A good tasting coffee makes all the difference.
Dialing
When coffee tastes bad, change one or more of these factors. It may take several attempts to get it right.
- Change to a new coffee matching your preferred flavour in the flavour wheel 1
- Grind size
-
Water temperature
- higher for light roasts; lower for dark roasts
- even a +/- 5f adjustment can make a difference
- Coffee to water ratio
Brew methods
How I typically make coffee:
Inverted Aeropress recipe
- Invert the Aeropress
- Add 10g 4 of coffee
- Water temp at 175f-190f (depends on beans)
- Pour about 40g, and stir for ~25 seconds
- Pour rest, total 100g.
- Brew until 1m 25s
- Press for ~30seconds
- Add ~35g of hot water to brewed coffee.
Kalita Wave 155 recipe
- 10g of coffee
- 185-194f water temp (depends on beans)
- 35g pour, wait 35 secs.
- Pour rest, total 135g. Wait till water comes through.
iDrinkCoffee beans
Ongoing review of beans from iDrinkCoffee, my preferred supplier of beans due to consistent freshness.
Legend: <water-temp>f; <comandante-grind>c; <coffee-weight>g:<water-weight>g = <total-coffee>g
Coffee | Taste | Notes | Grind notes |
---|---|---|---|
Monsoon Malabar | Smokey | 👍 | 180f; 17c; 10g:100g = 125g (35c+185f in Kalita) |
Brazil Santos | Chocolate | 👍 | 190f; 15c; 10g:100g = 125g (32c in Kalita) |
Sweet Blue, Daterra Farms | Chocolate | 👍 | 190f; 14c; 10g:100g + 35g (12c in Mokapot) |
Mexican Altura | Chocolate + Smokey | 🤷 (Not consistent) | Finer than Sweet Blue |
Espress Yellow, Daterra Farms (thawed) | Okay | 🤷 (Not consistent) | |
Sumatra Orangutan | Dark + Smokey |
Learnings / experimentation
- More coffee doesn’t impact sleep when fasting during the day (ie. OMAD close to bed time)
-
Eating (creamy) butter in between cups helps ‘reset’ taste receptor.
- Though eating a meal is ideal.
- Roast coffee myself
I enjoy flavours towards chocolate/sugar side of the spectrum, which tends to come from medium to dark roasted coffee from certain regions (like Brazil Santos).
If getting a manual hand grinder, note the the way of grinding may matter.
Comandante grind chart:
From https://coffeechronicler.com/grind-size-chart/
Coffee Maker | Clicks |
---|---|
French Press | 30-34 |
Pour Over | 20-32 |
AeroPress | 14-24 |
Moka Pot | 12-15 |
Espresso | 9-12 |
10g appears to be the minimum required to make a good cup. 7g did not work out well for me.