Like cooking, brewing really good coffee requires a recipe. You wouldn’t eyeball the measurements for your favourite viccy sponge, and coffee brewing is no different. Here are 6 tips to get your home brewing off to a strong start.
Buy really good coffee, ours preferably 😉 Seriously, not all coffee is created equal, so invest in specialty coffee when you can. To be considered 'specialty', coffee must meet a number of criteria: grown in regions with specific climates and altitudes, farmed sustainably and traceable so customers know exactly where their coffee has come from. Specialty roasters often select coffee beans by travelling to meet the farmers in person. Our Head roaster, George, is off to Brazil this year with our importer Kamba.
Weigh your coffee. Yep, like any other recipe, it's a science as much as an art and eyeballing it just won't cut it if you're after the perfect cup. A good rule of thumb is 15g of coffee to 250ml of water for most filter brew methods. Adjust it up and down to serve more people as needed (e.g. 60g coffee to 1 litre of water).
Grind your coffee for the brew method you plan to use. Either get a grinder which you can adjust at home, or buy your beans pre-ground. Specialty coffee roasters use some pretty high end equipment, so the quality of grind you get from buying pre-ground often outweighs any freshness you lose from the increased surface area. Unless you have an awesome, adjustable burr grinder, wholebean isn't always best.
Filter your water. Whether you use a Brita Filter jug, or fit an inline cartridge system to your kitchen tap, correcting the mineral balance of tap water will prolong the life of your brewing equipment and make the coffee taste sooooo much better.
Use a recipe when brewing your coffee. A coffee recipe specifies the weight of coffee, volume of water and brew time needed to get the perfect extraction for your chosen brew method. Conveniently, we have brew guides for most methods here. You're welcome.
Store your coffee correctly. Whether you have whole beans or ground coffee, make sure you store it in an airtight, ideally opaque container (fun fact, light ages coffee just as much as oxygen). Our coffee bags are (conveniently) designed to do just this, whilst being fully recyclable. Don't keep it in the fridge. Just seal your bag properly and leave it wherever you like, within reason.
GO FORTH AND MAKE GREAT COFFEE
(& TAG US IN YOUR PICS @WOODSTCOFFEE)
