Category: A Fábrica

Five Common mistakes when preparing coffee

Posted on | by Katia Pascoal

Preparing a good coffee is not very difficult, but it is not as simple as it seems. This happens because neglecting some details is normal and can compromise the quality of the drink, altering the flavor, body, and aroma.

To extract the best from your coffee, you need to pay attention to some factors before and during preparation.

Here we highlight some common mistakes that can help you prepare your coffee in the best way.

 

  • First of all, you have to choose the correct grind, for the correct method: 

The most common reason why your coffee may taste too bitter or too sour is the wrong grind size of the coffee beans. Each drink preparation method requires a different grind.

Finer grinds are recommended for espresso or Moka Pot methods, and coarser grinds are recommended for french press, cold brew, etc. Always check which grind is most suitable for the method you are preparing your coffee.

  • Second, you can´t use any type of water in your coffee, why is that?

It is common to think that this makes no difference and we end up filling the teapot with tap water, which tends to be the most practical and economical option.

However, this attitude is not correct, as the water may contain impurities that affect the quality of the beverage. Therefore, the idea is to use mineral or filtered water to prepare your coffee, which will have a positive impact on the flavor.

 

  • The third is very important too, choose the right ratio of grammage and water

The ratio between the amount of coffee and water used during the brewing process could be the problem. If you don’t use enough coffee or use too much water, your cup will taste sour. And if you exaggerate the amount of ground coffee, you will be drinking bitter coffee.

Investing in a coffee scale can also eliminate failed attempts. Weighing the number of beans and water you are using, whether for an espresso or a Pour-over preparation, will help you perfect the flavor.

  • Fourth, sorry but you cannot use boiled water

Brewing coffee with very hot water destroys the coffee’s delicate flavors and volatile oils, resulting in bitterness and stripping away its acidity. The ideal temperature to prepare coffee is just below the boiling point, around 90 degrees.

There is a good trick for taking measurements without a thermometer. To reach the ideal temperature, let the water start to boil, turn off the heat and wait 45 seconds or you can buy a kettle with built-in temperature control.

 

  • The last and most common mistake of all: don’t put sugar in your coffee

Mixing sugar directly into water or coffee is a very common but wrong habit, both for your health and for enjoying your coffee. Also is good to remember that many coffees or blends are already naturally sweetened. In addition, sugar nullifies the true taste of the drink and should therefore be avoided. Our valuable tip is to test, and drink your specialty coffee without sugar, at least the first sip, and evaluate this consideration yourself. Remember that taste is personal.

So, take into account these valuable tips to prepare the best coffee possible, and remember that having fresh coffee is paramount when preparing your coffee. If you need tools to help you at any stage, it’s worth checking out our online store, any doubt doesn’t hesitate to contact us.

 

The Basics: Understand the Terms on your Coffee Bag

Posted on | by fabrica

Understanding Coffee Bags

For those just entering into this beautiful world of specialty coffee, finding the right coffee for your personal preference might not be that simple in the beginning, but the process is soo worth it!

To help us in our coffee quest, we are going to break down the following key points you will commonly find on a bag of beans:

  1. Origin (Name of the farmer, farm, producer, village, region, etc)
  2. Altitude
  3. Variety of the Tree
  4. Processing Method
  5. Roasting level and date
  6. Score
  7. Sensory note

Origin

Origin is the story of all that makes up the unique journey of a coffee from the farm to the cup. The more traceable, the better.

You will likely find 1) coffees of a ‘single origin’ and 2) ‘blends’, or coffees that are blended together.
You may also find micro-lots or nano-lots, which are special single-origin coffees: rare, refined and delicious.

It may be easier to initially select your coffee by its’ country of origin: usually, African coffees are the fruitiest, brightest and juiciest. Central and South American coffees are usually heavier, with bolder bodies and flavors of chocolate and caramel.

Buying single-origin coffees allow us to taste the unique characteristics of each bean, terroir, processing, etc. Buying blends can also be interesting, as a rich, full-bodied coffee may be blended with a fruity juicy coffee for a balanced mouthfeel and interesting sensory experience.

Here at Fábrica, we prefer to showcase the individual characteristics of our beans, so mostly sell in single-origin.

Altitude

The ‘Altitude’ of a coffee plantation is measured in Meters Above Sea Level (MASL)

Usually, the higher altitude a coffee, (1000 MASL plus) the higher the density, the higher the quality and complexity, but this is not always true. There is a lot of climate factors that affect the flavor and overall quality of a coffee.

The coffee publication ‘Perfect Daily Grind’ gave a lovely example where a coffee grown on the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, with only 200 MASL, with a colder and specific climate, provides a complex, tasty and sweet coffee.

Variety of Tree

Coffee begins its life as a fruit on a tree. And like many fruits, has different species and varieties.
The most commercialized species are Arabica and Canephora (Robusta)

Species: Specialty coffees tend to always be Arabica; known for its’ wide scope of potential flavors, delicate aromas and pleasant notes on the palate. They are more difficult to farm, as they require specific climates and conditions for their growth and are susceptible to diseases and pests. Robusta is popular in the commodities sector. The flavor is more intense and bitter, and contains almost double the caffeine content of Arabica.

Varieties: The genus Coffea has around 100 varieties, a handful of which are commercially relevant. Some common varieties are; Bourbon, Catuaí, Gesha, Various Heirloom varieties, Caturra, Scott Laboratories: SL34 and SL28.

They each have their own individual characteristics.

Processing Type

How the coffee fruit is processed down to its seed form (known as a coffee ‘bean’) has a huge impact on the flavor. There are three main processing methods;
1. Washed, 2. Semi-washed (Honey) and 3. Natural,
but we are beginning to see some very interesting developments in the processing of coffee such as various phases of controlled fermentation.

  1. Washed: This usually results in a cleaner tasting coffee.
  2. Semi-Washed (Honey): A combination of the natural and washed methods. The fruit is pulped and dried with the mucilage still attached. Results in a fuller coffee than its washed counterpart.
  3. Natural: Can result in fruitier flavors with enhanced round sweetness. Is harder for the farmer to control the drying process.

Roast Grade and Date

It is common for a roastery to sell one or more roast types. Usually a darker one for espresso and a lighter one for filter.
When buying beans, try and buy the freshest you possibly can. (Don’t trust a coffee that has only the expiration date on it, as coffee won’t expire for a long time, but can taste flat after a month or two from the roast date) For best results, BEGIN using them around a week after their roast date and try to FINISH them between one to two months after their roast date.

Grading

For a coffee to be certified as “specialty” it needs to be tasted and evaluated (as 80 out of 100 or higher) through a specific method (known as cupping) by various qualified professionals (known as Q-graders).

Here are some points a coffee will be graded on:

  1. Aroma
  2. Uniformity
  3. Absence of defects
  4. Sweetness
  5. Flavor
  6. Acidity
  7. Body
  8. Finish
  9. Overall harmony
  10. Final concept

According to the SCA (Specialty Coffee Association), “the quality attributes of coffee cover a wide range of concepts, ranging from physical characteristics, such as origins, varieties, color and size, and even environmental and social concerns, such as the production systems and the working conditions of the coffee workforce”

Sensory Notes

All of the descriptive flavor notes we see on the coffee bags are naturally occurring, and the product of the coffee bean’s journey from the farm to the cup. The coffees are described by professional coffee tasters at the various phases of testing, and lastly with us here at the roastery.

Hopefully this has helped you to better understand specialty coffee bag labels. For any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact us!

 

The Basics: Grind Your Coffee Right

Posted on | by fabrica

What Is Grinding Your Coffee?

 

If you are new to the world of home-brewing or are beginning to explore the wonderful world of coffee, you will most likely be arriving at the topic of GRIND.

To break it down; grinding coffee is to crush a whole coffee bean into many tiny, (ideally) even-sized, particles.

If you tried making a cup of coffee with whole beans, the water wouldn’t have enough surface area to extract all the desirable flavors; it would taste weak and watery. The finer we grind, the more surface area of the coffee we are exposing to the water, and the faster the flavor will be extracted.

One thing to note is that not all of the potential flavor we can extract from the beans tastes good. It is possible to extract too little (known as under-extraction); resulting in a weak, sour, salty, astringent and unbalanced cup. It is also possible to extract too much (known as over-extraction); resulting in a bitter, ashy, unbalanced and empty tasting brew.

Knowing how to grind our beans properly is crucial for fine-tuning our extraction to get a balanced, delicious cup of coffee.
The adjustments we make can be described in relation to other particle sizes: coarse sand, fine sand, table salt, icing sugar. These may be usefully imagined as Macro-adjustments.
Tiny adjustments (imagine as micro-adjustments) to our grind setting can have huge results on the brew time and therefore flavor: in espresso, this is especially true; where 1/100th of a millimeter adjustment can alter the extraction.

The best way to understand this is to purchase your own grinder and experiment. Get close to the desired particle size for your particular brewer first, and then fine-tune to find your ideal brew.

Important:

Grinding is one of the most important factors as to whether a brewed cup of coffee will taste good or bad. Here is what we must know:

  1. Every type of coffee is different and therefore must be ground slightly differently.
  2. As a bag of coffee degasses (see our blog on storage and coffee-bean care here) we must also slightly adjust our grind size for the best results.
  3. Coffee is a natural product and is easy to stale. After grinding, the staling process occurs much faster.

To summarise; It is important that we know how to adjust our grind settings to control our extraction (and therefore FLAVOR), and we must grind just before brewing (ideally 15 mins before, max) for the best results.

 

The Roast Date?

We recommend brewing with your fresh beans after about a week from their roast date to allow them to rest. Apart from this initial resting phase, try using your beans as soon as possible, and ideally no later than 5 weeks after roasting.

 

 

Which Grinder Should I buy?

There are many different grinders on the market, but we can simplify what to look for by discussing the main types.

  • Blade grinders

This type of grinder uses blades that spin, resulting in some big particles that won’t extract enough and many fines that will add a bitter flavor to the cup. Our resulting brew will probably not be super balanced or delicious.

  • Burr-grinders

Burr grinders utilize two cutting surfaces facing each other that have a small space allowing the coffee to pass only when it has been ground to a certain size.

The resulting grind is much more evenly distributed and will extract far better. You can find both manual and electric burr grinders on the market, both of which have a range of prices and quality. For espresso, find a grinder that is designed for espresso use.

Grinding your coffee fresh at home or work will dramatically improve your overall flavor and control of your brewing process, see you on the journey, and thank you for being here with us!

The Basics: Storing Your Coffee

Posted on | by fabrica

STORING YOUR COFFEE

Brewing yummy coffee is made much easier when using freshly roasted (and rested) coffee.

It is also very important that your coffee beans have been stored correctly.
In order to understand how to store coffee correctly, let’s first quickly look at what happens to coffee during and after the roasting process.

ROASTING

Roasting is a process that transforms dense, relatively stable green coffee beans into the brittle, volatile, aromatic and flavorful brown-bean we love so much.

During the roasting process, chemical reactions involved in the browning of our beans create carbon dioxide, and straight after roasting, a process called de-gassing begins. Carbon-dioxide is released quite quickly within the first few days after roasting, and slower after. Hot water makes coffee release Carbon Dioxide instantly, which is why you will see bubbles in the ‘blooming’ phase of brewing sometimes.

In the beginning of a roasted coffee’s life, the high amount of gas present in the beans can make it difficult to brew well-extracted coffee, this is especially true in espresso where we have such a small amount of time to extract all the desirable flavors.
We recommend letting coffee rest for about a week after roasting before using it on your espresso machine, and at least 4-5 days before using it in pour-overs or other slower brewing methods, after which it will generally taste better.

For best results, we also recommend using your high-quality beans when fresh, within four weeks of roasting.

 

STORAGE

If we don’t store our coffee correctly, then this four-week period of deliciousness will be greatly reduced.
Coffee is a product that easily can become stale.
Staling occurs when coffee is exposed to environmental factors such as air, moisture, heat and light.
We want to store our whole-beans of coffee in an airtight container in a cool, dry, place; away from direct sunlight and moisture.

Take good care of your coffee, and you will have the best results in return. Happy brewing!