You’ve had it with instant coffee. Enough is enough, you’re through with this. You want to up your coffee game. You’ve gone out and bought some deluxe super luxury executive fair trade coffee beans, now let’s get down to the serious business of learning how to grind and brew coffee beans to perfect your cup of coffee.
How to grind and brew coffee beans
You can get a hand grinder or you can get a machine that does it for you. If you’re either a coffee purist, a luddite or just not a fan of incredibly loud noises then you’ll want the hand grinder.
With either the hand grinder or machine there’s usually a few different settings that lets you determine how fine your grind is.
If you grind your coffee too coarse (larger coffee grinds) then you’ll risk under-extraction. If you grind them too find then you’ll risk over-extraction. You just want extraction-extraction.
Aim for medium-fine and if your coffee tastes too sour and is under-extracted then change the grind size of your next cup so it’s finer and when it tastes too bitter increase the size of the grinds.
It’s just the curl of the burl
Some grinders give you the option to either uses blades or burr to grind your coffee. Admitting using blades to a coffee aficionado is likely to generate the same reaction as admitting you’re into a spot of serial killing as a side hobby.
A burr is more likely to give a consistent grind size. This is important if you’ve just spent the previous cup fretting about adjusting the size.
The blades generate heat when they spin which is apparently bad news for your coffee, although if you’re stressing over something this small then you’re probably never going to be happy.
The brew
This brings us back to over and under-extraction. If you’re brewing for too long then – you guessed it – this way lies over-extraction.
The amount of time you should brew for depends on the size of the grind. If you’ve gone for medium-fine then you want to brew for two minutes before you smash that plunger down on your cafetiere.
Again follow the sour/bitter logic if you want to change it up. If the coffee is too sour then it’s under-extracted you want to leave the coffee to brew for longer; too bitter and you need to decrease the brewing time.
The temperature
I fully concede that now we’re getting ridiculous.#No one is using a thermometer on their water, but if you have a kettle that’s fancy enough to set the temperate of the water then why not change it.
You want to be aiming for 93 degrees Celsius. Too hot and you’re over-extracting the coffee so that it’s bitter, too cold and you’re under-extracting so it’s sour.
Not all coffee is the same
Coffee producers take pride in the different taste profiles of their beans. Some coffee is a blend of different beans.
If you start with medium-fine burr for two minutes and you only have a kettle that boils at 100 degrees Celsius then you are probably heading in the right direction.
After that you can tweak to your heart’s content. Just as long as you don’t finally settle on the optimum cup of coffee with the last beans in the bag – enjoy the process!