Before preparing coffee, it is worth learning about the main factors that affect its taste. This will help you better understand the brewing method and experiment wisely. We highlight six such factors and talk about them in this article.
Before preparing coffee, it is worth learning about the main factors that affect its taste. This will help you better understand any brewing method and experiment wisely. In total, we distinguish six factors: the freshness of the coffee, the quality of the water, the storage method, the quality of grinding, the cleanliness of the equipment and the accuracy of the scales.
Freshness of coffee
To make delicious coffee, the beans must be freshly roasted.
During the roasting of beans, a reaction takes place between proteins and sugars, due to which important flavoring compounds are formed – they are responsible for the taste and aroma of coffee. After roasting, the coffee bouquet is still forming. However, two weeks after roasting, the quality of the coffee begins to decline – the coffee gradually fizzles out.
After two months and with each next day, the taste becomes stale and less expressive, and sometimes rancid, like old butter. The aroma loses the peculiarities of the country and region where the coffee beans grow. The coffee becomes unpalatable.
To prepare delicious coffee, you need to use the beans in the first two months after roasting – during this period, the coffee can be considered fresh.
There are subtleties. Too fresh coffee for making espresso is also not very good. If you prepare coffee using any other method, the beans can be used one day after roasting. However, if you are preparing espresso coffee, you should allow the beans to “rest” for at least five days after roasting. Then the potential of coffee will be maximized.
Water
Coffee is almost 99% water, so it is important that it is suitable for coffee.
The chemical composition of water is not only H2O, but also various salts and minerals. Water is suitable for coffee, in which the content of these substances is not too high, because they affect the brewing. The content of minerals and salts is called water salinity.
Coffee on water with a low mineralization acquires a sharp and overly bright character, bitterness appears in the taste. And on water with high mineralization – expressionless and with notes of paper in the taste.
The mineralization of tap water after simple filtration depends on the region, but most often it is equal to 300 mg / l – this is a lot. The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) recommends brewing coffee with water with a salinity of 75 to 175 mg / l. We believe that the ideal level of mineralization is 100 mg / l.
Besides mineralization, it is important that the pH value is between 6.5 and 8.
To achieve ideal water characteristics with a filtration system, you need to go through two steps:
- Clean it with a professional reverse osmosis filter to obtain distilled water,
- Or mix in more saline water or use remineralizing cartridges.
We understand that a complex filtration system is not for everyone. And in such a situation, we recommend using bottled water.
Storage method
Fresh coffee fizzles out very quickly. To slow down this process, it must be properly stored. That’s right – it means in suitable packaging and not too long.
The ideal coffee packaging is an opaque, tight bag with a degassing valve and a zip lock. Such a bag protects the grain from sunlight and contact with air, while the degassing valve helps to remove carbon dioxide, and the zip-lock helps to open and close the bag many times.
The ideal shelf life for coffee is one to two weeks. Acceptable – month. We recommend buying enough coffee so that you can drink it within the duration of this time. If you need to keep your coffee longer, you can put it in the freezer. The main thing is that there are no foreign smells.
You can store coffee in the freezer for up to six months, but you can defrost it only once and only at room temperature. You cannot re-freeze. After defrosting, coffee should be drunk a maximum of one to two weeks.
There are subtleties. If the coffee is ground, it fizzles out a lot faster: not in days, but in minutes. Therefore, you need to grind coffee a few minutes before preparation.
Grinding Quality
A good quality grind should be uniform. If the size of the coffee particles in one grind ranges from very fine to large, the coffee taste is unpredictable.
Grinding is also never perfect, so it is important to keep the particle size spread as small as possible. Only in this case will the taste of the drink be manageable and pure.
Generally, good electric grinders with a grind adjustment are not very cheap. If you are not ready for such an investment, you can use a manual burr grinder. Cheap electric coffee grinders sold at electronics stores will not always give you a good brew because they do not grind evenly.
Equipment cleanliness
A dirty coffee maker or grinder will nullify your efforts. Dried essential oils or ground coffee that is left in the grinder duct and get into the batch will make the coffee rancid. Even if there are very few of these oils or ground coffee.
In good coffee shops, grinders are cleaned daily, and coffee machines are cleaned twice a day. Even if a person is not very well versed in coffee, he will recognize coffee that is prepared with dirty equipment. In such a situation, adjusting the grinding or changing the water will not help – you just need to regularly clean the equipment.
The equipment is cleaned with water, brushes, and special cleaning agents.
Using Scales
Coffee requires maximum precision in preparation, and the scale is one of the main tools that helps in this. If you measure the dosage by eye, the result will always be accidental. The scale helps you track relationships and accurately understand the reasons for bad or good coffee.
Weigh both the grain and the water when pouring if you are preparing with the alternative method, and if you are using an espresso machine. It is the scales that will help you to precisely maintain the proportions of 60 grams per liter for drip and 17–20 grams for a double espresso.
What to remember
Regardless of the way you prepare your coffee, make sure that:
The coffee was fresh.
The water was right.
The packaging protected the coffee from light and air.
The grinding was uniform.
The equipment is clean.
And the proportions are measured exactly.