In this post I want to address all those people who are curious, are just starting out or have simply been interested in the title and did not know that there are better ways to prepare good coffee at home.
Something so “simple” to do and everyday... We have all made several mistakes or lack of practice and knowledge that have meant that we do not enjoy our coffee 100%, an example that encompasses all of this would be drinking coffee with sugar. .. between you and me, have you ever wondered why, as a general rule, most mortals are used to adding sugar to their coffee or drinking it with milk? Well, the answer is simple, few people are capable of drinking their “old coffee” alone, as is, many would die trying... Be careful! I am aware that the world is big and there are people who like commercial espresso coffee without sugar and they are coffee lovers etc etc and more etc but they are few and if they are happy I will be happy for them since each one is free to enjoy as they wish. taste. And I also support people who drink coffee with milk, such as a latte or a flat white, but good coffee will always be better, don't you think? I want to briefly explain and demonstrate that specialty coffee is by far better quality (the same word that defines it says so) than commercial coffee, oh by the way! It can even be much cheaper!
So in summary: better quality, cheaper and healthier (a topic I will talk about in future posts). Faced with poor quality, more expensive, more unhealthy, which one would you choose?
I personally ended up obsessed with the world of coffee as a result of how frustrated and deceived I felt when I discovered that the product I had been consuming all my life was of poor quality.
Well, if you have reached this part of the post and you want to change a habit in your life for the BETTER, today I want to show you the 10 steps to start drinking good coffee at home!
First I want to explain a little for those people who follow my videos that all those things that I use to prepare coffee are not necessary so don't be scared. Preparing coffee is like cooking, you need to have a series of ingredients and about those ingredients to have an idea of the quantities that we are going to use, why? Simple, - What cannot be measured, cannot be improved - in this case if we do not measure or have control over the quantities of our ingredients, we will hardly be able to improve it. So to prepare our coffee we are going to follow a recipe and work on it, when we get a recipe that we like we can replicate it over and over again and that way we can enjoy a good coffee every day.
- Scale , a scale will allow us to have control over the weight of coffee that we are using, any kitchen scale that has the possibility of tare and set to 0 is valid since on the one hand we are going to weigh the coffee and on the other hand we are going to Weigh the water, by doing this we have almost completely controlled our recipe. On the other hand, we are going to need a stopwatch that, depending on the scale, is integrated or not. If it is not integrated, you can use the phone's stopwatch.
2. Water , one of the most important elements, if not the most, to prepare our coffee. We will need quality water since more than 90% of our coffee is made up of water, so we are interested in using filtered or bottled water. You can't get an idea of how much the flavor of coffee can change by changing the water. In another post on my blog I talk in detail about water and you can see which is the most appropriate water.
3. Coffee , this is a very important point and I encourage you that if you have not done so yet, buy specialty coffee, it is very affordable and the results are incredible compared to any commercial coffee that you have tried before, to put yourself in a difficult situation. Drinking a glass of red wine from a carton for €0.80 is the same as drinking a glass of a Gran Reserva, only in this case the specialty coffee has a quite affordable price. Also said in other words, a commercial coffee is a coffee, as a general rule, full of defects, of poor quality and with very high roasts (the coffee is roasted high to hide the defects of the coffee) as happens with any product if it has defects. Defects contribute bad flavors, but if I burn the product the only thing it will taste is simply bitterness and burnt notes. That doesn't happen with a specialty coffee, a specialty coffee has really pleasant flavors, sweet, caramelized and citrus, notes of red fruits, nuts, chocolate, etc. depending on the origin and process of the coffee. Specialty coffee is a coffee free of defects and with roasts ranging from light to medium, resulting in coffees with truly appreciable and pleasant flavors.
4. Grinding , it is highly recommended that you have your own grinder at home since coffee is a highly elusive product and tends to quickly lose its quality after being ground. There are studies that show that coffee loses more than 65% of its properties within 15 minutes of being ground. Having a grinder at home, apart from being able to enjoy fresh coffee every time you prepare it, also gives you the possibility of being able to adjust the grinding for the type of coffee maker you are using, which is also very important since there are coffee makers that, depending on Depending on the type of filtering they have, they will need one type of grind or another, for example, a V60 is a drip coffee maker which means that it filters by gravity and for this we will need a coarser grind than to prepare an espresso, In the case of an espresso, the grind is finer because the force applied to extract it is water under pressure (9 bars as a general rule). If, for example, we use a fine grind of espresso to make a v60 filter, this filter would take hours. in preparation since, as I mentioned before, it filters by gravity and the fine grind offers too much resistance to the water, the same thing would happen otherwise if for an espresso we use a grind that is too coarse, the water will pass through very quickly since it does not offer the necessary resistance.
You can buy the grinder electric or manual, whatever it is, make sure not to buy one with blades, the grinder must be with wheels in order to achieve greater uniformity in the grinding of your coffee since blade grinders give grinds that are not uniform, resulting in grinding with different thicknesses. I recommend a Skerton Plus grinder to start with.
5. The temperature of the water . As I have already mentioned before, there are different types of roasting in coffee and this will change depending on what the roaster decides and what he wants to convey to us with the coffee. For now we are going to classify the roasts into light, medium and dark, in specialty coffee the range of roasting goes from light to medium, knowing this we must add that as the roast is greater its cellular structure is more brittle which It means it is easier to dissolve and extract soluble compounds from coffee. Now the temperature of the water comes into play, depending on the level of roasting of the coffee and the size of our grind we are going to use a higher or lower temperature of the water, the temperature usually varies between 90Cº and 95Cº as a general rule. Keep in mind that water is a solvent and the higher the temperature, the greater its dissolving capacity.
6. Ratios . The ratios are basically proportions between coffee and water, for example when we talk about a 1/16 ratio we are saying that for every gram of coffee we use 16 of water, so if I want to use 18 grams of coffee with a 1/16 ratio I would have to multiply 18 grams of coffee times 16, which is the proportion of water and would give us 288 grams of water. This way we find out what the correct amount of water would be for our coffee. They are the key to controlling our recipes! The recommended ratios range from 1/15 to 1/20. Another thing to keep in mind is that the ratios will indicate the intensity or strength that our coffee will have, a 1/2 ratio that is used for espresso has more intensity than a 1/17 ratio used for filtered coffees.
7. Extraction time . The extraction time will vary depending on the size of the grind, the filtering method we use and the roasting of the coffee. Depending on the size of the grind we will have a larger contact surface in the case of a fine grind and a smaller surface. of contact in a coarser grind, so that will largely determine the contact time that we are going to need for our infusion since with a fine grind we will need less contact time to extract all the soluble compounds from the coffee than with a coarser grind. coarse grind. We must pay attention to having a continuous flow of extraction when preparing our coffee and not overdo it too much or run short on time. A suitable extraction time for espresso is between approximately 25 and 35 seconds and an extraction time for filter ranges from 2 minutes to 6 minutes.
8. Preinfusion . This is a very important step that we must carry out when we are going to prepare our infusion, as soon as the water comes into contact with the coffee it begins to release CO2 which creates a force opposite to the water trying to escape and making it difficult for the water to reach the coffee well. all parts of the coffee to moisten it correctly, that is why it is important to perform a pre-infusion that consists of pouring a little water (3 times more by weight than the coffee we use, for example 18 grams of coffee 54 grams of water to pre-infuse) in this way. This way we manage to homogeneously moisten all the coffee and prepare it for extraction.
9. Types of filter. There are several types of filter among which we find: paper, metal and fabric, each one will give us a different profile in the cup and this is simply due to the fact that the filtering capacity of each of these materials is different. The metal filters mostly used in methods such as espresso or French press give less clean flavors in the cup, allowing a greater amount of oils and fines to pass through to our drink. These filters provide greater body to the drink due to the passage of fines.
Fabric filters filter better than metal ones, retaining a greater amount of fines, but they still allow oils to pass through and are more difficult to clean, so we run the risk of leaving dirt and contributing bad flavors to future filters.
Paper filters are the best option, they result in cleaner drinks with a lighter body and do not contribute bad flavors if they are rinsed previously. Apart from that, we save ourselves from having to clean them since they are single-use.
10. Consumption temperature . I personally recommend consuming the coffee if it is a filtered coffee once the temperature has dropped a little around 60Cº or even 50Cº since our tongue is sensitive to temperatures and if we consume the coffee at a temperature that is too high or too low we will not perceive it the same, and as it cools little by little other nuances of flavors will appear in the drink.