BREWING INSTRUCTIONS

How we recommend to brew the perfect cup!

Quality

In addition to our brewing instructions, we wanted to share with you some important information about the ingredients and equipment used to make a great cup of coffee! You may think, but it’s just water and coffee right? Well, you are right, but there are things you can do with these to make a better cup!

Water

Using great water will make a huge impact on your final cup, as water makes up over 90% of brewed coffee. While you can take a deep dive into this on the internet and spend days reading people’s opinion on the perfect water to use, there are a few simple principles you can go by to help improve your everyday cup.

The first thing you can do is to taste it and ask yourself, “Does my water taste really good on it’s own?” If so, then great! If not, consider getting a water filter for your tap to remove chlorine and sediment. If you are on well water, a softener and possibly an iron filter (if you have high iron and sulfur) would be most helpful. If you have reverse osmosis water, you may find the brew to taste clean, be a little weak. There is not quite enough minerals left in straight RO to extract the coffee properly.

Here at the shop we use a special reverse osmosis water. The water goes through a standard reverse osmosis process (to remove off flavors, sediment and chlorine), but then the system adds select minerals back in to enhance and properly extract the coffee.

Coffee

Well, if you’re brewing up our coffee, we would agree you’re probably off to a great start! But we’ve had many people ask us, “How long is the coffee good?” The answer to this question is largely answered by your taste buds.

On our bags of coffee, you will find the roast date on the bottom. We think our coffee tastes best between 7-20 days from roasting. Can you brew outside of that range? Absolutely. We liken this topic to bread. Bread tastes best early on, but the longer it sits, the more it goes stale. The same is true with coffee. As the oxygen from the air comes in contact with the coffee, it will start making it taste old. If it is kept sealed up, it will last longer.

On the other side of freshness is brewing too soon. The reason you don’t want to grind and brew too early is the coffee is off gassing (releasing CO2) for up to 7 days, mostly in the first few days. The earliest we recommend brewing a cup is 2 days after roasting. The earlier you brew, the more the coffee will bloom when brewed.

Another common question we get is, “How should I store my coffee?” The best way to store your coffee is in an airtight container that is stored in a dark and cool place.

We also get the question, “Can I freeze my coffee to make it last longer?” The answer is yes, but with a few qualifications. The first is, it’s most important to seal up the coffee, preferably vacuum sealed. The reason for this is even though it’s frozen, it will still go stale if not properly sealed. The second thing to consider is condensation on the beans. It’s best to grind and brew immediately from the freezer, or set the coffee out the night before to come completely up to room temperature before opening the bag.

Grind

The grind of your coffee is also very important! Depending on the brewing method, you will want different coarseness of grind. The finer the grind, the quicker the coffee will be extracted. The coarser the coffee, the slower it will be extracted. For example, we pull espresso shots in 25 seconds (super fine grind), and french press is 5 minutes (coarse grind).

If the coffee is under extracted, you will get a coffee that leans more sour in flavor. If the coffee is over extracted, the coffee will get overly bitter and harsh. The goal is to be in the middle and have a nice balance of flavor.

Lastly, the kind of grinder you use is also very important! We strongly recommend a burr grinder, as opposed to a rotary blade grinder. The burr grinder will produce an even grind, where as the blade grinder will produce “boulders and powder”. When you have an inconsistent grind, you will automatically get overly sour and bitter flavors as the coffee is both under and over extracted.

If you don’t own a good grinder and know you will use the coffee within a week’s time, we would recommend having us grind it for you! In our blind taste tests, the ground coffee was about 4-5 days old until we were able to detect a significant difference between fresh ground with a blade grinder and pre-ground on our shop grinder.

Gram Scale

One piece of equipment that would improve quality and consistency is a gram scale. Besides measuring the same amount of coffee and water each time you brew, it is also helpful as not all coffees are alike in weight/volume. Light roast coffees will be more dense, while dark roast coffees are less dense. You can see this if you pick up a bag of light roast and dark roast at the same time, and see the difference is size (both being 12oz in weight).

So if you measure the coffee using a measuring cup and brew, light roast will be more concentrated while dark roast is weaker. Fun Fact: This is what also leads to people saying light roast has more caffeine. Light roast will have more caffeine compared to dark roast if you use a measuring cup, but if you use a scale and same brew ratio (i.e. 1:16), light and dark roast will actually have the same caffeine content.

To make a 12oz pour over, we will use 25g of coffee and 400g of water.

1. Using the hot water, rinse your paper filter to remove any potentially off flavors. This also helps to warm your brewer and cup!

2. Discard the rinsing water.

3. Grind and add coffee to the pour over. Gently shake the pour over to flatten out the coffee.

4. Zero out the scale.

5. Bloom the coffee. Slowly pour water over the coffee, saturating the grounds. Use about 75g of water for the bloom. Pause for 30-45seconds while the bloom rises and starts to fall.

6. Slowly pour more water in, saturating all the coffee till you reach 250g. Pause for 15-20 seconds while some of the water drips out.

7. Slowly start pouring in more water, one again saturating the coffee, and stop at 400g.

8. Once the water is all in, gently swirl the pour over to level out the coffee.

9. Once the water is almost drained out, remove the filter and coffee. If you let the water completely drain out, there will be a little more bitterness in the cup.

10. Enjoy your coffee!