How to Brew Great Coffee at Home
There’s little that can beat a hot cup of coffee that is made to your liking; which is the perfect way to start the day. Some people only have that first coffee of the day, while others drink it throughout their day, but either way, this beverage is the preferred drink of millions of people around the world. If you are not so happy with the quality of your home-brewed coffee, the first thing you have to do, is use arabica coffee beans which provide rich flavor to your coffee. Here are some more tips for much-needed improvement.
- Use whole beans – Choose any of the Veneziano Coffee Roasters products, which are fresh whole beans that you can grind at home. Try a few varieties until you hit on the one that ticks all your boxes and you can order in bulk.
- Use scales for accurate amounts of coffee – It might surprise you to learn that different coffees have different densities; a tablespoon of one blend might be a different weight to the same spoonful of another blend. The way to ensure that you get the exact amount of coffee is to use accurate scales.
- Check your grind settings – How fine or coarse you grind your coffee has some impact on the flavour. How do you know which setting to use? Time is the key; good coffee should take about three and a half minutes to brew – if it brews quicker than that, the grind was too coarse and if it takes longer, the grind was too fine.
Of course, the other way to tell is the taste; you can experiment with the fineness of the grind until you are happy with the outcome.
- Use purified water – You might not know it, but your morning coffee is actually 98% water and any unwanted taste will transfer to the beverage. That said, do not use distilled water, as the minerals have been removed and they give the drink some of the taste. Click here for information about sustainable beverage packaging.
- Water temperature – The temperature of the water has an impact on the brewability; water temperature does affect the speed of the extraction, however, it can also affect what is extracted. Cooler water (below 195°F) brews the coffee slower, while hot water (above 205°F) will draw bitter flavours from the coffee.
- The importance of pre-heating – If you don’t pre-heat the various items, heat will be drawn from the coffee and that will impact the flavour. Wet the filter with hot water and let it drain, which also removes paper residue and that can also impact the taste.
- Always bloom your coffee – The bloom is when the coffee starts to bubble as it is poured over and this is caused by carbon dioxide, which is a by-product of the process.
Add a small amount of water at the start of the brewing process and wait for 30 seconds for the bloom before adding more water.
Brewing excellent coffee is most definitely an art and we hope that the information in this article goes some way to helping you improve your coffee.