COFFEE EDUCATION 101

HOW TO: HOME BREWING

Brewing great coffee at home starts with high-quality beans, but there’s a lot of contributing factors that can significantly improve (or ruin) your cuppa joe! It can seem intimidating to optimize your homebrew, but we want to help! We’ve broken down the process into five simple categories: coffee quality, freshness, grinding, brewing, and water quality. There’s no need to try to reach perfection overnight, but by simply starting with one category, you can begin improving — and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out! We love meeting people where they are in their coffee journey and then accompanying them along the way.

THE BEANS

The first thing to take into consideration is the quality of the bean you’re brewing. Coffee flavors and taste can change dramatically based on how the coffee is picked, produced and roasted. Here at The Daily Coffee Roasters, we hand select the best beans from across the globe, ship them to the U.S., and roast them here to give you the freshest coffee possible.

THE FRESHNESS

Secondly, freshness is very important when it comes to making a phenomenal cup. Coffee flavor is at its peak when it is sealed immediately after roasting and we make sure to follow all the best protocol to ensure the freshness will be maximized. There’s also a common misconception that coffee should be stored in the refrigerator. Actually, you want to avoid this! The best way to keep your coffee fresh is to store it in an airtight glass or metal container and out of direct sunlight.

THE GRIND

The next thing that can dramatically change your cup is how you grind your beans. For a successful grind at home, you should be using a burr grinder that crushes the beans and gives them a good texture but isn’t a source of heat. Blade grinders add heat and friction to the beans will actually affect the flavor of the brew. Moving to a proper grinder will bring the most notable difference to your cup! If you are looking to add new pieces to your coffee brewing equipment, a good grinder is a great place to start.

THE BREW

One of our main recommendations when brewing a consistent and quality cup of coffee is to use a scale. Using a scale can help to make the correct coffee-to-water ratio and will optimize a successful brew and lend to having a more consistent daily cup. This also allows you to play around! One of the beauties of coffee is that there’s so much room to find what you enjoy! A scale can give you a baseline ratio which you can adjust as you learn what you enjoy the most. You’ll even find that different beans can shine using different brew ratios. A good starting point is 10 grams of coffee (or roughly 2 tablespoons) per 6 ounces of water. We recommend using a higher quality, Specialty Coffee Association certified brewer. Not only will these provide an amazing cup of coffee but it also heats the water to the appropriate temperature. One of the best features is that they will last for a long time.

THE WATER

Lastly, one of the most overlooked factors is the quality level of the water with which you’re brewing. Using spring water or filtered water can make a huge, positive impact on how the drink tastes, while tap water can introduce many unwanted additives to the coffee and can end up damaging your machine. In terms of looking at the ratio of coffee, water comprises the majority of the drink and can be a big player in flavor.