Freshness, grind, and making due with old equipment

If you’re like me, you might not have the best-quality tools for making coffee, so you have to do the best you can with what you’ve got. Fortunately, there are coffee experts among us who can help us do just that. The other day, Matt and Liam from the Stumptown Annex gave me some good coffee advice that I wanted to pass along to you.

I went to the Annex to buy some coffee to brew at home, and since I was buying good (and somewhat pricy) beans, I wanted make sure the beans were prepared properly. I have a very poor-quality blade grinder, so the question was: would be better to have them grind the coffee to the correct size, or should I take the beans home and grind them myself as needed? As you know, freshness is one of the most important factors that determines the taste of the coffee, but the grind is important too. Where was the trade-off between bean freshness and an accurate grind? The two coffee experts cleared things up.

They told me that since I was using a French press, it would probably be better to grind the beans myself at home. With some brewing methods, having an even grind is of paramount importance. However, of all the brewing methods, the French press method is the most forgiving, and you can get away with some variation in the size of the grounds. If they were to grind the beans, many of the aromatics that give the coffee its richness would soon be gone. Therefore, they reasoned, freshness was more important and I should grind them myself at home. Sounded like solid advice to me.

The two also gave me some advice on how to make the most of my rickety grinder (if you have a good burr grinder, you can disregard this). They were confident that I could still grind the beans well for the French press if I used a couple tricks.

First, in order to get the best grind possible, don’t just set the grinder on the counter and turn it on. As you grind the coffee, shake the grinder up and down in order to keep the coffee stirred up. That way you will not end up with lots of finely-ground coffee at the bottom and coarsely ground coffee at the top.

You should also pulse the grinder so that it does not continually run while you are grinding the beans. Pulsing will reduce the heat generated by the blades. You don’t want the grounds to heat up because the flavor compounds literally vaporize at higher temperatures, leaving you with a somewhat flat coffee.

To help me gauge the right size, Matt sent me home with a sample of coffee ground with their commercial grinder, allowing me to compare my grind to the proper grind. This is something I recommend you do too if you are using a blade grinder. The baristas at your favorite café should be happy to grind some beans to the proper size for you to use as a guide.

By following these tips, you might not brew the best pot of coffee you have ever had, but you will definitely make the most of your brewing equipment.

Good coffee is even possible with this. . . an antique from the 90s

Happy grinding and enjoy your fresh-ground coffee. 

Some Tips for Buying Beans

Despite the ubiquity of cafés in this country, a large majority of coffee that people drink is still brewed at home. There are two main reasons for this. First, brewing at home is more convenient than going out to a café to buy coffee. You don’t have to get dressed, or comb your hair or put on makeup before heading out to the café (though I have to say, these are not necessarily requirements in Portland). Second, brewing at home is generally cheaper, something that has become more important to coffee drinkers since the recession began. Buying coffee at a café can add up quickly, especially if you buy more than just brewed coffee or espresso.

Whether you go to cafés often or not, when you do brew coffee at home, you want to have good coffee.  So which coffee should you buy? It can be overwhelming to walk into a supermarket’s coffee aisle. There are coffees available in lots of different packages—you can buy coffee in bulk, bags, cans, jars and bricks. There are different brands, roasts, blends, country names and even different flavors. All of these choices can be more confusing than enlightening, so you have to sort through them to get something that suits you. By remembering a couple things, you will find it easier to get good coffee.

The first thing to remember is that good coffee starts with good beans, and good beans should be fresh. It is difficult to overestimate how important the freshness of the beans is to the taste of the coffee. Coffee beans are at their peak of flavor about a day after being roasted, and after that, the volatile aromatic compounds that give the coffee its flavor begin to dissipate. Therefore, you should always look for a roast date on the package. If you buy directly from a coffee roaster, you should ask when the coffee was roasted. If they won’t (or can’t) tell you, don’t buy it. They don’t care enough about quality to warrant your business.

Since freshness is so important, it is much better to buy whole beans than it is to buy pre-ground coffee. If you buy pre-ground coffee, even if it is ground at the store or café, the coffee is going to lose flavor quickly because the oxygen breaks down the flavor compounds inside the coffee.

If you buy your coffee at a supermarket, you should be sure to check the bags for roasting dates and expiration dates. Not all coffees have this, and if a company is afraid to put the dates on the bag, odds are you are not going to get the freshest coffee. Always look for the coffee with the nearest roast date or the farthest-out expiration date. Be careful about buying from the bulk bins too. Some of those beans may have been in there a while [Insider tip about buying bulk coffees: if you grind your own beans at the store, be sure to run a few beans through the grinder before catching them in the bag. You won’t get any flavored coffee surprises that way].

In addition to buying fresh beans, it helps to have an idea of what tastes you like. Do you prefer just a little bit of smoky flavor in your coffee? If so, you might want to look at a French or Italian roast. If you like lighter, more floral coffees, try a single-origin from Africa. Bright, sparkling coffees with crisp acidity? Try a Central American coffee. Most of the time, the coffee labels have descriptions of what you can expect in a coffee. Read them and try the one that sounds the best.

The best advice I can give you to learn more about blends and regions is to visit a café that sells coffee beans (if they roast their own beans, even better) and talk to the people that work there. A good barista will have opinions about what he or she likes and should be willing to let you try some of the café’s different offerings. When possible, visit the café during a slow part of the day so that the baristas will have more time to talk to you and make some samples. If you try to talk to them during the morning rush, you’re probably not going to have their full attention and they will just want to get you out the door so they can get back to working the line of customers.

If you buy some coffee and end up not liking it, don’t be afraid to take it back to the store. Roasters understand that not all of their recommendations will be right, so they should take back a bag of beans if you don’t like them (and haven’t used most of them). You’re paying good money to get good beans, so you ought to be satisfied with what you buy.

Hopefully these tips will help you when you go to buy coffee. Buying fresh beans and learning about blends and regions won’t necessarily guarantee you a good cup of coffee at home, but they will definitely improve your chances. Once you have good beans, you’re off to a good start.

Airport Coffee Hacking Tip

When you travel, one thing you may get tired of is airport coffee. It’s true that most airports these days have Starbucks or Peet’s (or some other large coffee chains) in them, but even if you do like their coffee, you probably don’t like the high prices they charge. Airport cafés have limited competition and they know it, so they charge way more than they would on the street.

There is a way to beat the airport coffee cartels and still have great coffee.

Zachary Gray, owner of Paper Tiger Coffee, gave me some great advice for getting great coffee when you’re traveling, without being treated like an ATM.

Here are the steps:

Step 1-Right before you leave for your trip, grind some coffee beans and put the grounds into a Ziploc bag. It is very important that the beans are ground extra-coarsely—more coarsely than for a French press. Grind out enough coffee so that you have at least two tablespoons of grounds for each six ounces of coffee you are going to want to drink. Put them in the bag and remove as much air as possible. Seal the bag and throw it in something you are going to carry onto the plane.

Step 2-When you get to the airport, look for a Starbucks—not to buy coffee, but to get a cup of hot water. Starbucks has great water. They triple-filter it so there is nothing in it to add or detract from the taste of the coffee. Order the size you want, making sure to match the quantity of water with the quantity of coffee you have.

Step 3-Dump your ground coffee into the cup of hot water. Gently stir the grounds to make sure that they all come into contact with the hot water. Let sit for 3-4 minutes, then pour just  a little cold water over the grounds to help them sink to the bottom. The coffee should be ready to drink.

As you drink the coffee, you have to be gentle with the cup so that the grounds stay at the bottom. If you do this, the grounds are less likely to release some of the bitter compounds they contain (i.e., they won’t over-extract) and you won’t get a mouth full of sediment when you drink it. As long as you’re careful, you will not taste much more sediment than you would with a French press.

It’s not rocket science—high-quality fresh coffee + good water has always been the recipe for great coffee, even if the method is somewhat primitive. In Gray’s experience, this ‘farmer coffee’ (a.k.a. ‘cowboy coffee’) is better than nearly all the coffees you can get at the airport. The fact that you don’t have to spend so much money also makes it taste better. Enjoy!

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(Feel free to pass this on to your fellow travelers/coffee lovers)