Everyday coffee hacks

"I must offer a word of caution here: don’t invest in an espresso machine at home unless you want a new hobby."
— James Hoffmann

After some of my recent writeups about coffee, one or two of you have commented that I appear to be setting standards much higher than most people have on the topic. To quote one, "All most people want is a good cup of coffee, not the very best, and most aren't going to go to those extremes to get it." Point taken. And they are right, I am chasing the very best coffee I can afford to make, and I am chasing that exceptional flavour high, with every cup. I've become something of a snob, I know. But given the truth of that riposte, I offer you all some simple hacks to get a little more out of your coffee and your brewer.

General tweaks everyone should read

That said, I will encourage one or two general upgrades to your coffee gear, and explain why. Firstly, I'd encourage you to invest in a grinder and buy whole coffee beans, simply because once beans have been ground their flavour deteriorates noticeably and rapidly, within hours in the case of some beans. I mentioned this in How to make good coffee at home and a couple of other writeups, because it's the single most important step forward I noticed in my journey. One of these days I will do a full writeup on the topic. For now, read How to make good coffee at home. Currently, the KINGrinder K6 is the grinder making people twitch, it seems like the best budget manual grinder for everything except espresso at the $30 price point. I may pull the trigger on one myself. Grinding right before brewing makes a huge difference; for a few extra seconds of prep time the flavour of my coffee improved quite dramatically. You will learn that some brewing methods need a finer grind, some a coarser. Espresso and Turkish need very fine, French press and cold brew need much coarser.

The second suggestion is to buy a set of scales and weigh your beans (and possibly even your water). The reasoning here is that once you find that cup that fills you with delight (and you will!), you can replicate it more scientifically, because you made a note of the weight of beans you used. Which brings me to the third thing, buy a notebook and take notes. Because when you do get that flavour high, you'll know what you did because you took notes.

Clean your kit! Any coffee machine needs cleaning from time to time, to remove the inevitable buildup of old coffee oils and grounds, which will affect the flavour of your beloved cup. If you use a machine regularly, a regular clean and flush is going to maintain it in tip-top condition, which is A Good Thing. Don't be afraid to check and clean your machine. I do my machines at least once a week, and have never regretted that routine. A few minutes a week will pay dividends.

My other general suggestion is to try different coffees. You are probably accustomed to buying one or two preferred roasts, but don't be afraid to try another roaster, a different roast level, source from a different country or area. By doing this I discovered lighter roasts, and I've really been enjoying an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe light roast and it's changed my mind about different roast levels. Experiment!

Okay, that's the general advice, now to the hacks themselves. Some of them I have discovered, some are from coffee enthusiasts like the excellent YouTuber James Hoffman. i keep banging on about James, but he is a curious, informative, experimental and entertaining coffee enthusiast who is concerned with getting the most out of his cup, and wants to pass on his findings. Some hacks will surprise you, but I have tried them all and know them to be effective. None of them need much in the way of attention, but together they will enhance your coffee. so first, some issues:

Bitterness

Some people simply love bitter coffees. One exchange I had contained this:

"I can't find my perfect coffee, I can't seem to find a coffee as strong as I like—by "strong" I just mean bitter and overpowering. I was drinking black espresso for a while but I didn't want to wear out my mother's espresso machine so I stopped."

This took me aback because my idea of "strong coffee" does not include that level of bitterness. If you're in this same school of thought, know that the tiniest pinch of salt in the brew will reduce the impact of those bitter compounds and enhance the natural sweetness in the cup. Nd when I say "tiny", I mean it. Just a countable number of salt grains between the fingertips, and add it where and when you will. Personally if ever I make a dark-roast brew I add some to the top of my Moka pot so it dissolves as the brew emerges. But you can throw it into the bottom of the cup too, that works.

If you want bitter coffees, go for the classic Italian dark roasts. Look for coffees with more Robusta than Arabica as that species has less subtlety of taste and more bitter taste (and caffeine!). Illy does one that might suit you (Classico), and the darker Starbucks roasts will probably be right up your alley. You might also look at a brew method that enhances the strength of flavour. It's well known that I'm a big fan of the Moka pot, and for dark and medium roasts they excel at bringing forward those darker and more bitter notes.

Strength

Do not be tempted to just use more grounds for a stronger cup; for percolation methods you may wind up with the brew that never ends, and in any case, there's a science behind dosing grounds to water. In fact, flying in the face of reason, you may even wind up with a cup that is weaker than you had before, as water, faced with too many grounds to go through, simply bypasses them ("channelling"), resulting in a weaker or more sour cup. You may find that a slightly finer or coarser grind will do the trick, but tweak that by degrees and take notes (always take notes when experimenting). If you coffee is always too weak, you're using the wrong beans (see the general comments bout about bitterness) or you need to go back to basic and check your ratio (because remember, you took notes). Now onto tweaking brewing methods. Some of these are covered in more detail in Coffee Brewing Methods, but bear repeating here.

Automatic drip brewer According to my poll, this seems to be the favoured method for most people, and is a sensible and reasonable means to produce coffee in-house. Whilst they are capable of producing decent coffee at the push of a button, hey are not without their issues. During the years that it was my only coffee delivery system, I learned a lot about it's strengths and weaknesses, and learned some hacks.

The first is really simple. Don't just leave the carafe on the hotplate! The continual heating and reheating of the coffee will cook it up, driving off the real flavour compounds and leaving you with coffee that after a while simply tastes burnt as Starbucks. If you must have a constant, ready supply of coffee, once you've had your first cup, pour the rest into a Thermos or other insulated flask.

Hot water in the tank can speed up the process. It doesn't have to be boiling, just anything higher than whatever passes for room temperature in your house.

Bloom your coffee. Simply put, this means adding some almost-boiling water over the grounds before you hit the Start button. Alternatively, if your brewer cuts off the coffee drip if you remove the carafe, simply remove it for maybe a minute and allow the hot water to soak into the grounds in the basket. This does a couple of things—one, it starts the extraction process a tad sooner and it also allows the escape of some of the built-up CO₂ from the grounds, allowing more room for the water to extract that tasty coffeeness.

Steep and release is a method of allowing hot water to build up in the brew basket and allowing it to infuse for longer. It doesn't make a huge difference to the nature of the flavour in my opinion, but it does somewhat improve extraction (strength) and it may work for you.

Where to go from here? Well, other than finding a better machine (which is a lottery), moving to a manual pour over coffee is the next step up. More on this later.

There are others, (James Hoffmann has a video dedicated to hacks on these brewers, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Ga8SRhRrE), but it's a rabbit hole probably more suited to would-be Weird Coffee People and I'm inclined to not explain every damn' little tweak.

Espresso

Espresso is a hobby thing all its own and needs a grinder with a particular set of skills, namely producing a consistently fine grind every time. The tweaks are seemingly without end, but provided you have a good grind and tamp well, two quick-and-easy hacks are:

1)The Weiss Distribution Technique (WDT) is all about distributing the grounds easily in the espresso basket. This can be done with a specialised tool that resembles a wine cork with acupuncture needles sticking out of it, or a homemade tool (which is in reality, a wine cork with acupuncture needles ticking out of it) This tool is used to stir and distribute the grounds prior to tamping, in order to break up clumps and create an even bed to prevent channeling and uneven extraction. It works, I even do it in my Moka.

WDT is rarely seen in the wilds of cafés, in fact I have only seen one professional barista use this technique, which is normally reserved for the Weird Home Barista hobbyist tribe , keen as they are to wring every drop of goodness from their beans and expensive gear. This is less true of the next hack, the

Puck Screen. A puck screen is simply a thin, perforated metal plate that is placed in the basket on top of the grounds before the portafilter is planted into the group head. The purpose is to create an even distribution of water over the puck, resulting in a reduction in channelling and better, more even extraction.

There are probably more hacks related to espresso than any other brewing technique, due in part to the investment of time, money and the learning curve involved with this method. I know people who've spent hundred of dollars on replacement portafilter baskets, all in the name of chashing the perfect shot. This is one of the reasons Hoffmann advises avoiding espresso as a hobby (see his quotation above)! Espresso needs more attention than any other method to get truly awesome results (and it's a major reason I've avoided investing in a machine). Grinding for espresso is by itself a whole topic; there are so many YouTube videos on he subject it scares me.

Moka Pot

Once you've got your grind right (coarser than for espresso, finer than for pourover), my only daily hacks are hot water in the boiler and an Aeropress filter in the top receptacle. The first (as expected) makes for a faster brew, and the second removes the worst excesses of oils and fine grounds, meaning a cleaner, clearer and sweeter cup and less sludge at the end when you drain it. I've also been known to use a little WDT-style grounds distribution (even stirring the coffee with a paperclip will help).

Everything I said earlier about cleaning applies to this beast. Rinse all the parts in really hot water after each use, wash weekly by hand (not the dishwasher, which will quickly ruin the finish!)

French Press/Aeropress

No hacks here, beyond encouragement to experiment with grind size and immersion time. It's such a simple brewing method and even without messing wih hacks, makes an excellent brew pretty much every time. Perhaps give it a stir and let it steep a little longer for a little more flavour and sweetness; immersion methods are very very forgiving. For the Aeropress there are many widgets you can buy (search on tha inyernet, it may be worthwhile). The biggest hack for the Aeropress is the "inverted" method, which some claim improves the brew, and others claim just makes it more dangerous. The primary advantage I can see is that the brewer is not dripping during the immersion process; if you are curious, watch some YouTube videos on how to do it safely.

Manual pourover

Buy a gooseneck kettle. This will enable you to pour a steady stream of water over the grounds (it turns out you need laminar flow to make excellent pourovers!). Try diffrent filters (there is also some variation in papers for each system, which will produce cleaner cups or faster brews depending on your preferences). Again, there are as many variations in recipe and method as there are people making pourovers, so do some web searches or peruse YouTube for ideas. There are far too many hacks to detail here, most of which are down to refining pouring technique and experimenting with timing. You need patience to perfect this technique, and time to absorb all the suggestions. Good luck.

Reheating cold coffee

We've all done it. Get distracted for half an hour, and the nice 60°C cup that was perfect to drink is now at room temperature at best. What to do about it? Well other than advising you to drink it hot in th efirst place, I can only recommend microwaving it like you were defrosting meat. for me, 45 seconds in 15-20 second periods, warm it sufficiently without making it bitter. The last thing you want is o take too high, which will cook the coffee, rendering it bitter and weird in a bad way. If it gets to boiling, you are doomed and should throw it awa and make a new one. If you have milk in it, do not take it past 70°C, as that will break the proteins in the milk, leaving you with an eggy taste. If you're prone to being distracted a lot, invest in an insulating vacuum mug (cheap as chips in most stores) or even a thing called an Ember mug, which actually plugs into the power and maintains the ideal 60° temperature for a long time. Worthwhile if you're deskbound and distracted (sysadmins and programmers fall into this group).

So anyway, there you have it. Grind your beans just before making your brew, weigh your damn' beans, take notes, keep your gear clean and above all, don't be afraid to experiment. As ever, please approach me with questions, I'll happily talk with you. And don't forget that caffeine absolutely will interfere with sleep, having a half-life of 3-5 hours, so either scale back seriously after midday. Consider decaffeinated coffee, it's certainly better than you may think, and you can join the ranks of the top-tier coffee drinkers who drink it purely for the flavour.

This writeup dedicated to passalidae
svntax says Thank *you* for coffee snobbing, it is much appreciated :D