Hi Friends,
I’ll roast next on Monday, November 10, and any orders received by Sunday night will be delivered and shipped on Tuesday the 4th. If you are local, email me, and away orders are easier if they go through the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).
The holiday season is coming! Next week, I’ll have a full rundown of our new holiday coffees (5-6 of these) and some special offers for you. As a reminder, if you have a large order coming that will need custom labels, please get in touch with me ASAP. I’ll be ordering green coffee and bags in the next few days, and I am trying to line my ducks up so I don’t have to order again before Christmas.
Oh. I have 8 Barack O’Java labels left – and when these are gone, that blend will become the Jamlii Holiday Blend. If you want a souvenir bag of Barack for your shelf (or to drink it in celebration!), order now – first come, first served.
Today, I am writing about troubleshooting coffee. I’d like to share some ideas on things you can do at home to fine tune your brew and to deal with those perky little strange tastes that arise from time to time.
Lets start with a refresher on making coffee. You have a certain coffee, you store it in a particular way and in a particular form (ground or whole bean) and you then measure out an amount of coffee. You get water from somewhere and heat it to a certain temperature and introduce the water into your brewing device. Maybe there are other elements to your brewing device, like a filter. You may brew it into a cup (made of something) or into some kind of holding container, which may be insulated or not and which may or not sit on some kind of a warmer. Maybe you drink it now or drink iater. You put stuff in it (or not). Maybe it stays warm or stays cool.
Then you taste it.
Coffee is a very, very complex substance, and they say there are more than 700 separate chemicals found in coffee – many of which change with time, temperature, moisture and other factors. Some of these changes happen before I ever see the coffee, and many happen after it leaves me and goes to a café or to you. And a lot of these impact flavor.
If something doesn’t seem right about your cuppa, it may be the coffee, but it can also be factors that are under your control . . . and by changing these, you can dial in your own perfect brew.
So, based on the above refresher, here’s a step by step list of some things to consider if you want to make changes at home:
Choice of Coffee: The spectrum of available coffee out there runs from the lighter roasted origins from South and Central America through to French Roasts (and even darker, though not from us), and within this spectrum, you can find rich, fruity, light, sweet, bright and all sorts of other sensations. Changing the beans you buy really can change the whole experience. Write me back if you want some ideas?
Storage: As a rule of thumb, if your coffee is relatively freshly roasted, and you’ll use your bag within a week, seal the bag and leave it at room temperature. If you will use in longer than a week, freeze it (not the fridge)
Ground or Whole Bean: Pre-ground coffee goes stale really fast! If you buy pre-ground, the freezer is your best bet across the board. Love, the Grinder Police.
Amount of Coffee to Use: The rule of thumb here is two level tablespoons of ground coffee per 6 ounces of water. Note that brewers, carafes, etc. will use this amount as a “cup of coffee” measure (as in, this is an “8 Cup Coffee Maker”), but in reality, most of us use cups larger than this. If your coffee taste seems off, you can play with the amount you are using upwards or downwards, and don’t assume if your cup is bitter that you are using too much coffee. You may in fact be using too little.
Water: Our water comes from a well source in Freeport, and we notice a pronounced difference in the taste over the course of a year. A while back, I was getting a funny taste in my coffee, and when I drank a glass of tap water next to the coffee, there was a similarity in the off tastes. If you think your water source is the culprit, try getting some water from somewhere else (I am NOT recommending out of a plastic bottle) and tasting them side by side. There are a lot of ways out there to filter out the bad tastes, and you may want to experiment with using filtered water to brew your coffee.
Water Temperature: If you heat the water on the stove for making coffee, note that the temperature of a rolling boil (212’) is really too hot for coffee. You’d like the ideal temperature to be closer to 200, so maybe get in the habit of boiling the water and letting it sit for a minute or so before you brew – you should notice a big difference.
Brewing Device: I’ll save a discussion of the different ways of brewing coffee for another day, but for here, I’ll just say that results are very different from device to device – and you may find that using a different apparatus gets you closer to the coffee you want. Have a look at this link on the Coffee Review site for an excellent discussion of the methods available: http://www.coffeereview.com/reference.cfm?ID=164.
Other Elements: You might use a paper filter or a gold filter or some kind of metal filter as part of your brewer. Paper filters can leach flavor and should be rinsed before using. Other filter types need regular cleaning to eliminate the tastes of old coffee oils.
Cup: The material your favorite cup is made of makes a difference, and if you use a metal or plastic cup, give it a sniff, and chances are you’ll discover a strong smell you don’t equate with delicious, fresh coffee. Those metal travel mugs a lot of people drink from on the way to work can develop a buildup very quickly, and they are great at holding the scent of teas. It might be necessary to go at this gunk with espresso machine cleaner or cleanser, as these are very tenacious substances.
The Coffee Pot: If you brew into a glass coffee pot that sits on a warmer, you will have trouble if the coffee stays there longer than a few minutes – switch to storing the coffee in some kind of a thermal carafe and you’ll notice a big difference. If you are the person who gets up late in your household and you come downstairs to find something akin to sludge waiting for you in the family pot, treat yourself and brew up your own fresh one. You have rights too!
I hope this helps. I am happy to answer any questions about this, or if you are in Freeport or Yarmouth, I’ll come over and have a look at what you are using if you like.
Enjoy the weekend, and thanks for all your support.
Kent
