Wrote a beginner guide to coffee, aimed at the person I was three years ago
I drank instant for most of my life and never thought about it. What got me curious was cafés: their coffee tasted different to mine and I could not work out why. Three years later I have a lever press, a hand grinder and far too many opinions, so I wrote down the things I wish someone had told me at the start.
A few things that took me embarrassingly long to learn:
- Pressure does not come from the machine. It comes from the coffee resisting the water. If your grind is too coarse there is nothing to push against, and no amount of pulling slowly fixes a fast shot.
- Acidity is not sourness. Acidity is brightness and it is a compliment. Sourness is under-extraction, and the fix is to grind finer rather than to buy different beans.
- Crema tells you about freshness, not quality. Robusta reliably produces more crema than arabica whatever the cup tastes like.
- Rest your beans. Roughly 2 to 5 days for a dark roast, longer for light, longer again for espresso. Published sources genuinely disagree here, so I put the disagreement in rather than inventing a clean rule.
It is written for someone who knows nothing, so if that is not you it will be too basic. There is an interactive slider for roast levels that I am quite pleased with.
Full disclosure, it is on my own site: https://www.shashwa7.in/coffee