3 important factors that can affect the flavour of your coffee brew
Get the best coffee taste from your brews
If you’re a passionate coffee lover like me, you’ll find brewing fresh coffee from your favourite brand (either bought freshly grounded from the local cafe or you grind them yourself) is an great and fun experience, but it always comes with that challenging task of ensuring the flavour is not affected. This is largely determined by what brewing method you use, and other factors. But that begs the question, what factors can influence your brewing and how can you get the best tasting coffee from your chosen beans?
There are 3 main factors or elements that can influence coffee flavor. This includes the beans and roast, extraction and strength. You should choose your coffee based on the region of origin and roast. The extraction method is important because it shows there are different ways through which water is pulled in the coffee grounds. As for strength, you can boost the strength by using a different combination of grounds and water in the coffeemakers.
Understanding your favourite roast
You usually have 3 different types of coffee roast. There’s a light roast where the caffeine is high, the body (feeling you get in your mouth) is light, acidity is high, and the beans are dry. Then you have the medium roast, where the caffeine acidity and body are medium, the beans are drier here as well. In the case of dark roast, you have a large amount of caffeine, a heavy body, low acidity and oily beans. So as you can imagine, the flavor will differ in each situation.
Brewing tools and the grind
The grind can be different too. For example, you have extra fine grinds like fine sugar, fine like table salt, medium like coarse and coarse like kosher salt. The coffeemakers you use can also bring in a very specific result in here as well. However, do keep in mind that a finer grind doesn’t deliver a stronger coffee. An expresso has extra fine grinds, the fine grind is suitable for the pour over options, drip brewers uses medium grinds, and the French press is ok with coarse grinds. Be sure you have a great coffee grinder in your machine.
Yes – water DOES matter
Yes, if you want the best tasting coffee, you will want to be careful with the water you use. Normally, you should use 3.75 oz grounds and 64 oz of fresh water. You can scale up based on that. If you don’t have a scale, you can start with around 1-2 tablespoons per cup. This also using high quality water in the cleaning your coffee machine.
Here is a great video I found by Dr. Brew that explains to you better the importance of water quality in your brews:
Avoid boiling water when you brew
One thing to keep in mind is that you should never use boiling hot water in your brews. The taste won’t be good at all, and the chemical reactions resulting from that will just bring a lot of trouble. It’s important to note that the brew water’s quality is overlooked most of the time. And that’s what mostly leads to bad coffee in general.
Experiment with your coffee brews
In the end, it’s important to note that everything from the coffee brewing process to what brewing water you use or what coffeemaker you opted for can change the coffee flavor. Use this set of guidelines to your advantage and experiment as much as you can.
At the end of day, you just can’t find the best coffee flavor that suits your tastes unless you experiment and try out new flavors all the time. Not only is that amazing journey doing this, but it does bring in front some tremendous benefits!
Here is a great infographic I’ve found on Pinterest that explains all the major factors and considerations that affects the overall flavour of coffee:
