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Oh thank god you posted. I was just standing in my kitchen pouring coffee into my kettle and holding the power button down until a thick poo like substance boiled over the top of the kettle and all over the worktop, and simultaneously punching myself in the face. Somebody suggested that was what to do on page 147.
NurseHolliday
jdp
This thread has a disturbing lack of coffee information. I am an Australian barista/trainer and coffee person. There is literally so many wrong opinions in this thread it saddens me.
Firstly, more expensive coffee IS WORTH IT. From the farm to the cup coffee has hundreds of hours of labour involved, and it is your privelage to have such readily available coffee. Each bean is hand picked and sorted!
Generally the more expensive the coffee, the better. This is true and measured on a scale of "cupping" scores out of 100.
Of course it doesn't matter too much I if your roaster over cooks it, or you don't have any idea how to brew it.
Let's have some brewing basics:
Step one:
Get a decent brew device. Home espresso machines aren't worth it. Stick to filter.
Step two: buy micro scales and a grinder, essential for any kind of brew if you want to get a decent extraction.
Step three: tasting. Generally speaking, sour is under extracted, bitter is over extracted. Somewhere in the middle it's sweet and balanced. Adding sugar will cloud this away till you have no idea.
Step 4: ratios and brewing:
There are many exceptions to these rules but here's some good starting points.
For filter brewing, a ratio of about 1gram coffee for 18 grams water is a good starting point.
Use water at least 90 degrees, and grind as course as your grinder can without producing too many fines (finer grind particles)
Adjust your brew time based on tasting sour or bitter, and try to always use the same water source and temperature.
ALWAYS GRIND FRESH and coffee should be between 2 days and 2 weeks old for filter. (7-14 days for espresso)
As a closing note to this post, cheap coffee will generally be roasted darker to caramelise the coffee more and make it sweeter. This also masks the natural flavours of the coffee and makes it extract faster. It is acceptable in lower quality coffees but higher quality coffees should be roasted lighter to preserve be natural complexity and acidity of coffee.
If you have more questions I encourage you to seek out information from well know specialty coffee businesses. I suggest The Nordic Approach, square mile (mainly for the blog) seven seeds (Australian), Koppi, the coffee collective, Barn.
Please feel free to pm me for any recipes on filter coffee, cold brew, or espresso advice.