It's to our detriment that we strive for perfection & consistency in the Speciality Coffee World, Being consistent on a Coffee Roaster is incredibly rewarding for you and your customers. Imagine having one of the best cups of coffee one morning from your favourite Coffee Roaster only to be disappointed after you flew through the bag only to purchase another that does not live up to what you had just experienced, I doubt this will equate to returning customers.
There are multiple Practices that help with consistency while roasting coffee,
BBP is a series of temperature points that you must follow to the letter to help create consistent roasts, Once you open the roaster door you release your batch of coffee but along with it lots of heat and energy from your machine. When the door closes the roasting chamber and sensors need to climatize, What happens is your temperature reading will drop once the door is opened once closed the reading will slowly rise until it reaches the internal ambient temperature, we then want to wait for this reading to drop to a chosen degree and then turn our heat source back on but at a reduced power setting, Then when we meet a second selected temperature reading we apply the power setting to the desired charge temperature (Charge/Drop Temperature is the degree of which you want to let your Green Coffee into the roasting drum) if you rinse and repeat the between batch protocol you will for certain see increased consistency throughout.
Ambient Temperature Monitoring is exactly what it says on the tin, you want your green coffee to be in a similar environment before you start roasting. If Green coffee is just loaded off a truck and you roast it straight away it is going to roast differently to a coffee that has been sat in your roastery due to its temperature difference, Imagine cooking a steak from the fridge or one that has being resting outside of a fridge the rested steak would cook faster. So storing your coffee in your regulated temperature area for at least 24 hrs prior to when you will commence roasting it will give another edge on consistency.
Weight Monitoring, Weighing each batch to the gram is paramount for consistency. Less coffee will roast faster & vice versa more coffee will take longer. Weighing coffee after its been roasted will show you how much weight has been lost during the roasting process and if you keep hitting your numbers you know you're being consistent.
Software Tracking, using a Roasting software such as Cropster or Artisan will allow you to create and track your roasting profiles. (Profiles are a combination of power, airflow & drumspeed actions) these softwares allow you to play back your profiles and allow the roaster to try match what they found to be the best sequence of settings for the coffee.
]]>Finca El Placer belongs to Sebastián Ramírez, a 4th generation coffee producer who has been running his family estate for over a decade. El Placer means "The Pleasure" in English, and the farm is located at the heart of El Eje Cafetero (the coffee zone) in Calarcá, Quindío at 1.744 MASL.
Sebastián is using natural, washed and honey processes, and all varieties undertake carbonic maceration. Most of the coffee is processed naturally or via a honey process to minimise water consumption. In his quest to maximise the flavour potential of every variety, Sebastian is taking a step forward by adding the mosto from cherries to the coffee during fermentation.
At El Placer, avoiding herbicides and cutting weeds via guadaña (weed wacker) every two months is part of a sustainable approach to farming. They prioritise soil health, which results in healthy plants and contributes to great flavour profiles too. Sebastian has access to a well- equipped microbiology laboratory crucial for the El Placer team in developing innovative and exotic coffees.
El Placer believes education is the key to success. They provide their neighbours with free coffee production consultancy and buy crops from them at a fair price. They plan to build a central milling station, where farmers can get direct access to the milling services and lower their production costs. Besides this, Sebastian is supporting Bienestar Animal, a foundation that cares for abandoned animals. He adopted several rescued animals, giving them a new home at his farm.
Sourcing phenomenal Speciality Coffee is our main focus at Soma Coffee Company, last year we fulfilled one of our biggest goals of travelling to origin and meeting the amazing people that grow the plant we know and love.
We arrived in Sao Paulo in July and took a beautifully scenic drive to Minas Gerais, The Brazilian Coffee growing capital some 5 hrs from the city. Upon arrival we wasted no time & headed straight towards a familiar named farm, Fazenda Santa Cruz. We were overwhelmed by this coffees quality at the beginning of last year when it was part of our offering and jumped at the chance to meet the people behind it and secure some fresh crop for the season ahead.
Josiani Moraes & her team greeted us with open arms at the gates of her farm welcoming us to a spread of Brazilian delicacies overlooking her impressive operation of farmland, processing stations & drying patios.
We could not refuse after our long journey from Ireland and what better way to get to know everyone than over some traditional & regional dishes.
From here we were taken into their coffee lab to taste their latest crops in preparation for a full breakdown of their farming & Speciality Coffee growing principles which included making their own compost from harvest waste, experimenting with new and diverse coffee varieties, picking only the ripest cherries by hand and constant development of coffee processing techniques.
We then took to the farms vintage bus that brought us through the Brazilian mountains to see the coffee harvest in action, we met on the hillside with their skilled team of pickers and headed into the coffee plantation to pick some coffee. An amazing experience being able to hand pick the coffee we roast and serve at Soma. From here we trecked to the next plantation of machine picked farmland where we mounted the picking machines that allow Fazenda Santa Cruz to cultivate part of their 485 hectare farm.
Fazenda Santa Cruz is located in the Southern part of the state of Minas Gerais, in an area called Paraguacu, a place with excellent land, it is a hilly region that gets a lot of water. The Farm was acquired in 1992 but at that time there were only oranges grown on the farm and in the surrounding areas. After surviving a crisis in 1998 the owners Giovanni Batista Bragagnolo & Josiani’s Moraes, took the decision to remove the orchards from the farm and plant their first coffee trees. This was when the family began to invest in technology and infrastructure for coffee production.
The whole property is connected through eco pathways, allowing the local fauna to move easily around the farm, also in an attempt to increase the afforestation, 400 thousand native trees were planted in the area. The seedlings were grown in the farm’s seed bed through donations from partners such as the federal institution. Water saving is also an important issue, and so the farm has biodigestores to treat the residual water and a recycling system for the water from the coffee washers. Every year they run lab analysis on all the water that is used for human consumption, following the WHO’s guidelines and the National Council of Environment.
We then made the trip back down to the processing plant to see all the the fresh coffee berries that had been picked that day get washed, dried, hulled & ready for sorting. Fazenda Santa Cruz do all of this on site where as some farms would outsource these stages to Cooperatives.
It was then finally time time to cup some of this farms amazing processes and varieties, and it did not disappoint. To be able to taste these coffees with the owners, farmers, cultivators & processors was life changing. We got an amazing feel for this farms coffee and picked some outstanding coffees for this years offering, we even brought & brewed Josiani some coffee from her last crop that we roasted at Soma. Such a surreal experience being able to share this with her.
The Fazenda Santa Cruz 2022 Crop is due in for arrival this summer and we are beyond excited to receive it, roast it & share it all with you.
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Hint: Don't pour it out, let's try fix it!
First things first - if you are trying to make improvements to your coffee, a proper coffee grinder is absolutely essential. If you aren't able to adjust your grind settings, then most of the solutions put forward in this blog post are inaccessible to you. If you want to know more about this, check out our in-depth article discussing why a coffee grinder probably is the most important piece of coffee brewing equipment you'll ever buy! If you're looking for a coffee grinder, check out our range of grinders here. It. doesn't need to be fancy or expensive, it just needs to be adjustable
Secondly, measurement is everything. You don't need much, a scale and a timer will serve you perfectly (a thermometer is also a great addition and would be useful, but it isn't essential). By measuring your variables, you'll know exactly what you've done in your brew and be able to make intentional, specific and informed changes in order to brew your coffee better next time.
And lastly, if you're trying to make tweaks and improvements to your brew, try only change one thing at a time... If you make too many changes all at once, you might end up overcompensating and making your coffee taste even worse, or some changes might improve your brew while other changes are introducing new problems. Making individual changes allows you to assess the specific impact of that change and decide whether it made your brew better or worse. Once you've done this a few times with a few different coffees and in a few different brews, you should start to get a natural sense of how to improve your brews.
*bear in mind that coffee is complicated. While this guide is a great start to fixing your brew recipes, we can't make any guarantees.
This is one we hear all the time as it's especially prevalent in lighter roasted specialty coffee. Good quality coffee is often prized for its vibrant acidity, however, brewing acidic coffee can be a lot less forgiving than other coffees. When it comes to brewing acidic coffee, it's imperative that you brew it in a way that highlights the coffee's sweetness and body. This will balance out the acidity and take what was sour and make it delicious.
Just think of the sour coffee as sucking on a lemon, and the well-balanced coffee as drinking homemade lemonade... both are acidic, but one is delicious.
The Brew.
More often than not a sour coffee is a result of an under-extracted brew and the main cause of under-extracted coffee is usually your grind setting. This is another reason why having your own adjustable coffee grinder is so important! If you're looking to increase extraction, try grinding your coffee a little finer.
Using freshly ground coffee beans can make an enormous difference
A couple of other ways you can address under-extraction (although to less of an effect) are temperature and time. Often times we're told to brew coffee off the boil (88ºC-95ºC) however if your coffee is coming out sour, you're probably dealing with a lighter roasted, high-altitude coffee that often does well being brewed as hot as you can. As for time, if you brew your coffee for longer, this can also help to increase your extraction. Unfortunately, time can't be addressed independently with all brew methods - for example, if you're brewing espresso or pour-over your brew time is directly related to your grind setting (a finer grind will result in a slower brew and a coarser grind results in a faster brew).
The Coffee.
Another aspect that can result in sour-tasting coffee is the coffee itself. While many people love their vibrant and acidic coffees, these coffees just aren't for everyone. However, that doesn't mean that you need to resort to low-grade, dark roasted coffee, it just means you need to learn to select your specialty coffees with acidity in mind.
Choose your coffee according to what YOU like
One of the biggest factors in the acidity of your coffee is going to be the altitude at which the coffee was grown. Lower altitude coffees are almost always less acidic. It's also worthwhile to consider the coffee's processing method. Natural coffees tend to have a lot more body to them which in turn, can help to balance the acidity out. If you tend to have a hard time with acidic coffees, we'd recommend trying a low-altitude, natural process. You can expect low acidity, with lots of body, and flavours of chocolate and nuts - what's not to like?
The Coffee.
When it comes to coffee that is exceptionally bitter, the most common culprit is actually the coffee itself. The darker a coffee is roasted, the more intense and the more bitter the brewed coffee will be. While certain steps can be taken to mitigate the amount of bitterness in the final brew, the bitterness is inherently a part of the coffee and there usually isn't much you can do about it. If you're looking for an inherently sweeter coffee, look for medium to lighter roasted coffee from a reputable specialty coffee roaster. Pop into your local cafe and have a chat with your barista, he's sure to have some advice.
The Brew.
A bad brew can also contribute to the overall bitterness of a cup of coffee. If the brew is to blame for your bitterness, over-extraction is probably to blame. Similarly to under-extraction, you can address over-extraction by adjusting your grind size (grinding a little coarser) and brewing your coffee a little faster. If you're dealing with a darker roasted coffee, it. can sometimes help to intentionally under extract a little bit in order to try and mitigate the bitterness.
The is nothing worse than taking that first sip of coffee, first on a cold and frosty morning... and it just tastes like dirty dishwater. No flavour... No texture... No Body... Just water, but way worse.
Luckily enough, this can be one of the easiest things to fix. Just use more coffee! happens when your ratio of water to coffee is too high. If you're brewing filter coffee, a good starting point for your ratio is 60g of coffee per litre of water (eg 15g for a single 250ml serving) and for espresso, 1g of coffee for every 2g of yielded espresso (eg. 17.5g of coffee yielding a 35g espresso). Lighter roasted coffee can sometimes be a little harder to extract and will often need a slightly higher dose to get a nice full-bodied cup and very dark roasted coffee and vice versa.
Another major factor that contributes to watery or weak coffee is channelling. This happened when your coffee is ground too fine for water to pass through. What ends up happening is the water will create a narrow channel (kind of like a crack in the coffee bed) and flow through that channel instead of flowing evenly through all the coffee. Although this issue is most common with espresso, it can happen in brew methods such as AeroPress and Pour Over as well. The first step in avoiding this is to make sure you are using the correct grind setting. If you're happy with your grind setting, taking a few minutes to make sure your bed of coffee is well-prepped before beginning your brew can make a world of difference. For espresso, this means a firm (just firm, you don't need to smash the espresso puck into oblivion) and an even tamp. For filter coffee, this means making sure there are no clumps in your bed of coffee and giving the coffee a proper bloom.
Although it is less common, an extremely under-extracted coffee can also taste very watery and unpleasant. If you've tried to increase your dose and still find the coffee to be weak, try grinding finer and making sure you are using hot enough water.
While there is a reason for this, and it is possible to prevent it, if your coffee has already turned flat or bland, it might be a little too late to fix it...
If you know the coffee you're drinking and it usually pops with vibrant flavour, the most likely reason for your coffee tasting bland and flat is that the coffee you are drinking has turned stale. When it comes to specialty coffee, you have a much shorter window of when that coffee will be at its best - as a general rule, we say our coffee is best consumed within 6 weeks of its roast date. As it goes beyond the 6-week mark, you'll find that all those interesting flavours begin to fade and the coffee begins to seem a bit flat. You can try dosing a little higher (using more coffee in your brews), and while this might bring back some intensity, it won't quite be the same.
The best thing you can do is invest in an airtight container (Preferably one that has a vacuum seal) and store your coffee correctly. Although it's. not guaranteed, this might keep your coffee tasting fresh for a few extra weeks.
How you store your coffee can have a significant impact on how good your brewed coffee tastes.
On the other hand, if you're not familiar with the coffee and it falls into the category of bland, flat and uninteresting, it might just be that it is poor quality or lower-grade coffee. Find a barista at a cafe you love and have a chat about the types of coffee you enjoy; I'm sure they'll have some great suggestions for you!
At the end of the day, coffee is far more complicated than this blog post makes it out to be but, using this as a starting point means that you are on a journey to experiencing some delightful and wonderfully delicious coffees... And you'll probably experience some coffees that are about as cooperative as a toddler who has just had his third espresso.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on what you're brewing and if you have any tricks or tips on how you get the best out of your brews!
]]>In today's coffee culture, V60 brew recipes are a dime a dozen. There are so many variations on how to brew with this simple dripper, and anyone & everyone vaguely interested in coffee has their "Ultimate V60 Recipe". The truth is, all of these recipes have their merits and their downfalls, so in todays blog and video, we are going to look at two of the more popular recipes seen today, how to brew them and some comparative notes on the two recipes. Let the brewing begin!
Essentials:
Nice To Have Extras:
In 2016 Tatsu Kasuya took home gold with this brew method at the World Brewers Cup Championship in Dublin, Ireland. He captured the interest of the coffee community in a new way as he tried to break down the brew method into steps that would allow one to make changes that would have specific impacts on the sweetness, acidity and body of your brewed coffee. The brew method got its name from the way that it splits your brew into two portions, the first 40% and the second 60%.
Bear with us here, because this can get a little complicated. In order to make adjustments to your brew, you must have a basic brew to adjust - a starting point if you will. The base recipe for this is 5 equal pours, that are each three times the mass of your ground coffee. For example, if you use 20g of coffee (which is what we use), it will be five equal pours of 60g. If you use 15g of coffee, it will be 5 equal pours of 45g, and vice versa, if you use 30g of coffee, it will be 5 equal pours of 90g.
Now let's look at how you can adjust this recipe to make specific changes to your brew. The first part of your brew is delivered in two pours and makes up 40% of your total brew mass or 120g if you are using 20g of coffee. By making the first pour bigger, you will bring a little more acidity to the table, and by making the first pour smaller, you will find the brew to be a little sweeter. It's important to remember that the total of these two pours must still be 40% or 120g (for example, two pours of 60g will become one pour of 50g and one pour of 70g for a sweeter brew or vice versa for a more acidic brew).
The remaining 60% of your brew, or 180g for 20g of coffee, can be adjusted to manipulate the body of your coffee. For our basic brew, this would comprise of 3 pours of 60g. If you want more body in your cup, increase the number of pours while keeping the volume the same (for example - 4 pours of 45g to make up 180g), if you want a more delicate or tea like brew, decrease the number of pours (for example 2 pours of 90g).
Bear in mind that you can only highlight flavours that are already in the coffee - so brew to strengths of your coffee. No matter how much you want them, your brew method cannot create flavours that aren't there in the first place. Now that you've made it through the pre-ample, let's brew some coffee! Here are step by step instructions on how to brew with the the basics Tetsu Kasuya V60 Brew Method.
We know... technically, Kubomi isn't a "brew method" as much as it is a technique for prepping the bed of coffee that aids extraction. We found this technique really helpful and interesting and for the sake of creating interesting content with a catchy title, we dubbed it a brew method. We used this preparation with a fairly simple brew method that seems to be a favourite for a lot of the "coffee YouTubers" out there
This brew method uses long pours that fill the V60, along with low agitation of the grounds. The idea behind this is that the more hot water you have in your V60, the better your brew will retain heat and the more thermal stability your brew will have. This, combined with the Kubomi preparation, helps get the coffee grounds evenly saturated and inevitably
For the sake of comparison, we'll be using the same brew ratio as the previous recipe. Let's get started.
This part of the discussion is much more subjective. There is no such thing as a categorically "good" brew. It comes down to taste, preference, nuance, and, quite frankly, the mood you're in. Both these brews were outstanding. The extraction was good, the flavours were clear, yet they were (much to our surprise) vastly different. So let's talk about these differences and how you can use this experiment to better your future brews.
This experiment was done with a juicy and bright, fruit forward Kenyan coffee. The Tetsu Kasuya brew was beautifully textured, with a lovely mouth coating feel. The coffee had loads of body, which really surprised us for a Kenyan! It still had that acidity that we love in our Kenyan coffees, but it was much smoother and a little heavier than usual. Perhaps some tweaks in this brew to help highlight the acidity would have allowed the best aspects of this coffee to shine a little more.
The Kubomi brew on the other hand was delicate and tea like, but still packed full of complex fruity flavours. Peach ice tea was really the star of the show here!
In terms of practicality, the two brew methods were quite different. The 4:6 method, while definitely more complicated to explain, was far easier to execute, easier to repeat and a little more forgiving on variables. The fact that it's so easy to repeat has meant it's been a staple brew method at our cafes for years. The Kubomi method on the other hand, while quite simple to explain, requires constant attention during the brew, and tends to be a little less forgiving.
If you were to ask us which brew we prefered, I think it was fairly unanimous that the preferred brew was the Kubomi brew... Having said that, this whole experiment got us thinking about how the different brew methods highlighted different characteristics in the coffee. Suddenly we realised we were asking the wrong questions... Of course a vibrant coffee which shone with fruity acidity was going to be the star in a brew method that highlighted delicate, fruity and acidic flavours. We shouldn't be asking the question "which is the better brew method", we should be asking the questions "which is the better brew method for this particular coffee".
At the end of the day, coffee is wonderfully complex! There isn't a one-brew-fits-all approach. When it comes to your morning cup of Joe, think about the coffee you are brewing and what you want to get out of it. Is it a rich and full bodied Brazilian with a heavy, creamy body? Are you putting milk in your coffee (a body forward brew method often helps if you drink milk.). These are instances where the 4:6 method would probably be your best bet. On the other hand, if you are brewing a high altitude coffee with a fruity bouquet and a playful acidity, these characteristics can be lost in a body forward brew.
As long as you are brewing great coffee and paying attention to what you are doing, you will have a great time. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter. What do you brew with and how do you brew your coffee?
]]>Use good coffee. The simplest way to brew better coffee is to use better coffee beans (given that you'v e landed on our website, we're going to assume that you already have some good coffee bought from us). No matter how you brew your coffee, or what tricks you use, your brewed coffee will only ever taste as good as the coffee beans that you use!
It's great to explore the world of coffee! Find a good roaster and try their different offerings, paying attention to the origins and processes. Figure out your own tastes and preferences and start to intentionally taste your coffee, looking for what you like about each brew and what you dislike. Do you like the citrus and berrys of a light roasted Kenyan coffee or perhaps you prefer the florals and peaches of an Ethiopian? There are the chocolates and nut forward flavours of a natural Brazilian, the tropical pineapple flavours of a natural Honduran or blueberry funk of a Natural African Coffee (obviously, we're painting origins and processes with very broad strokes here). Exploring coffee from good coffee roasters will not only make your coffee better, it will change how you see and experience coffee.
Check out our full range of single origin specialty coffee here.
At this point we sound a bit like a broken record player. The truth is, without a grinder, there is very little you can do to improve your coffee. It is single handedly the most crucial piece of coffee making equipment you'll ever buy.
We feel so strongly about this, that we wrote an entire blog post on the topic. If you want to read more about why a coffee grinder is the most important piece of coffee equipment you'll ever buy, check out the blog post here, but we've also listed some options for you below.
Measuring is one of the fundamental concepts of good coffee brewing - especially when it comes to brewing high quality, specialty coffee. Sometimes, you just brew a perfect cup of coffee - it's rich, sweet and full of all the complex flavours you were going after! By measuring what you do in each brew, you can take notes and, over time, you will begin to figure out exactly what it is you are doing that makes the coffee so great. Coffee is very subjective, we like different things and we're all after a slightly different flavour profile, but by measuring your variable and taking notes, eventually, you will learn precisely how YOU like to brew YOUR coffee.
When it comes to measuring, you can go pretty far down the rabbit hole, so take this guide with a pinch of salt and decide how far you're willing to go. We recommend using a scale to measure your ratio of coffee to water, a timer to time your brew, a grinder that allows you to adjust grind settings and a kettle / thermometer that allows you to measure the temperature. Check out some of our favourites below.
Lastly, it goes without saying that you need a way to brew your coffee, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you need anything fancy - in fact, we would go as far as saying that the brewer is the LEAST important part. If you use good coffee, a good grinder, and a little bit of technique, you can brew incredible coffee, cowboy style! Having said that, we are all coffee nerds here and we do love playing around with different coffee brewers. Every brew method has something unique to offer, from the delicacy of a pour over to the versatility of an AeroPress and simplicity of a French Press. Listed below are some of the main ways we love to brew coffee and why what makes these brew methods special.
At the end of the day, it comes down to two simple things: good coffee beans and repeatability. Begin paying attention to what you're drinking and the little details in your brew method and you'll start to notice subtle differences in your brews. Coffee is all about incremental improvements and the power of making small changes is huge - if you manage to do something better by 1% every single day, you will be 37 times better at it after a year! Make small changes, try make your coffee a tiny bit nicer every day... It adds up!
Most of all though, enjoy it. Enjoy the process. Enjoy the time spent brewing your coffee. Enjoy the smells of freshly ground coffee in the morning. Enjoy learning to brew better and to taste better. Enjoy the coffee you love, brewed the way you like it, every day!
Do I really need a coffee grinder? This is a question we hear all the time, and the answer is quite simple. YES! You 100% need a good coffee grinder in order to brew good coffee.
Most people jump to buying a new coffee brewer when they want to improve their coffee, but the truth is, while a different brewer might highlight slightly different characteristics of the coffee, it wont brew a better coffee. All coffee makers are capable of brewing delicious coffee, I've brewed cowboy coffee that tasted incredible (ground beans & water in a mug - it's that simple)... But you must have the right tools in order to make great coffee, and the most important tool in your arsenal is your coffee grinder!
In this blog post we will talk about why a grinder is so important, what you need to look for in a coffee grinder and we'll go through some options for you if you're looking to upgrade your coffee grinder.
One of the most obvious reasons for owning a coffee grinder is freshness. The intensity of flavour you get from fresh coffee really is in a league of it's own. Coffee beans usually stay fresh and good to brew with for up to two months (some people say 6 weeks, others might say three months - this is a ballpark figure). Once you grind the coffee, you have a few hours, to (at most) a couple of days, to brew the coffee until all the interesting flavours and aromatics are lost.
Think about it: every time you open that bag and smell that sweet, delicious aroma, those aromatic compounds should be in your cup of coffee and they are just floating off into the air. There isn't much point in spending hard earned money on great quality coffee if the flavour that you are paying for ends up drifting away.
As you become more interested in coffee brewing and all the wonderful things it has to offer, you might be tempted to begin experimenting to achieve your ideal flavour. Do you like an intense and full bodied cup that really packs a punch? Do you enjoy your coffee to be delicate and tea like with nuanced acidity? All of these preferences can be tweaked with grind settings.
You can do so much with your grind to improve your brew and adjust your extraction to suit your coffee. If your coffee is roasted a little darker, try a coarser grind; the lower extraction will counter the bitterness of the darker roast and result in a much sweeter cup. If you enjoy very light coffees, grind find and push that body up, extracting every bit of tasty goodness. Your grind setting is the one variable that will have the greatest impact on your final cup.
Once you get into coffee, you're bound to want to start trying new brew methods and seeing what you can get out of your coffee. The reality is, every brew method requires different grind settings. Even within one category of brew method there will be variations - for example, a Chemex, a V60 and a Kalita will all offer up their best performance with different grind settings (this is because of the way they treat flow rate, but that's a whole other conversation). An AeroPress will give you almost unlimited options, all resulting in slightly different flavour profiles; for example, if you grind finer and extract quicker with a shorter steep, you will get a different taste to if you grind coarser and extract slower with a longer steep.
At the end of the day, if you buy great pre-ground coffee, you can get an average brew, maybe occasionally a good one, but if you want every brew to be great, you have to grind your coffee, fresh, according to how you're brewing it.
So we're all in agreement - a coffee grinder really is an essential piece of kit for the home coffee brewer. This brings us to the discussion of what kind of coffee grinder is best for you, and what are the pros and cons of the different options.
In order to understand the problem with blade grinders, we need to do a quick crash coarse on coffee extraction. There are three main phases that happen when we extract a ground of coffee. First we extract acids; sour compounds that add a lot of complexity to coffee. If you only extract these acids, your brew tends to be sour and would generally be considered under-extracted. Second comes body and sweetness. This balances the acidity out and generally makes the cup well extracted and quite tasty. Lastly, you will begin to extract less pleasant flavours such as bitterness as well as dry & astringent textures. How quickly this extraction occurs is directly proportionate to your grind size. This brings us to the problem of blade grinders, which chop the coffee up into all different sizes. Brewing with coffee ground like this is going to result in a mixture of sour, under-extracted coffee, bitter over-extracted coffee and only a small portion of your cup being well extracted.
A burr grinder is designed specifically to avoid this problem. Instead of "chopping the coffee" randomly, a burr grinder pushes coffee through a set of burrs in which it has to be crushed to a certain size before it can pass through. Due to the brittle nature of roasted coffee, this is not perfect, and there will always be a range of particle sizes, but it will be significantly better than with a blade grinder.
At the end of the day, while a blade grinder does have its uses, it is not an appropriate tool for grinding coffee. A burr grinder is an essential tool for you if you want to get the best of your coffee.
When it comes to comparing manual coffee grinders and electric coffee grinders, it really is quite a simple equation. It's a trade off between ease-of-use, price, and grind quality.
An entry level hand grinder will be cheap and cheerful and do a great job of getting you started on your coffee journey. When you get into the mid-tiered price range however, you begin having to make decisions and trade offs. You can either get an exceptional quality grinder that will deliver amazing brews, or you can take the step to an electric coffee grinder, that will deliver similar quality to what you get from an entry level hand grinder, but with the ease of electric grinding.
Once you head in to top tier, you start getting the high end burr sets in electric grinders. If you're willing to spend the money, you really can get the best of both worlds!
If you want to browse all our coffee grinders, you can see the fill collection here.
The Hario Mini Slim Plus is, without a doubt, the best way to start off with grinding your own coffee. It offers great quality on a budget and will happily grind fine enough for a Moka Pot as well as coarse enough for French Press! If you're a beginner home brewer, and new to the world of specialty coffee, this is the perfect grinder to get you off the ground and experimenting.
Get the Hario Mini Slim Manual Coffee Grinder here.
If you're looking for something with a little more finesse, the Hario Skerton PRO and the Timemore C2 are both great options. While you will pay a little more for these grinders than the entry level options, the improved grind quality and consistency is worth every cent. The difference in flavour, especially when you taste side by side, is astronomical. If you want the best quality grind you can get on a budget, this one is for you. Although the sharper and better quality burrs will also help you grind faster, thats not the main benefit of these grinders.
If you're thinking about one of these grinders, the Timemore has a smaller chamber making it more portable, but only able to grind a single brew at a time. The Hario, with the glass chamber, is less portable, but easily handles enough coffee for multiple brews.
Get the Hario Skerton Pro Manual Coffee here.
Get the Timemore C2 Manual Coffee Grinder here.
We get it... No one wants to manually grind their coffee first thing in the morning. Maybe you just want an easy solution. An entry level electric grinder will do this perfectly. An entry level electric grinder will set you back about the same price as a high end manual grinder. It comes down to whether you prioritise ease of use, or grind quality. For most home users, an entry level electric grinder is the perfect option.
We have a few options in this category, but our favourite is definitely the Wilfa Classic. In our minds, this is one of the best value for money electric grinders on the market today.
Get your Wilfa Classic Electric Burr Coffee Grinder here.
Lastly, you can look at a high end electric grinder. These are electric grinders that have a heavy quality focus. They often adapt high end technology from commercial grinders to home use and offer a combination of the ease of use of electric grinders, alongside the hight quality grind achieved by top end manual grinders. They really are the best of both worlds.
If you're interested in one of these grinders, the Fellow Ode and the Eureka Mignon Classico are the best options for you. Although they are both very verstatile, the Eureka Mignon was designed with espresso in mind and the Fellow Ode was designed with the manual brewer in mind.
Get your Fellow Ode Brew Grinder here.
Get your Eureka Mignon Classico grinder here.
]]>The specialty coffee industry revolves around the pursuit of the best tasting cup of coffee that we can find. This can pose a little bit of a problem when taste is such a subjective thing. Not only is it subjective to the tasters preference, but the taste of coffee can be heavily influenced by the different brew methods. Think about how different espresso tasted to a pour-over! In order to inject some order into this quest, the practice of cupping was developed. This is a standardized tasting protocol, designed to encourage a taster to think more analytically and objectively about the taste of coffee.
Cupping scores take this process to a new level and break down the taste into separate groups to analyze and grade. When cupping, you grade a coffee on specifics like Aroma and Fragrance (both dry and wet), flavor, aftertaste, acidity, body and consistency (does all the cups taste the same). By separating these, you might realize that despite having certain characteristics that you don’t like, a coffee can still have very unique and interesting characteristics.
This practice can help us to identify unique and specific flavors and characteristics in a coffee, but it can also be great quality control practice that help coffee professionals identify defects in the coffee. The practice of cupping can be done as a fun practice to taste new coffees, but it can be developed into a skill that you can build a career on. Professional coffee tasters, known as Q-graders, dedicate there careers to tasting coffee, learning about flavors, roast defects and defects in coffee beans.
At the end of the day, we can never completely remove ourselves and our personal tastes from the equation, but this is a great step in the right direction.
If you’re interested in coffee, I’d recommend keeping an eye on your local coffee community, you’ll find cupping events all over the show. If you want to get more involved, check out the Specialty Coffee Associations in depth and detailed guide to cupping protocols. Bear in mind that these protocols are designed for high level coffee professionals and if you’re just a fan of good coffee but don’t have the means to follow this to the tee, take it easy, do what you can and enjoy good coffee.
Now that we know why we do it... lets talk about the how.
What you need:
This section, we'll break down what is essentially the "brewing process" for cupping. Bear in mind that you will be tasting and evaluating the coffee throughout this process.
Grind the coffees at a grind setting that is slightly coarser than a standard pour over. The specialty coffee association uses a ratio of 5.5g for every 100g of water. You can tweak this to your own preferences and to work with your specific equipment and water - but it is important to make sure once you have established your ratio you always use the same ratio. For the purpose of this recipe, I’m going to suggest 11g of coffee to 200g of water.
Weigh out 11g of coffee into each cupping bowl. We recommend doing more than one bowl of each coffee. This is just in case there happens to be a defect in one cup or something goes wrong with the measuring.
Add 200g of water to the cupping bowl - you can use volume markings, but due to how different coffees will expand differently when added to water, weighing your water is the most accurate practice. Water used for cupping should be clean and odour free, but it should not be distilled or softened - the minerals in water play an integral role in the extraction of coffee. Bring your water to just off the boil (around 94°C) and pour the freshly boiled water into the cupping bowls, directly onto the grounds and let it steep for 4 minutes.
After four minutes has passed, you'll notice that a crust of coffee grounds has formed on the surface of the bowl. You want to gently stir the surface of the coffee in order to break that crust and let the coffee grounds settle - this also stops the extraction. There are two schools of thought here, some say you should only agitate the surface of the coffee, allowing the grounds to settle, and others say you should gently stir to the bottom of the cup, making sure to agitate all the coffee - whichever way you chose to do it, it's really important that you always do it the same way. Once everything has settles, use two spoons to remove any foam or ground coffee that remains on the surface.
At this point, your cupping bowl is ready to taste - although it will still be ripping hot and you might want to wait for it to cool down. We'd recommend waiting till at least 8 minutes has passed from when you poured the water.
To begin with, you should familiarise yourself with the SCA cupping sheet. You can download it here. Even if you are not going to use it for tasting, it's good to take a look at and see how the pros do it.
The last step of the cupping is evaluating the coffee. This can be exceptionally tricky as you want to evaluate the coffee as objectively as possible. True objectivity is impossible as we all have preferences and favourites, but I think if we keep this in mind, we can avoid a heavily skewed bias. In order to evaluate coffee objectively, we need to look at what are generally considered positive attributes and those that are generally considered negative. It's important to take note of these, because if there are clear flavours of a certain characteristic that you might not like, but are generally considered positive, you need to mark it so. Below is a ballpark idea (by no means is it exhaustive) of good and bad flavours in coffee.
Positive flavours:
Negative flavours:
When cupping, you need to think about all the elements of the coffee throughout the cupping process. You want to analyze the dry aroma of the freshly ground coffee, the fragrance of the coffee when you add the water, and the fragrance when you break the crust, and lastly the taste. taste is broken up into body, sweetness, acidity and balance. Don't forget to taste your coffee continuously over time - as the coffee cools you will notice the flavour changing. Write things down, take notes and taste with intention!
Cupping coffee is such a great experience, and it awakens a world of flavour that only happens by tasting with intention and focus. You'll find that as you cup coffee more, your lexicon of flavours grows and everything that you taste, from coffee to wines and beers, come alive with flavour!
]]>Let's tackle the basics first: what is cold brew coffee. Cold brew coffee is a method of brewing coffee where you extract coffee without the addition of heat. This process not only slows the process down, but it also has a significant impact on the flavour of your coffee. Cold brew is generally served cold and over ice.
When the warm summer months roll around, their really is nothing better than a refreshingly cold coffee. In recent years, cold brew coffee has sky rocketed in popularity and become a staple coffee for many during the warmer months. This surge in popularity could be because of its accessibly low acidity and delicious creamy body, or it could be just because people are keen for something a little different, but whatever the reason, cold brew is here to stay and we are delighted!
Making cold brew coffee is an incredibly simple process that requires minimal equipment and a little more patience than usual. Here is our cold brew recipe; it's an adjusted version of the cold brew concentrate recipe we use throughout the summer months in our cafes. This is a recipe for a cold brew concentrate, Brew up a batch and enjoy your delectable, home made cold brew coffee. Slainte!
Classic Cold Brew: For a classic cold brew, just dilute your cold brew concentrate with a 1:1 ratio. That is equal parts cold brew and water. This will give you the classic, rich, creamy and delicious cold brew that we all know and love.
Cold Brew Flat White: If you would like something a little more rich and decadent, why not try a cold brew flat white. Mix equal parts cold brew and a milk of your choice (we love it with oat milk at SOMA HQ) and serve over ice.
Cold Brew Tonic: If you are feeling adventurous and looking for something delicious and different, why not try a cold brew tonic. Mix equal parts cold brew and tonic water, serve over ice and garnish with a twist of lemon. Cold brew tonic is one of our absolute favourites at SOMA HQ, and we're sure you will love it too!
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Despite being overlooked so often, the French Press is still a hugely popular coffee maker, and with a little attention to detail, it is more than capable of brewing incredibly delicious coffee! A little known fact is that, because of its similarity to cupping, the French Press is often the prefferred brew method of many coffee roasters and coffee proffesionals.
Here is Alex's French Press method. What the video or follow the step by step instructions below.
In this french press recipe, we're brewing 500g of coffee with a brew ratio of 1:17 (1g of ground coffee to 17g of water or 60g of ground coffee per litre), however this recipe can easily be scaled up to brew for many people, or scaled down to brew one early morning cup. For our 500g brew, we are using 30g of coffee, if you want to adjust this recipe, you just need to adjust the amount of coffee and water accordingly (15g coffee for a 250g brew or 45g coffee for a 750g brew).
Cascara tonic has been one of Soma's most unique and most popular drinks of all time, but we don't want to keep it all to ourselves! Here is a little video on how we brew our Cascara Cordial in the cafe. Step aside cold brew because Cascara tonic is the perfect cold coffee drink for the long and warm summer days.
If you're looking for Cascara, you can get it from our online store, here!
The secret to this delicious drink is all in the cascara concentrate, but luckily for you guys, it's incredibly quick and easy to do in just a few simple steps
Now for the bit we've all been waiting for. How do you turn this into the most delectable and refreshing cold coffee drink known to man? It's quite simple really, just add tonic water. If you really need step by step instructions, you can follow them below.
What more can we say... This truly is one of those beverages that is greater than the sum of its parts.
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