There really is nothing better then being able to roll out of bed, eyes barely open, and having a great cup of coffee to give you that final oomph to get your day started. Whether commuting, working from home, or just handling business, a good cup of joe will make your mornings that much better. But who has time, money(and let's be honest now, variant risk) to grab that $4-$8 cup from the local café everyday? Sometimes, we're gonna have to do this for ourselves.
(See what I did there?😎Okay, sorry back to the article.)
This is where information truly does become king. Its not necessarily that you can't make good coffee at home, you might've just missed a few key steps. I promise, this list will not be as painful and/or pretentious as it sounds.
GRINDS, GRINDS, GRINDS SIZE. This one right here might be the most important if I was highly pressured to give one answer. Depending on your brewing method, if you don't have the correct grind size, you're just making hot water either run through or sit on top of your coffee. Resulting in two options=Under-Extracted-(A watery, bland mess) or Over-Extracted(A bitter, roasty mess)
*Insert coffee shop adage: "Pebbles & Sand" What does water coming in contact with these two things do? Flow or Sit!
BREW METHOD. Look, I get it. I too, have been wooed by fancy looking machines, but I promise you, unless you're patient/truly passionate like us coffee freaks, you might not want to assemble the siphon at 6:00A.M.
Pour overs (like v60s and Chemex) are dope too, but do you really want to weigh your coffee, boil(and cool) to the right temp in that gooseneck kettle, then proceed to stand there for 2.5-4 minutes carefully pouring and agitating your coffee?(See siphon point above.) For real, as long as you have quality coffee(which you can conveniently purchase right here!)that old Mr. Coffee and Keurig can and will produce coffee that's pretty damn good too.
AMOUNT OF COFFEE YOU USE/COFFEE INPUT. Now I know we just went over not weighing coffee, etc. but you don't have to physically weigh your coffee every time if you don't want to. It's all about learning what taste you prefer, then just keep that same metric. The SCA(Specialty Coffee Association, the leading authority on all things coffee here) recommends the ratio of 1:16 parts coffee to water, but even I get confused looking at that(Math? Yikes.) I say lets just keep it simple (you don’t measure every single ingredient when you cook,do you?)We pretty much all have table or teaspoons, use that as a reference guide!(e.g- 22grams recommendation for a single pour over=roughly 4 teaspoons)
That pretty much sums up some basics to help you feel confident next time you head to brew at home. Remember, as long as you like it, that’s what matters!