By now, quite a few of my friends know I’m very elitist and snobby about my coffee. What is usually just a quick pick me up for most people in their morning routine is something of a ritual and passion for me. I spend a lot of time, money and effort on coffee and I love sharing that passion with my friends. I’ve been asked about some tips to try and get into specialty coffee, how to brew it at home and what people should look out for. Here is a video I made, very long, very rambling, and probably not that helpful, where I try to share some of my experiences and insights.
You can definitely find more poignant, technical and informative videos online on how to brew coffee. Re-watching what I said, I think I was probably wrong on a lot of technical aspects, especially the chemistry and processing, but in general, what I said is true.
In the video I touch on grinding, water temperature, simple recipes, how to pour, what to look for when buying coffee and some other random things that popped into my head.
One thing I did forget to talk about is water quality. This is actually a HUGE factor and can turn a good coffee bean into a terrible disgusting cup of coffee. I know it sounds pretentious, but it’s true. The PH and mineral composition of water is very important. To be honest, I’m not qualified to give exact numbers or details, and it sometimes varies with the bean itself. However, you can experiment with your own water, try using tap, a brita filter, cheap bottled water, and see if you notice a difference. In Thailand, the cheap bottled water from 711 was by far the best water I could buy for coffee. It made the coffee taste crisp and clean, whereas other brands, most of them double or triple the price, left a slimy, muddy taste to the coffee. It’s kind of like my pure disgust whenever I drink Dasani bottled water. It’s gross. So that’s another factor to keep in mind,
Another topic I didn’t mention was new coffee processing methods like anaerobic processing. The coffee world has started to use yeast cultures to help process coffee, and just like wine, this has been allowing tastes and flavours to emerge in really exciting and vibrant ways. It is not a guarantee of a coffee being better, but it is very cool and sometimes produces very surprising coffees. A lot of times I find these fun to try, but not the best to drink everyday as they are so flavourful or unique.
One more thing, which was lost in the video section that disappeared, I talked about robusta coffee beans. A lot of espresso blends will use Robusta beans in an attempt to make coffee cheaper. Arabica is the gold standard, but its very difficult to grow and poses serious threats to the long term health of the coffee plant. Being so genetically non-diverse, the worlds supply of arabica coffee plants are susceptible to climate change and disease. Robusta is a much hardier, easier to grow plant, but it doesn’t produce as nice flavours and coffee. But a lot of farmers are working hard to bring the robusta coffee beans up to the standards of the arabica beans. It’s an interesting developing industry, but it’s important to know that what we enjoy as high quality specialty coffee comes at a great price, and just like the chocolate industry, has so many ethical and environmental issues.
I probably should have written down what I wanted to say, planned it out, and made the video succinct and to the point, but hopefully my long winded and boring style was tolerable to some people. If you have any questions, or want me to make coffee for you, I would love to :) (Although you’ll have to come visit in Japan :p )