The Levels To Brewing An Excellent Cup of Coffee
Firsthand Advice From A Passionate Barista
You may expect firsthand advice from myself as a passionate barista on how to make good coffee. What you do not find is a step-by-step guide how to make coffee with a particular coffee maker, because there are hundreds of pretty good tutorials already out there. Also there is nothing on Cold Brew or Ice Brew. What I want to do is to boil down coffee brewing to the essence of what it takes to brew a good cup of coffee.
I went through every level of "making a cup of coffee." From the bottom level to the top level, I observed people making "their" cup of coffee. Not only once have I asked myself: "that was hard to look at! How on earth can she enjoy this cup?" Anyhow, let us dive in starting with instant coffee (I wonder why that even is allowed to exist) until we come to the worshipped portafilter.
Level 1: Instant Coffee
I feel uncomfortable to speak this out loud: "instant coffee." I do not want, or let us say I never want, to talk about instant coffee. It is just something that was invented by a deeply evil human being coming right from Dante’s circles of hell — okay, I am done.
My first touchpoint with instant coffee was way after I had my very first cup of coffee. I got in contact with instant coffee at age 20, so about 5 years ago. I stayed over the weekend at my former girlfriend’s and she did not drink coffee at all. She was a typical tea person; you know this water resulting from soaking leaves. Anyhow, all she had close to coffee was a glass of weird looking brown gravel — instant coffee. Silly coffee junky Me wanted to give it a shot. Up and done. One scarring experience later, I told myself not to ever touch brown gravel again.
Level 2: The Housewife’s Coffee
This one is pretty simple: go into the groceries store, buy whatever kind of grounded coffee, go home, and pour scorching hot water over it running through a paper filter. Et voilà: you got yourself a cup of, let us say, coffee. To top it up, we leave the coffee for hours on a hot plate to make it stay hot. Do not get me wrong, it is way closer to coffee than instant coffee, but to be honest: there is no way to go further away from coffee than instant coffee.
Back to the housewife’s coffee. I am not sure if that is even a internationally known term; nevertheless, it is a term in Germany. This method of making coffee was well known as the go-to method for the most households in the old days. Of course the wife made the coffee, because the wife back then, maybe in the 1950s, did pretty much everything around the household. Good we are passed that. Anyhow, the housewife’s coffee method is for those people that like to say “give me coffee, whatever it takes.” In this case it takes: taste. Not only you burn the coffee with the boiling water (yes, you can burn coffee with water), you further use a grind size that is not even close to right, not to speak of the quality of the grounded coffee you might have picked up in the groceries store (never buy coffee in a groceries store). By the way: among such cups of coffee was my very first cup of coffee — Sorry, Mum!
Level 3: Using A Coffee Maker WRONG
We take it to the next level and you get yourself a pretty fancy coffee maker, for instance a moka pot. Invented in Italy 1933 by Alfonso Bialetti, you might think “this barely can go wrong, it’s so straightforward.” This could not be further away from the truth. My passion for coffee actually started with a simple moka pot — Sorry, Alfonso, it was no Bialetti, but I got one of yours later. I started with a moka pot and more or less good, although already grounded, coffee. Among my 6 coffee makers, I consider the moka pot as one of the most difficult to handle (rightly).
Let us start with a story. Couple of years ago, I accompanied my best friend visiting his far away living girlfriend (former short-, then long-distance relationship). Yeah, I know: dumb idea; they split up later — Sorry, bro. Anyhow, she used to make her coffee using a moka pot as follows: she poured cold water into the bottom, put coffee into the filter, closed the moka pot, set the ceramic hob to level 9 out of nine possible levels, and waited till it was done. — If I recall, I think I cried.
Too much heat is death to every coffee flavour.
What did she do wrong, you ask? #1: never use cold water. The water for a moka should be preheated in a kettle or in a water heater to prevent the coffee from burning. Before the cold water is even close to boiling, the bottom of the moka pot becomes so hot that you kind of roast the coffee. It has been roasted before you bought it, there is no need to do it again. #2: never put the grounded coffee into the filter before the water is almost boiling. Reason is the same: the coffee burns before it gets in contact with the water. #3: never use more heat than you actually need. Reason is again the same: the coffee burns, and not just the grounded coffee, but the coffee liquid inside the top of the moka pot. And it goes without saying: too much heat is death to every coffee flavour.
Getting back to my 6 coffee makers, the story above is just one example for using a sophisticated coffee maker the wrong way. If you get yourself, or if you get a loved one, a good coffee maker you should do your homework: research how to use it properly. It is very easy to find information on how to make coffee properly. I recommend to research online and to not follow the supplier’s manual. There are several coffee makers, which, if used wrongly, after all still have the potential to make a housewife’s coffee and I know what I am talking about after learning to make coffee on a moka pot, Chemex, AeroPress, French Press, Karlsbader Kanne, and V60.
Every coffee maker is best at something particular.
Level 4: Using A Coffee Maker RIGHT
You really do not need an expensive coffee machine to make yourself a damn good cup. There is a huge potential in manual coffee makers. The coffee you produce with them is called “Filter Coffee”. With my 6 coffee makers, I made some of the best cups I ever tasted, even compared with coffee at a third wave coffee shop. As mentioned, it is not that easy to get it right, but it is by far much easier than with a portafilter espresso machine.
Before you choose the right coffee maker for you, you need to think about how you like your coffee: mild or strong, fruity or rich, milky or pure? There is the right coffee maker in each area. There are coffee makers that fit in the most areas (e.g. AeroPress), there are coffee makers used at best in just one area (e.g. V60), and there are coffee makers, or machines, for just one precise purpose (e.g. Portafilter Espresso Machine). It is important to understand that every coffee maker can make coffee (duh!), but every coffee maker is best at something particular.
After you got your coffee maker, there are a few things to (ideally) look after before brewing (ordered by priority):
- As mentioned, learning how to use the coffee maker properly
- Knowing what water to use: hard water intensely compensates coffee flavour
- Grind by yourself: grinding your beans with a handy grinder (e.g. Porlex Mini) is not only a pleasure, but it makes a huge difference in quality of the resulting cup due to freshness and the correct grind size
- For every coffee maker, the grind size differs: for each coffee maker, you will find in the how-to-guides what grind size you should “try”
- Depending on the coffee beans used, the grind size differs: I just said “try”, because the very correct grind size depends on the beans you use and after all on your preference in taste
- Weigh everything you do: weigh the coffee beans you brew (18g is a good start for the most) AND weigh the coffee liquid you produce (try 230ml)
Now we come to choosing your coffee beans. This might be a bit of a challenge since it includes lots of and lots of trial & error in both suppliers and flavours. There is further a huge range in quality of coffee beans. A few tips to get the right bean:
- Never buy coffee beans at a groceries store: if you can rather buy online at a roastery or locally at a third wave coffee shop. Groceries store have mostly no idea what they are offering and store the coffee for months after roasting
- Make sure the supplier provides information at least on:
blend or single origin, composition if it is a blend (e.g. 70% Arabica, 30% Robusta), espresso or coffee roast, detailed flavour profile, country/ies of origin, coffee farm/s of origin, processing method (e.g. washed), roasting method (drum roaster) - Make sure the supplier ships the beans in a good container, as an aroma bag and the roasting date is printed on the bag
- Make sure the supplier sells the coffee right after roasting (1–2 weeks is ideal)
Finally when you have your beans of choice, preserve their flavours by storing your coffee beans in the aroma bag you bought them in, do not move them more than necessary, close the bag tight after use and store them at a cool place. Coffee beans become stale after 4–6 weeks (grounded coffee becomes stale after 2 weeks), so use them wisely.
Level 5: Mastering The Portafilter Espresso Machine
After mastering all of my 6 coffee makers over 4 years, I got myself my very first portafilter espresso machine. Spending my entire salary I got from writing my Bachelor’s thesis, I have to say: that is the best coffee I ever had.
Being able to drink the best coffee whenever I want to took a lot — a lot of energy, kilograms of coffee, litres of milk, litres of water, and uncountable hours one-on-one with my Bianca. As you might noticed, I took a lot of effort to master all of my coffee makers, but nothing compares with a Portafilter.
Brewing Filter Coffee is much more forgiving than brewing Espresso.
Let me compare brewing filter coffee and brewing espresso:
With filter coffee 1g more or less grounded coffee makes a difference — with espresso 0.1 g does.
With filter coffee there might be 15 different grind sizes — with espresso there are no fixed grind sizes, it is rather an infinite range, as centimetres on a 100 metres long street.
With filter coffee 10g more or less coffee liquid makes a difference — with espresso 1g does.
The only thing that is the same with both is temperature: 1 degree celsius makes a difference with filter coffee and espresso.
To sum it up: brewing filter coffee is much more forgiving than brewing espresso. You have to look after many parameters at once: there is coffee weight, grind size, liquid weight, ratio, temperature, pump pressure, brewing pressure, steam boiler pressure, steam boiler temperature.
If you got all parameters right, most of them you are improving while practicing, there is still the act of actually brewing the coffee. Of course it is no act of just pushing a button and waiting. There are several steps to perform more or less perfectly, because otherwise you are not going to enjoy your cup. A rough step-by-step list might be:
- Weighing coffee beans
- Grinding
- Tamping
- Pre-flush the group head
- Lock in the portafilter
- Start the pump
- (Control the brew pressure while brewing)
The seventh entry is just applicable to my machine since it has a paddle with which you can control the brew pressure — this act is called "profiling." Profiling in my case is starting the pump, ramping up to 2 bars, staying at 2 bars till 20g of coffee liquid is in the mug, and then finishing by ramping down passing 9, 8, and 7 bars till 36g of coffee liquid. — As you might sense, profiling is an art of itself. There is endless experimenting possible and it requires lots of practice. In the beginning, I served my girlfriend a lot of cups that were nowhere close to perfect — Sorry, my Love.
After all this rabbiting about the art of brewing a cup: what does it take to brew an excellent cup of coffee?
It is not talent, it is not skills, and it is not the best equipment — at its essence, an excellent cup of coffee takes one thing: Dedication.
Thank you very much for reading my article! You deserve a cup of coffee!
