oldgearhead Senior Member Joined: 25 Jan 2010 Posts: 354 Location: Go Colts! Expertise: I like coffee
Grinder: Virtuoso by Baratza Drip: Chemex,Dilongi DCM900 Roaster: 1/2K Fluid-bed
Posted Sun Oct 14, 2012, 7:49am Subject: Re: Looking to get schooled on the art and science of great coffee
'Looking to get schooled ....' You don't have to start out roasting, but if you want to learn about coffee you need to read the bible: "Home Coffee Roasting" by Kenneth Davids
MoJoeCoffeeRoaster Senior Member Joined: 19 Aug 2011 Posts: 12 Location: Vegas Expertise: I love coffee
Posted Sun Oct 21, 2012, 8:45pm Subject: Re: Looking to get schooled on the art and science of great coffee
Alright you asked for it.
Start off with fresh coffee. Find a snooty local coffee shop or local roaster and get some fresh roasted beans from all different origins. If you cant find it localy I am sure you can find an online retailer (equator coffee is great) that ships fresh roasted coffee. There is a crazy huge variance in coffee flavors once you get into good single origin beans that are roasted to bring out there flavors. As a rule, roasted whole coffee is good for 2 weeks.
Next, making coffee all comes down to extraction, and to do that you need to grind the beans evenly otherwise the dust gets over extracted and and the big pieces get under extracted. You need a burr grinder and unfortunately that takes you over your price limit and there's nothing you can really do about it. The good news is you can get a refirb baratza grinder from their site for under 100 that should serve you well for a very long time as long as you don't ever want to get crazy about making great esspresso. (You need a little more expensive grinder to get it as fine as you need for espresso). Grind it right before you brew it, a general rule is ground coffee lasts 2 house
Brew it, once again it comes down to extraction if you extract coffee too much it taste bitter, if not extracted enough it can taste sour. My recomendation is the clever coffee dripper, get the large for like 22 bucks. It is simple to use, no fancy kettles to buy for pouring slowly and evenly, and doesn't require much technique, which means the results are very repeatable. I actualy dont have one as i use a beehouse pour over that I love but I spent a fair amount of time learning how to get the extraction right. I have used one and I have given the clever as gifts. With the clever if its bitter grind it coarser or brew it faster, if its sour grind it finer or brew it longer, thats really it. There really is no down side to this device. The other brewing device that is pretty simple and cheap is a french press, i started out with one of these but i don't realy love the coffee it makes anymore, I (and a lot of other people) prefer the cleaner cup the filter gives you when drinking better aromatic coffees.
There you have it, i guess the next step is home roasting
Not going to go into that too much but i recomend a corretto roaster, you can look into that later. As a rule green coffee can last 2 year.
You do need a scale eventualy but a slightly rounded table spoon is about 7 grams of medium and light roasted coffee, 6 grams of dark roast.
Posted Sun Oct 21, 2012, 10:30pm Subject: Re: Looking to get schooled on the art and science of great coffee
MoJoeCoffeeRoaster Said:
Alright you asked for it.
Start off with fresh coffee. Find a snooty local coffee shop or local roaster and get some fresh roasted beans from all different origins. If you cant find it localy I am sure you can find an online retailer (equator coffee is great) that ships fresh roasted coffee. There is a crazy huge variance in coffee flavors once you get into good single origin beans that are roasted to bring out there flavors. As a rule, roasted whole coffee is good for 2 weeks.
Next, making coffee all comes down to extraction, and to do that you need to grind the beans evenly otherwise the dust gets over extracted and and the big pieces get under extracted. You need a burr grinder and unfortunately that takes you over your price limit and there's nothing you can really do about it. The good news is you can get a refirb baratza grinder from their site for under 100 that should serve you well for a very long time as long as you don't ever want to get crazy about making great esspresso. (You need a little more expensive grinder to get it as fine as you need for espresso). Grind it right before you brew it, a general rule is ground coffee lasts 2 house
Brew it, once again it comes down to extraction if you extract coffee too much it taste bitter, if not extracted enough it can taste sour. My recomendation is the clever coffee dripper, get the large for like 22 bucks. It is simple to use, no fancy kettles to buy for pouring slowly and evenly, and doesn't require much technique, which means the results are very repeatable. I actualy dont have one as i use a beehouse pour over that I love but I spent a fair amount of time learning how to get the extraction right. I have used one and I have given the clever as gifts. With the clever if its bitter grind it coarser or brew it faster, if its sour grind it finer or brew it longer, thats really it. There really is no down side to this device. The other brewing device that is pretty simple and cheap is a french press, i started out with one of these but i don't realy love the coffee it makes anymore, I (and a lot of other people) prefer the cleaner cup the filter gives you when drinking better aromatic coffees.
There you have it, i guess the next step is home roasting
Not going to go into that too much but i recomend a corretto roaster, you can look into that later. As a rule green coffee can last 2 year.
You do need a scale eventualy but a slightly rounded table spoon is about 7 grams of medium and light roasted coffee, 6 grams of dark roast.
There is a downside to french press and CCD - they are immersion brew methods and need slightly more coffee (stronger brew ratio) to produce the same strength for a given extraction. Technically, they are not as coffee-efficient.
However, the CCD is nearly foolproof, like you said. I've nearly moved most of my brewing to it because its easy and forgiving (for the stuff that I'm just drinking).
Also - I find a HUGE variation in coffee density, and not just with roast level. With single cup brewing, you just can't really be THAT accurate with volume measurement - volume measurements are really just for if you're throwing together a brew - or for amateurs (LOL). I've been tracking mass and LEVEL AeroPress scoops (my recipe is 26.5g-27g coffee : 425g-450g water, depends on my mood) for several months now, and two AeroPress scoops are somewhere between 22 and 30g of coffee! Those are LEVEL scoops, not rounded, not heaping.
Perked (the OP): Don't just assume all bagged coffee is stale. There is a progression to coffee flavor from the roast to the cup. It takes a few days to mature immediately after roasting and reach the penultimate PEAK flavor. Then, if it is in an airtight bag and hasn't been exposed to oxygen, and stored at ~65°F OR frozen, the flavor will gradually deteriorate. Whole bean roasted coffee will remain very drinkable and enjoyable for several months if stored properly in low temperature, away from oxygen and in the original dry package.
This is pretty much how every supplier of shelf-coffee does it - and while it's not PEAK flavor, it can be still really good. Some coffees that are lower cost actually have decent turnover - when I do a lot of experiments or grinder checks, etc., I don't use Panama Geisha - I use good old Eight o Clock 100% Colombia. It's low cost, consistent, and has very good turnover where I live.
Remember: you can have decent coffee come out decent if brewed properly. You can really fkuc up a great coffee if you brew it incorrectly... LOL
k-cups are (IMHO) a waste. normal ones contain 9g of coffee, the "bold" ones contain 11.5g of coffee. That's enough to produce target strength of 1.25% (at proper extraction -something the k-cups have a hard time doing) 5oz or 6.5oz cups - and that's it. Not even a full true "cup". More volume than that and it will be technically weak - but it's convenient as heck. (but then so is 7-11...)
On average, they are $0.50 per k-cup (a buck for Starbucks k-cups, I just noted). 1 lb of coffee is about 50 normal K-cups or about 40 bold k-cups. The math says you're paying between $20/lb of coffee on the low end to $50/lb of coffee on the high end - that's a big price for convenience and weak coffee.
I've done nicely brewed pots of Eight o Clock that blows away any k-cup in side-by-side comparo. 70g of coffee, makes about 3-4 decent mugs of coffee - about $1 worth of Eight o Clock, or $3 worth of something like a La Minita Peaberry or decent single origin high quality coffee that some local roaster has roasted. Or, I could water it down to K-cup strength and have double the number of mugs of coffee. :^D
Work a Clever Coffee Dripper - low risk, low cost, you can use it to practice doing pourovers or just use it as a steep/release.
------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- Le café doit être noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, et doux comme l'amour.
"There is no right answer with coffee. There is only the elixir in your cup at the moment you partake."
"...I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind;..." - Lord Kelvin RECIPES thread => http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/coffee/machines/585708
Perked Senior Member Joined: 24 Sep 2012 Posts: 30 Location: Ohio Expertise: I live coffee
Posted Mon Oct 22, 2012, 4:29pm Subject: Re: Looking to get schooled on the art and science of great coffee
Wow! A lot of interesting information here!
Extraction method. Now this caught my attention as since I have one of those whirly thinga-ma-jigs still I will try to control the rate of the grind and not OVER grind it.
I am using 8'o clock whole bean right now and since I have never had truly freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee (I don't think so anyway), it is better than all the rest right now.
I dumped my kcup brewer and got a simple coffee maker from a big box store for now. One with 2 hour shut off and a brew strength (normal or strong). The stronger brew is simply a slower drip and that works for me - I like to get the most out of my coffee grinds - and that's where on my kcup brewer I feel I was falling short.
Anyway, this one also came with a water filter of sorts. It simply goes on top of the grinds cup and supposed to filter out chlorine in the water. Not really sure if it works.
VERY INTERESTING about the final cost per pound on the kcups. I'll have to let me wife know that one... and we may finally just sell our kcup brewer. We had planned on keeping it around for convenience and those early morning too-much-in-a-rush-to-grind-your-own-coffee mornings :D
KenpoJew Senior Member Joined: 9 Feb 2012 Posts: 9 Location: SCHAUMBURG Expertise: I live coffee
Espresso: Moka Pot Drip: Bonavita
Posted Tue Oct 23, 2012, 10:06pm Subject: Re: Looking to get schooled on the art and science of great coffee
My 2 cents.....
When I stepped-up, I went with a Bonavita 1800th and I have not looked back. I was a Great Buy for the money that I spent and I have been enjoying it for over a year now. While grinding beans at home is great and you really do get the most out of your beans it does have it's drawbacks. For example, if your significant other is a light sleeper and gets up a few hours after you, grinding your beans in the morning can create a 'situation.'
It all comes down to personal preference and how far up the coffee plant you want to go.
Go to a local coffee house and do your trials there. Brew, Pour Over, Press, Turkish, you taste and then you decide.
For me I just like the taste of drip coffee over anything else.
Good luck and have fun, but most important of all remember,
calblacksmith Moderator Joined: 25 Nov 2007 Posts: 5,683 Location: Riverside, Ca, U.S.A. Expertise: I live coffee
Espresso: ECM Veneziano A1 Grinder: Many different commercial Vac Pot: 40s era Silex Drip: Milita, Bunn&Curtis... Roaster: Cast iron pan, gas burner
Posted Wed Oct 24, 2012, 6:53am Subject: Re: Looking to get schooled on the art and science of great coffee
Congrats on wanting to "up your game"! The first bigger purchase is to dump that blade "grinder", there really is no way to keep from making dust to boulders with it due to the way it works, that is just life.
Your first FIRST purchase should be fresh coffee from an Artisan roaster, you will be AMAZED at the difference EVEN with that bean crusher you have now!
In real life, my name is Wayne P.
Feed the newbs, starve the trolls and above all enjoy what you drink!
Perked Senior Member Joined: 24 Sep 2012 Posts: 30 Location: Ohio Expertise: I live coffee
Posted Tue Oct 30, 2012, 4:13pm Subject: Re: Looking to get schooled on the art and science of great coffee
Ok, so here are my steps:
1) start getting fresh roasted beans from a local producer (this one guy quotes $11, but does not say for what - is this per pound? Is this a bad price? He roasts to order :)
2) upgrade my coffee grinder. already have a few in mind at amazon. Burr grinder. Cheap enough. $20-$50 range. Don't want to mention the specific brand.
3) upgrade my coffee maker. Looks like brazen is the way to go. Will take some time in talking my wife into going into the $200+ range for coffee maker. Perhaps I can justify the cost from selling our kcup brewer :D
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