Coffee ☕️

A good tasting coffee makes all the difference.

Essential equipment

Invest in these:

• Scale (0.1g precision)
• Brew kettle with precision thermometer (I use Fellow Stagg)
• Coffee canister (I use Airscape)
• A good burr grinder (I use Niche Zero, or Comandante when travelling)
• Aeropress

Dialling

When coffee tastes bad, change one or more of these factors. It may take several attempts to get it right.

• Grind size
  • Get a good burr grinder! ¹
• Water temperature
  • higher for light roasts; lower for dark roasts
  • even a +/- 5f adjustment can make a difference
• Coffee to water ratio
  • I generally do not vary this, and keep it fixed at 10:100g.
• Change to a new coffee matching your preferred flavour in the flavour wheel ²

Generally speaking, you mainly want to vary grind size and/or water temperature.

Brew methods

How I typically make coffee:

Inverted Aeropress recipe

• Invert the Aeropress
• Add 15g of coffee
• Water temp at 165f-190f (depending on beans)
• Start timer; pour about 50g; and stir until ~30 seconds
• Pour rest, total 150g.
• Brew until about 2 minutes
• Gently but consistently press for ~30seconds

If you use fresh coffee with your preferred flavour profile, and select the right grind size and water temperature for those beans - expect this method to consistently produce a great cup of rich coffee that is equivalent in strength to what the Québécois call café allongé.

Kalita Wave 155 recipe

TODO: This recipe is usually not successful (probably because I tend to use espresso blends?).

• 10g of coffee
• 185-194f water temp (depends on beans)
• 35g pour, wait 35 secs.
• Pour rest, total 135g. Wait till water comes through.

Beans

I tend to buy my coffee beans online from iDrinkCoffee.

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.
  • But eating a meal is ideal.
• Roast coffee myself