Coffee is the best drink ever, but how do we get it to taste as good as it smells?
A high quality bean, appropriately roasted, relatively fresh, freshly ground immediately before use with a bur grinder, and then your choice of method, plenty of grinds but almost always hot water, and preferably some pressure to extract oils, finally filtered through paper.
My weapon of choice is an aeropress or a manual espresso press. An Americano is arguably superior to a cup of drip. I drink it black.
Coffee is fucking delicious.
1) Really, really, really shitty coffee that just tastes like bitter and stale, always. Often lots of ash tray in the flavor. (instant, many k-cups, some exceptionally bad gas station coffee, very bad pre-ground coffee usually bought in a large tin [though not all of that!])
2) Normal coffee. It is coffee flavored. It might taste very burnt if it's a dark roast. It might be bad coffee flavored, or good coffee flavored, but it is coffee flavored. This is nearly all coffee you buy at stores like Target. Ground or whole bean and preparation method makes a little difference, but not really that much. Anything involving a filter versus French-press will be fairly different, but that's about it.
3) Fine coffee, prepared well. It's... heavenly. Delicate. Notes of herbs and berry and all kinda of crazy stuff, clear enough that even this guy's crappy palate can pick it up. It's really expensive. It's basically a whole different drink from the entire rest of "coffee". It goes stale in maybe 3 days after opening the bag, so buying more than a little at a time is a bad idea unless you have many people drinking it. I've not found any method to preserve it longer that actually works.
Have you tried vacuum packaging and freezing it? You want to vacuum package it so no moisture is trapped with the beans.
The cold temperature will slow evatoration of the volatiles from the bean, but it is unstoppable.
Vaccume sealing will drastically slowdown the oxidation, but since you cannot truly get a 100% vaccume, there will still be some oxygen in the bag, which will cause oxidation anyway. It will just be a bit better than nothing.
And then unthawing the beans requires a moisture free environment (e.g, take it out of the freezer for 24hrs without unsealing it), or the beans will spoil. Once unthawed, i dont believe refreezing will work - it will just spoil it.
So yes, preserving beans' freshness is difficult, and bound to fail eventually. Might as well just pay for fresh beans, and pay for the transportation and packaging (which, i guess is the overhead, and makes buying small quantities more expensive...)
The first 3-7 days after roasting its not typically at its best yet.
Drinking and enjoying black coffee is like whiskey, it takes a few times to get past the “why the hell would anyone?!” hump, but once you do, you never look back.
Tastes are different; I hate really expensive trad whiskeys (Islay, Oban) because there's something in there that tastes to me like the smell of plastic shrinkwrap around vegetables from the japanese markets -- it's not peat, it's something else. But the cheap stuff I don't mind, and suntories are pretty good too.
Then I went to Seattle and SF in the same month, and discovered how wrong I was. Those places may be pits right now just like NYC, but they definitely win in the coffee department.
Regarding whiskey, getting to the stage of sipping on anything Islay takes a while, but there’s a whole lifetime to get there. Along the way there’s plenty of more approachable single malts, rye whiskeys, bourbons, and so much more.
or do you mean that you've gotten fast at putting the plunger on, and then leave it there for a bit before pushing it down? (in which case, do you skip the stirrer step?)
Grind for the appropriate brewing technique.
Use an AeroPress or a French Press, use water that has been boiled and just finished dropping past the bubbling point.
Let it steep, and stir.
Drink it black, and get used to it.
but in my experience, freshness is the biggest factor to good coffee--mainly being freshly (and adequately) roasted, but also freshly ground before use. everything else seems to be relatively marginal after that.
edit: i buy locally roasted coffee that's delivered to my door for about the price of starbucks or peets ( <=$1/oz ). that's been the biggest difference.
If you're going to end your advice with "get used to it", do you really need everything that came before?
Drinking it black means you taste the full flavour without the bitterness being masked by milk or sugar. But for me personally, drinking esspresso without milk is only good if the beans are excellent, and brewed to perfection by a proper barista (a level of skill i have yet to truly attain - that's why i buy my esspresso instead of making it myself).
But a milk-based coffee drink like latte or cappacino doesn't require that level of quality, and would still taste really good. So for the home, i recommend making milk drinks yourself, with medium quality fresh beans, while you buy esspresso from a trusted barista/cafe that you know is using great (single origin!) beans.
For example, I used to have these shitty speakers, but I'd enjoy music very much all the same. Then, I got great speakers, and could hear all the nuances, but I enjoyed music the same amount, the only difference is that I now needed expensive speakers to do it.
From then on, I decided that ignorance in these matters is usually bliss, and avoid (for example) looking at OLED TVs as the blacks on my TV don't bother me, but they would start to if I bought an OLED TV and I could never go back.
thanks for "expounding" it :p
I learned to drink MIL-SPEC coffee black at Boeing, because the Boeing creamer tasted like it was mined.
I liked McDonalds coffee before they tried to copy Starbucks. Horrible and black and perfect for road trips!
Great coffee comes down to many factors: the beans, roasting, grind, brew method, and temperature.
A great resource for learning more about great coffee is James Hoffmann's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMb0O2CdPBNi-QqPk5T3gsQ
Sounds like what wine salesmen say.
Leave coarsely ground coffee in water for 12-24 hours at room temperature and then filter the beans out.
Lasts for about 2 weeks in the fridge and you can have it straight, with ice, water or milk.
Some coffee shops use this technique to find out the flavour of coffee prior to using it for hot coffee. As the heat denatures some of the proteins in coffee, doing it cold extracts all the flavours without damage.
Otherwise find a good espresso place (not a chain). I have no idea how many or if they are around in US much.
Isn't it already roasted at this point?
Well, no, flavors fluctuate with temperature. Temperature changes flavor degradation and dissipation, and what compounds are released or not released. Heat can actually contribute the preferred flavors that may be lacking in unheated brews, and vice versa. Hot coffee can be the best tasting coffee, for a very short period of time. Cold-brew coffee is stable for longer, and has less astringent, bitter, and sour flavors, which lends it a cleaner, brighter flavor, but can make it lack "body". Point being, you still have to taste it hot to find out if it's going to taste good hot.
Can confirm that this is the best way to brew all but the finest beans. Elevates mid-tier beans quite a bit.
A "hot" brew is similar, but you get to smell the volatiles while brewing (which you lose if cold brew).
TBH, i'm not a fan of cold brew.
Second, buy a cheap hand grinder and grind 'em right. https://www.javapresse.com/blogs/grinding-coffee/grinder-bes...
Third, buy a cheap plastic V60 funnel and some paper filters, and hand-pour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI4ynXzkSQo
If you're just learning how to do this, buy a good bag of coffee just to practice a bunch until you taste a difference. (Do this any time you learn to cook. Cook 36 eggs in one go and you will become an expert omelette maker in an hour)
Cold brew is also delicious. Both the "let it sit overnight" variety, and "brewing into a carafe of ice".
Oh, and clean all your stuff each time before you use it. Stale leftover coffee (in your brewer or coffee mug) makes your coffee taste like shit.
That said, yes, I would love to know how to make it more palatable without making it so unhealthy. I'm extremely sensitive to bitter flavors, black coffee is a lost cause for me.
Perhaps coffee just isn't for you? The bitterness is part of what is enjoyable.
Tea is probably more your thing.
I prefer a coffee that is done at a low temperature (80-85c) and ground more towards an espresso to pull a little more flavor out.
I use a Commandants C40 with 40 grind settings.
Maybe not, as I am not a coffee drinker and don't like being caffeinated - but I really do like the smell of coffee, too.