i’m going to be honest, i don’t drinka lot of coffee because it freaks me out. and when i do drink coffee i drink decaf becauseit actually has quite a bit of caffeine in it. but whether or not you have cultivated thiscraving: knowing how to make coffee is a valuable skill.
difference between dark and light roast coffee, and to make your very own cup of joe, you’regoing to need three things: you need coffee, you need water, and you need some brewingmethod, like some way of heating them up together and then separating out the stuff that youdon’t want to have in the coffee. coffee comes in a variety of roasts and iseither ground or whole bean. if it’s ground,
you don’t need the added expense of gettinga bean grinder. however, if you have a bean grinder or youwant to get one, whole beans tends to retain more flavor because you can grind the beansright before you brew. most coffee aficionados recommend a burr-grinder,but a blade-grinder is more affordable and the difference between the two is not goingto ruin your day. either grinder might have some setting thatcontrols coarseness- to fineness of the grind. you might also find that this happens in thegrocery store. you can actually buy the whole beans and then grind them with the grocerystore grinder and you can also set the coarseness of the grind there.
as a general rule of thumb, the longer yourcoffee is in contact with the water, the coarser you’ll want the grounds. so your brewingmethod usually dictates the coarseness of your coffee. if the intimidatingly hip coffee roaster asksyou what kind of grind you want for your beans, you can confidently tell them your methodof coffee-brewing and they will produce the grind that corresponds. now let’s talk about roasts. these existon a spectrum that goes from light roast to dark roast. maybe somewhat counterintuitively, light roastshave more caffeine in them, and they taste
more acidic, citrus-y, and ‘bright’. light roasts will also retain a lot of whatthey call the flavor information from the place where they were grown- so a light roastfrom ethiopia will probably taste different than a light roast from guatemala. if you can tell the difference at all… whichi can’t. dark roasts, not so much. the flavor of adark roast is much more dependent upon the roasting process itself than where the coffeewas grown. in general, a darker roast will be less acidicand contain less caffeine. think ‘dark’, ‘smoky’, and ‘bold’.
like, a lot of people will say that it’slike… nutty, or chocolate-y, but if you’re expecting this to taste like a snickers bar,you will be disappointed, unless you put a lot of sugar and cream in, which is what ido. and as you might expect, medium roasts arein the middle! water is easy to overlook, but bad-tastingwater will result in bad-tasting coffee, so use the best-tasting water that you have available. that might be a water filter in the fridge,or bottled water, or cold water from the tap if you live in a place where you really likethe tap water like i do... many people believe that hard water, or waterwith more minerals, helps bring out the flavor
of the coffee, so keep that mind when selectingyour water source. finally, you must select a coffee-brewingmethod with all of its trappings. there are a bazillion ways to brew coffee.just… a brazilian... overnight steeps to make a cold brew, methods that involve fancyespresso machines, but we’re going to focus on three methods that are relatively affordable,and available to you when you’re in a hurry. method 1 is drip coffee. it’s this one righthere. it uses an electrical drip brewer, or a filter coffee machine. it’s the automatedversion of a pour-over. i call it a coffeemaker. this method is also going to need some coffee-filterswhich you can get from any grocery store.
we’re going to use the kind that you canturn into a snowflake or compost, but there are reusable filters out there. make sure that you get the right size foryour coffeemaker: a tiny-baby coffee filter in a giant basket will result in much sadness. to make the coffee, you first decide how muchcoffee you want, and fill accordingly with water. then you place the filter in the basket, andthe coffee grounds in the filter. a good rule of thumb is 1-2tb of coffee groundsper 6oz of coffee, but i’ve definitely just eyeballed this before, so i promise that it’snot the end of the world if you just throw
some coffee in and you’re like, that seemsabout right. if you’re feeling, like, super fancy orscientific you can take out a kitchen scale and measure out a ratio between the waterand the coffee of 1 to 15 to 1 to 18. so, like, we’re talking, one unit of coffeeto 18 units of water. then all you have to do is turn on the coffeemachine and voila! you are the bathrobe person in that coffee commercial. method 2 is called french press, or cafetieres,or coffee press, or a bunch of other names depending upon your geography. for this method you will need this object,which is basically just a cup with a piston
and a disk on it, and the disk separates thegrounds from the drink-y part. you’ll also need a kettle, or some otherway of heating water. first, determine how much coffee you’d liketo make, and measure out the corresponding amount of coffee grounds to water. with the disk/piston portion out, layer thegrounds on the bottom of the cylinder. then heat your water. if you’re feelingextra fancy you can use a thermometer to get the water to about 195âºf or 90âºc, but ifyou don’t have one, just boil the water, then turn off the stove and wait a littlewhile… like, 30-60 seconds for it to cool off some.
with the water at the correct temperature,pour about half of it in and set a timer for four minutes. 30-60 seconds into the four minutes use aspoon or a chopstick or whatever sanitary utensil you have around to break up the crustof coffee and mix it all up. then pour in the rest of the water. and withthe piston pulled all the way up, put the lid on. wait to plunge. meditate. take an instagramphoto. practice your catchphrase. whatever you need to do until you’ve made it to fourminutes. now, slowly push that piston down, and savorthe moment. once you have pushed it all the
way down, pour into your mug or a carafe soit doesn’t steep too long and get bitter. our last method requires the least amountof equipment, so very little investment, but you have to be careful or you’ll find yourselfwith a bitter, and crunchy brew. if you have coffee grounds, and water, andsome way to heat water to boiling, you can make cowboy coffee. grind your beans -- or select your grind atthe store -- somewhere between the coarse grind that you use for french press and theslightly less coarse grind for electric brew. then measure out your coffee to water ratio. heat the water alone in your kettle or potor can to boiling and set it aside for 30-60
seconds just like you would for the frenchpress coffee. set a timer for four minutes then add thegrounds to the heated water and stir thoroughly to get a good steep. might want to give it another good stir whenyou’re halfway through your four minutes. finally, since you don’t have the frenchpress plunger, take a handful of cold water and sprinkle it on the grounds to encouragethem to sink to the bottom of the pot. now carefully pour the coffee out of the pot,and take care to avoid getting grounds in your mug. you’ll probably want to pour out all thecoffee you’d like to drink at this point,
because if you let it steep in there any longerit will ultimately result in jet fuel. but, like, i’m not here to judge. regardless of whether you brew your coffeeover a campfire, or in the fanciest of machines, you are now participating in a ritual humanshave been performing for hundreds of years. if you have any coffee making tips or tricksthat you’d like to share, or have a topic
you’d like us to cover, that’s what thecomments are for, they’re down there, we will also be in them seeing what you haveto say. and if you want to learn more about adulting with rachel and me, you go to youtube.com/learnhowtoadultand subscribe!
