Coffee Fundamentals: 3 Steps to Brew the Best Coffee at Home

Improving Your Home Coffee Experience

FrontStreet Coffee has published numerous articles about how to make better coffee at home. While we could spend hours outlining the intricacies of brewing delicious coffee, there are three consistently standout methods that are simple and accessible, yet can significantly improve your home coffee routine.

Invest in a Quality Grinder

Having a grinder is crucial because coffee tastes best when brewed immediately after grinding. Even grinding is essential for proper extraction. Consistent particle size enables more uniform extraction, resulting in a more balanced cup of coffee.

Think of it this way: when you roast potatoes, you want them diced as evenly as possible. This allows all the pieces to cook uniformly. If you have large chunks and small pieces, the large chunks won't be fully cooked before the small pieces are done. A similar concept applies to coffee. If your ground coffee is uneven in size, you can't extract enough soluble material from the larger particles while extracting too much from the smaller ones, leading to an uneven brew.

There are many grinders available at different price points, but not all products are created equal.

Use a Digital Scale

Just as using proper ingredient ratios is crucial for good results in cake or cookie recipes, using the proper coffee-to-water ratio is essential for making delicious coffee. Many of the world's best bakers use scales to ensure they consistently make the best cakes or cookies time and time again. Similarly, many of the best baristas we know use scales to ensure coffee consistency. This might make you wonder why measure by weight rather than using a reliable coffee scoop.

When making coffee, the proper coffee-to-water ratio ensures consistency and repeatability: approximately 1.6-2 grams of whole bean coffee per ounce of water, depending on your brewing method. Different coffees from around the world have varying densities and physical sizes. The roasting characteristics of coffee also affect weight. This means one scoop of a particular variety of whole bean coffee might weigh 5 grams, while another might weigh 8 grams—even though they appear to be the same amount of coffee in the scoop. In our example, if your preferred recipe uses 4 scoops of coffee per pot, that's a difference between 20 or 32 grams—a 60% variation! Weighing your coffee allows you to maintain consistency regardless of coffee variety or roast level, giving you better control over the coffee you make.

As with grinders, there are many options available for scales.

Use Clean Water

Water is the unsung hero of coffee brewing and perhaps the most overlooked ingredient in making delicious coffee—which is crazy considering that brewed coffee is 98% water! With this in mind, it's easy to understand why using clean water is so important. If your water tastes like chlorine or other chemicals, these flavors will transfer to your coffee. If the mineral content in your water is too high or too low, it can affect extraction, and specifically, if the mineral content is too high, it can lead to faster buildup of mineral scale in your brewing equipment.

To avoid making things too complicated, just ensure your water tastes good and has moderate mineral content. If you're using tap water at home, run it through a simple carbon filter to check for taste and odor—just like a Brita filter. If you're buying bottled water for coffee, we recommend using spring water rather than water labeled "drinking water." Never use distilled water for brewing coffee; its lack of minerals can actually corrode your equipment.

Paying attention to these three things at home will consistently help you make more delicious coffee.

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