New York - Mocking people who care about coffee is a proud American tradition dating back to the birth of Starbucks. The same jokes about coffee-dandyism that filled up many a half-hour of the 1990s-era sitcom Frasier still work for The New Girl. The attitude has become so commonplace that it infects journalism about contemporary coffee appreciation.
Glance at The New York Times’s recent item on the latest high-market brew outfit to open a glitzy showcase space in Manhattan.
There is a faint but unmistakable note of derision in lines like: “If you want to learn how grind size affects extraction, here’s your chance.”
But, if coffee is something you drink every day why shouldn’t you want to learn how grind size affects extraction from a coffee bean? Why should paying attention to such a detail be regarded as any more annoying a habit than having the patience to remember to preheat an oven, peel an onion, or perform any of the sundry other preparatory tasks that we endure to improve the taste of products?
Today’s elite roasters don’t do much to undermine popular conceptions about coffee connoisseurship: Note the dandified presentation that appears to be mandatory for baristas, or the name of Intelligentsia Coffee. But that’s all marketing, which a person can ignore. Coffee evangelists also undermine their own cause by making the brewing process appear too fussy.
But you don’t have to be a champion barista to dramatically and quickly improve your at-home coffee process, nor do you need to spend a fortune on equipment. You can acquire a few pieces of basic gear, order beans directly from one of the best roasters, and begin making coffee at home that’s much better than what’s being served at your local price-inflated but barely serviceable café. And it’s cheaper.
What follows is a crash course in being a B+ coffee snob. Or, if we decide to divorce any and all associations of taste-distinction from snobbery (as I think we should), we could call this a guide to having better coffee without making your whole life about coffee.
The method of choice for B+ coffee appreciation is pour-over, which is basically putting your coffee in a conical dripper and then gradually pouring boiling water over it; the coffee filters into a vessel below. This allows you an enormous amount of control over the strength and flavour of your coffee, but it doesn’t require a huge investment of money (or space) in special equipment.
The only moderately expensive piece of unfamiliar equipment you will need to acquire is a conical burr grinder, which grinds beans finely and evenly (as opposed to a disc grinder, which tends to chop them in half once and call it done).
Apart from that, you’ll need to acquire a dripper, a server (a glass carafe with measurement lines on it), and, if you don’t have one already, a digital kitchen scale.
You really do need this stuff, because you won’t get the full benefits of a coffee’s flavour unless you’re exact about the weight of your beans and the volume of your water. Estimating the weight of grounds – and being wrong by half a gram on either side – is what most often accounts for sourness or bitterness. And, letting too much water pass through the filter is how over-extraction (which muddles or obscures coffee’s taste) happens.
Rest assured that when you master it, the process for making a decent cup of coffee takes about six minutes – far less time than going to your local café and waiting in line behind picky people placing complicated latte orders. It’s cheaper, too.
Ready to get started?
For a 350ml cup:
Boil some water in a kettle.
Measure out 34.5 grams of beans on a kitchen scale, and grind them finely in a conical burr grinder.
Put a No. 4 filter in a dripper sitting over a server.
When the water comes to a boil, pour a little into the dripper to wet the filter, then discard the water that collects in the server. (Keep the kettle boiling.) Replace the dripper, and add the ground beans to the filter.
Pour less than ½ cup of just-off-the-boil water over the coffee. Don’t pour so fast that the grounds start rising up the sides of the filter. (The idea is to let the water “wet” the grounds, unlocking flavours, in preparation for the bigger hot-water hit to come.) About 30 seconds later, pour in enough water to let the grounds rise three-quarters of the way up the filter, while breaking up any visible clumps of coffee on the surface by shaking the kettle a little. About 45 seconds later, repeat, letting the grounds rise up no higher than they did on the first pour.
When the coffee hits the 350ml mark on the server, remove the dripper, drink your coffee, and get on with your day.– Slate