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I'm a Coffee Roaster: Here's What You're Doing Wrong That's Ruining Your Coffee

hudsonroastingcompany.com

51–60 of 93 posts

Re: I'm a Coffee Roaster: Here's What You're Doing Wrong That's Ruining Your Coffee

#51
post #39

As a coffee enthusiast, I can wholeheartedly vouch each and every one of the points raised in the article, except maybe the tap water and temperature. The biggest upgrade you can do on your setup is getting a proper coffee grinder with burrs and not blades. There's little sense in buying any fancier beans if you're grinding them in store and drinking it over a period of several weeks. In a matter of hours after grind…

I have a manual grinder (Hario) and I really don't like how long it takes to grind the damn things with it. IMNSHO it adds to much friction to the process /rimshot/ and makes it that much less enjoyable. Caveat emptor, basically.

I enjoy the daily morning routine of grinding 25gr filter roast with a Commandante. Takes about 2-3 minutes.

https://www.comandantegrinder.com/

Re: I'm a Coffee Roaster: Here's What You're Doing Wrong That's Ruining Your Coffee

#52

I've studiously avoided gaining the ability to discriminate good from bad coffee. I don't see any upsides, and the coffee snobs are insufferable.

I've spent a decent amount of time and effort getting better coffee, and I can still enjoy a cup of instant from time to time.

You do you, though.

Re: I'm a Coffee Roaster: Here's What You're Doing Wrong That's Ruining Your Coffee

#53

I've studiously avoided gaining the ability to discriminate good from bad coffee. I don't see any upsides, and the coffee snobs are insufferable.

As someone who drank Navy coffee for 6 years, who cares what it tastes like? The question is, does it wake you up?

If you're just into caffeine, there are pills to be had on the cheap. They are arguably more effective at waking you up, as well.

Re: I'm a Coffee Roaster: Here's What You're Doing Wrong That's Ruining Your Coffee

#55
post #50

All good advice, but the delivery could maybe have been a bit nicer. I imagine that this article might be a bit off-putting to people who are not into coffee as a hobby, so to speak.

Fine enough advice, except for the tap water comment, which I would think might lead some to distilled water (so it’s not “saturated with impurities”) - that’s not the way water and coffee work, and indeed, in a water-sensing machine (which likely depends on minerals in the water), not the way equipment works either. If one takes that comment to its logical conclusion, you’re going to have a (poorly flavoured) bad time.

Re: I'm a Coffee Roaster: Here's What You're Doing Wrong That's Ruining Your Coffee

#56

I don’t know, weighing my coffee three times a day doesn’t seem too appealing. Using scoopes is fine as long you tune in your taste with the scoop, but you have to try to scoop consistently.

Different coffee types and roasts differ in volume. Darker roasts tend to be lighter which translate to more volume in the beans and less in the actual grinded coffee. If you buy only one type of coffee and it's consistently the same roast level, then there shouldn't be a huge difference if you measure accurately. But for me, I buy a different coffee bag every time and one scoop of a light roasted Ethiopian coffee wi…

> If you buy only one type of coffee and it's consistently the same roast level, then there shouldn't be a huge difference if you measure accurately.

It’s basically what I do, and also sometimes it isn’t perfect but I don’t expect it to always be either .

Re: I'm a Coffee Roaster: Here's What You're Doing Wrong That's Ruining Your Coffee

#57

I've studiously avoided gaining the ability to discriminate good from bad coffee. I don't see any upsides, and the coffee snobs are insufferable.

Your implication is that you don't want to enjoy anything because you might turn into a snob... Some sort of meta-snobbish anti-hedonistic hero?

Re: I'm a Coffee Roaster: Here's What You're Doing Wrong That's Ruining Your Coffee

#58
post #55
post #50

All good advice, but the delivery could maybe have been a bit nicer. I imagine that this article might be a bit off-putting to people who are not into coffee as a hobby, so to speak.

Fine enough advice, except for the tap water comment, which I would think might lead some to distilled water (so it’s not “saturated with impurities”) - that’s not the way water and coffee work, and indeed, in a water-sensing machine (which likely depends on minerals in the water), not the way equipment works either. If one takes that comment to its logical conclusion, you’re going to have a (poorly flavoured) bad ti…

Agreed. I don't bother filtering my water, the tap water where I live is pretty great though. I imagine that might not be true everywhere. Some mention about the mineral content of the water would have been appropriate, ad you mentioned.

Re: I'm a Coffee Roaster: Here's What You're Doing Wrong That's Ruining Your Coffee

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really depends on the tap water and might be mostly due to chlorine. As someone who drinks distilled water almost exclusively, it's surprising how apparent the chlorine is when I occasionally have to the drink tap water in my area. Chlorine is basic while coffee is acidic, and chlorine is just pretty reactive in general, so it would be surprising if chlorine didn't affect the flavor of and in a negative way.

I thought that distilled water is bad because there are no more micro elements?

You should already be getting your minerals from your diet, and food is an all around better way to get micronutrients in general. The mineral that's in the highest abundance in tap water is calcium, but there's better calcium to be found in broccoli. Same with things like magnesium... if one's health hinges on what's in their ingested water, their diet is terrible. There's nothing in water you can't get in greater quality and abundance in food.

There's this urban myth that distilled water pulls minerals out of your bones. Go find some high quality studies that demonstrate this incredibly flawed idea and get back to me. ;) Things like calcium in your bones aren't in a form that distilled water could dissolve away even if it wanted to (that's just not how things are working in the body though). The other theory is that the body would cannibalize calcium from the bones if there's no other calcium available; if you're getting even a modest amount of calcium from diet, which is easy to do with even the most unhealthy diets, this is never going to happen. If you are osteoporotic or are at risk of it, no amount of water is going to save you, and the evidence that mineral-free water would make it worse is nonexistent.

If it was dangerous to be consuming water devoid of minerals, the FDA would pull things like reverse-osmosis and ZeroWater filters off the shelves. But people keep repeating the evils of distilled water as if it's concluded fact when it's anything but.

Meanwhile, distillation and reverse-osmosis guarantee that heavy metals, microplastics, and many pharmaceuticals never make it into your drinking water in any meaningful amount. For some people it improves the flavor, as in my case, but others don't like it. But to anyone reading this, try drinking distilled exclusively for a few weeks and then drink tap water again. For me there's an obvious difference in smell and flavor that is tolerable but still off-putting.

Re: I'm a Coffee Roaster: Here's What You're Doing Wrong That's Ruining Your Coffee

#60
post #30

Drink the coffee the way you like it. If you like to experiment, try different methods of brewing - French Press or pour over are easiest. You can try single origin beans, or blends, ground or whole bean that you grind with a propeller grinder gasp . I consider myself a coffee snob and even I buy pre ground beans sometimes because I'm a lazy old codger. Frankly I sometimes don't want to go through my coffee ritual in…

Author didn't say that everyone needs to fix their habits or anything. It wasn't pretentious at all. It gave some solid tips on where it most often goes wrong if you want to go from mediocre coffee to great.

I don't measure my own coffee on a scale from "terrible" to "enjoyable" because they're all for a different purpose and mindset. The main point is that people enjoy their coffee. If they're often finding the experience lacking, then they should try to fix the process.

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