Today we’re out to give a helping hand to anyone just starting out on their coffee journey. There’s so much information to absorb about our favorite caffeinated beverage, and it can be hard to know where to begin. While we invite you to check out our range of getting started content here and on our YouTube channel, right now we have a helpful list of 5 things you’ll want to know as you start out!
How Should I Store My Coffee Beans?
We’re often asked if it matters whether you store your beans in the bag or in a container, and whether it’s OK to freeze them. While we don’t recommend freezing beans (the moisture in the freezer can ruin the flavor), it’s actually very easy to keep your coffee fresh for weeks! We recommend sticking to dark, room temperature storage on the cooler side. While coffee will last for a few weeks in the original bag, a vacuum sealed container like this option from AirScape will help keep your coffee fresh for well over a month.
Are All Coffee Beans Created Equal?
There’s a lot of terminology in coffee that can be confusing for a new drinker. The first thing we hope to demystify is the difference between single origin coffee and blends. Single origin coffees are composed entirely of coffee grown in from the same origin, generally the same producer or very small region. This means that all of the beans in the bag will have been grown with the same soil and atmospheric conditions, and will be the same varietal. In simpler terms - these beans will all share a flavor profile.
Blends, on the other hand, will be a mix of beans from, potentially, all over the world (though often blends will be made up of beans from a single country). The main difference is that a single origin will provide stronger notes of that single flavor profile. This can make SOs hard to work with as a new coffee brewer, as you may struggle to set brew parameters to highlight those more specific tasting notes. Blends, on the other hand, have a less specific flavor profile and will be a bit easier to brew.
Finally, what’s up with espresso beans? This is largely just a term used for roasts that are produced with the espresso brew method in mind. Many espresso brews taste great in a wide range of other brew methods, and there’s no specific technique of difference in the roasting process that separates beans labeled as espresso from any other roast.
What’s Up With Flavored Coffee?
When you see a tasting note on a bag of specialty coffee, it just means that that’s the flavor that the roaster feels the roast evokes. There’s no added oils or syrups in the coffee. When you see a coffee specifically labeled as flavored, such as chocolate coffee, it usually does mean that an oil or other additive was added to the beans with that flavor. Typically these flavored coffees are lower quality, mass produced beans that use the flavor to help mask the fact that they aren’t up to specialty coffee standards. Generally, we prefer the specialty stuff, as you can always add flavor to your coffee with syrups and milks after you brew. Plus, sometimes the oils in flavored coffee can be damaging to the grinders in superautomatic machines that are tough to clean.
What’s the Best Way to Grind Beans?
You’ve probably seen a number of different kinds of coffee grinders out there, and maybe even heard that burr grinders are the way to go for coffee. This is correct! Blade grinders tend to unevenly chop up beans into different sized chunks, when what we want is to crush the beans into grounds that are as consistent as possible. Burr grinders do this perfectly, ensuring a much more consistent grind than a blade grinder.
But what’s the right setting? Well, this is a big topic, but at a basic level you should know that brewing coffee is a balance between temperature, surface area, and brew time. Flavor from finer grounds with less surface area will make it into your brew more quickly than a ground with a larger surface area. This means that you want a finer grind for something like an espresso shot, which concentrates a lot of flavor quickly, and a coarser grind for something like a press or cold brew, which are steeped for longer. In general, these are the two extremes of the grind size spectrum, with drip and pour over falling somewhere in the middle. You should also know that not all grinders are created equal! Unless a grinder is specifically noted to work well for espresso it is likely that it doesn’t grind fine enough unless you use a pressurized portafilter.
What’s the Best Brew Method?
This is a fun one! What brew method you go for is really down to your preference. In a hurry? A superautomatic espresso machine might be perfect for you. Want something that’s automatic but a bit more traditional? A classic drip brew might be the way to go. Maybe you’re looking for something very hands-on but that’s easy to get started with, for this, we’d recommend pour over. And of course, for that full barista experience there’s always semi-auto espresso machines.
What method you start with is really up to you, but it’s definitely easiest to get started with either a drip brewer or pour over. Presses are also simple to use. That said, if you know you love espresso then you should follow your taste buds and start with an entry level espresso machine!
We hope you’ve found these answers insightful, for more on these questions check out our video with Sean below!