale is one of the most important things you can do to help yourself make great coffee. Weighing your coffee and water input allows you to achieve consistency and helps to refine your brewing recipes. Your scale should hold at least 2,000 grams so that a cup and brew device can both be used on it while brewing.
Tricks of the trade:
We like to start most brews at 16:1 water to coffee ratio. This means 18 grams of coffee to 300 grams of water. 300 divided by 18 is gives us a 16 :1 ratio.
When brewing coffee our biggest goal is to dissolve the appropriate about of coffee into the water. Another word we use for dissolving coffee is extraction. When you brew the right amount of coffee with a correct grind, you will get perfect extraction. But it is possible to extract your coffee in such a way that it does not taste as good as it could. There are two terms for this.
- Under extraction. This is when not enough of coffee has dissolved into the water. This means your coffee will taste weak and sometimes sour. If this happens, brew with less coffee to water in your ratio, or grind finer.
- Over extraction is when you have dissolved too much coffee into the waters. This results in a bitter and overly strong taste. To correct, use more coffee in your recipe or grind your coffee coarser.
These are tips for folks who are already brewing coffee at home.
If you still don’t see what you need, feel free to drop us a line with your brewing questions. We’d love to talk shop with you!