Brewing Better Coffee at Home It isn’t difficult to brew coffee at home, and with the right techniques, you can make it just as tasty as coffee from our cafes. You can improve your home-brewed coffee by following these 11 simple tips!
Use Fresh, Whole Bean Coffee
Roasted coffee beans contain aromatic compounds that are a large part of what makes the coffee smell and taste so complex and delicious. After roasting, these compounds begin to escape from the bean in a process called degassing. Approximately 70% of those compounds will be gone after 8 days. As time goes on, you lose more flavor and are left with stale tasting coffee. By grinding the coffee, the compounds are exposed to more surface area of the bean, allowing them to escape more quickly.
If you use only fresh coffee and grind your beans right before you brew, you will be able to get the most flavor out of your beans! If you want freshly roasted coffee delivered to your door, consider a coffee subscription service. We ship all Caffe Luxxe coffees directly from our Los Angeles roastery!
Use A Scale
It is common knowledge that 1 tablespoon of coffee per 6 ounces of water is the rule of thumb. It is true that that recipe (or similar recipes) can be used to brew coffee, but they lack the precision you need to take your brewing to the next level. The density and size of various coffees can vary widely, so a tablespoon of one coffee might weigh significantly less than a tablespoon of another coffee. By using a scale (instead of a cup), you can measure precisely how much coffee is going into your cup, no matter what coffee you use.
Use The Right Amount of Coffee
How strong or weak a cup of coffee will be depends on how much coffee you use and how much water you use to brew it. Stronger the cup is when you use more coffee, and weaker when you use less. What is the right amount of coffee to use? A good way to think about it is as a ratio between the amount of coffee used and the amount of water used. To enhance the chocolate sweetness and silky body of our House Blend, we recommend using a ratio of 1:12 (35 grams of coffee to 400 grams of water). For our Single Origins, we recommend using a ratio of 1:14, which brings out greater acidity and delicate flavours.
Use A Burr Grinder
In order to make great coffee, you need a great grinder. When ground coffee is ground into fine powder, the particle size determines how quickly the flavours are extracted from the beans, with smaller particles extracting more quickly than larger ones. In brewing coffee, you want all of your grounds to be about the same size, so all of the particles brew at the same rate. The ability to control the exact size of your ground coffee gives you greater control over the brewing process. It is easy to produce a very specific grind size repeatedly with burr grinders; they make it easy for you to do that. Among our favourite grinders for home use is the Handground Precision Grinder; with 15 grind settings, it helps you consistently produce the right grind size for your brew.
Grind At The Correct Coarseness (Or Fineness) Setting
To make great coffee, different brewing methods require different grind sizes. But how do you know which size to use? You can tell by timing and tasting. Using our pour-over recipes, we aim to have the coffee brewed in about three and a half minutes. The coffee will brew too fast if the grind is too coarse. It means the grind was too fine if it brewed too slowly. Similarly, a coffee that tastes too acidic and sour is usually a sign that the grind was too coarse, and a coffee that tastes too bitter indicates the grind was too fine. Generally, espresso requires a fine grind, pour-overs and AeroPresses require a medium grind, and French Presses require a coarse grind. You will be one step closer to enjoying delicious coffee at home by adjusting your grind setting according to time and taste. You can learn more about the grind settings we use in our cafes by checking out our Brew Guides!