My significant other doesn’t care nearly as much about coffee as I do, so we always have pre-ground supermarket coffee at home. Tastewise, it’s usually rather dull and bitter because apparently, that‘s what people expect coffee to taste like around here.
I wonder if there is a method/recipe that can compensate for those flaws. The Aeropress is pretty versatile, so going for lower temperatures and/or shorter extraction times comes to me as a natural first step in this investigation. Doing a pour over with this stuff feels like I‘m wasting precious V60 filter papers though tbh 😄
Any further suggestions? I own a V60, an Aeropress, a cheap drip coffee machine and the (in-) famous IKEA french press. My kettle only allows for adjustments in 10°C steps, but features a temperature display, so I can go reasonably precise on that end.
Cheers! ✌️
Pour over is probably it. I got my mum, who prefers simple solutions, a steel filter. It’s got little holes in it. Got a v60 as well. It’s done really quickly and is very forgiving with grind size. Most demanding step of the whole process for her was pouring it over in circles.
Still pulls out the percolator sometimes though. Doesn’t like standing over the stove doing nothing. Tastes bitter as all hell but hey, she’s done her coffee that way her entire life.
Others have suggested that pour over would even emphasise the bad taste. Hm, I might conduct a single cup experiment one day none the less.
But yeah, in my family, I also have those people who actually seem to want their coffee taste as bitter as the 8th season of Game of Thrones was. Offering them anything else feels like throwing pearls before swine.
Cold brew, followed by French press. With cold brew you want a coarse grind but it doesn’t really matter THAT much compared to pour over. You just dillute to taste. I do it in a french press so it’s easily filtered. The french press is also forgiving. I’ve oversteeped by 5 minutes and the coffee is still drinkable. Lately I’ve been mostly drinking supermarket generic Arabica bean brews since I’m on a tight budget but I wouldn’t do cold brew with specialty coffee anyway!
Did the cold brew in a french press, and it was great! After 18 hours of steeping, it was perfect (given the temperatures outside). After that, it went bitter again, but also, the ratio of coffee to liquid had shifted quite a bit as I started to drink the coffee without removing grounds.
Filtration also was great, no sediment whatsoever.
Honestly, your ingredients are going to far surpass any brewing method. I’ve brewed cheap coffee in my Chemex that didn’t taste very good and quality coffee in a hotel in-room Coffee machine that tasted amazing.
Good Beans + Good Water gets you like 70% of the way to good coffee.
Yeah, I‘m aware. That‘s the reason why I’m reluctant to use my good consumables in aimless experiments.
What I‘m looking for really is some way to deal with overly bitter grounds, and I know the basics of extraction. Maybe someone just happens to have gone down that path already and can say something like „Put them in a french press, 50 grams per Liter, water not hotter than 85°C, steep for two minutes max“ or so. 🙂
consider cream and sugar ;-)
I already do oat milk, and try to get away from it for purity and calories 🙈
If I were to provide a suggestion, I would start with fresh grinding your coffee from beans. You can get a pretty cheap manual grinder for like $20-30. I don’t remember the name of mine (it’s generic) but it was like $30 on Amazon and is great when I travel.
Next time you’re in a coffee shop, grab their cheapest blend. Coffee shops, in my experience, have fresher beans than the grocery store, especially if they roast their own coffee.
It doesn’t have to be the $26 organic single origin, just something that’s been roasted more recently than 6 months ago. Maybe you’ll be able to convince your S/O to get some better coffee in the future.
I do grind fresh usually. It’s only that we got this stuff at home already and I hate wasting coffee when it’s going stale just because no one uses up an open bag, even if it’s bad coffee.
As a bonus, knowing how to get anything remotely decent from these raw materials, it would enable me to do so when I don’t have my nice things with me, be it at work, at my friends & family’s homes or on vacation.
There is a video from Lance Hedrick for the aeropress on making old coffee taste passable. I know you can’t control the grind size, but try it out if you already have the aeropress handy.
That went to my watch list immediately, thx!
Personally I think a cooler temp aeropress is the way to go. Cold brew is a good idea too, but if you are looking for your morning cup of coffee, you might not want cold. You can steal a trick from the beer industry and add some calcium chloride to the coffee. Chloride ions suppress the “harshness” of bitter tastes. Some people add salt to their coffee to get the same effect, but then you get the saltiness in addition to the chloride ions.
Really, I think for the most part, the beans make the biggest difference, so there’s only so much you can do. When I end up drinking mass market coffee, I’ll sometimes just add cream. There’s a reason so many people do.
Our water always came across to me as acceptable, but I wanted to measure the aspects most important to coffee non the less anyway. I’ll keep your suggestion in mind, thanks!
I second cold brew. I don’t know how you do yours, but Toddy is a cheap system and brews coffee concentrate (~3:1). I do a pound of beans at a time and keep the jar in the fridge. When I drink it, I fill a cup about 1/3 full and pour boiling water from a kettle to fill the cup. One brew lasts about a week.
With the right system, there’s no need to drink cold brew cold; and I agree that as a method, it’s more forgiving of bean quality. It was a good suggestion.
That’s just the sort of gadget I’m very likely to buy, please don’t point me to that kind of stuff! 😄
I might implement a routine though where I always have some cold brew concentrate available in the fridge in case I need coffee and can’t put in the time & effort of a pour over etc, so good suggestion!
It’s, like, $50. When I said “inexpensive,” I wasn’t exaggerating.
In order of importance for good coffee, are:
- the beans themselves, and in particular, the age and type of the roast. If you’re getting French roast (or darker), the coffee will always taste burnt; dark roasts hide many ills, which is why Starbucks mostly uses them. Something like Toddy helps here because once you brew the coffee, the beans stop oxidizing and aging, and you can brew an entire bag at once. Cold brews are often milder and can reduce the bitterness of dark roasts.
- the grind. Again, cold brewing helps minimize the negative effects of an inconsistent grind.
Everything else is preference, or mitigation. Since you can’t change the beans, getting a good grinder isn’t going to help much, and I’d suggest spending the $50 on a Toddy. It’s the cheapest single mitigation with the biggest impact for shitty beans that you can make. It also makes fantastic coffee from good beans and is super convenient.
I’m less concerned about the money than the shelf space in my small-ish kitchen and that I have to justify another purchase to my SO, especially since “we have good coffee already!”. 😄
I’ll look into the Toddy non the less. “Thanks” for another round of GAS! 🙈
Of the listed options, the french press is the most forgiving imo. I imagine its the total immersion style and very coarse grind.
In my scenario, I don‘t have control over the grind size as I’m trying to work with pre-ground beans. But even though I might give that a try.
Check my other comment. I grind using an old timey grinder. Not sure what condition the grinding parts are in as I don’t know how they should look new. So your pre-ground should be fine. Probably with a but shorter steep (2-4 minutes?). You biggest issue may be oxidation of your coffee.
You do know you can fake a french press by just putting water and beans in a container, let it steep and once done pour through a fine sieve.
I read your other comment and even replied to it IIRC, thanks for tuning in on the other discussion as well!
Doing some sort of immersion sounds reasonable when I can’t do cold brew. I also like the idea of implementing some advanced self filtering with a kitchen sieve, where I could easily just sieve the coffee again through the same grounds and probably catch most of the sediment that way.
I went french press because it is so forgiving. Put ground beans in container, pour over water and let it sit. You can of course go fancier, measure things here and there. But you’ll get very far with very simple techniques, or no technique.
Speaking of grind fineness it’s also very forgiving there as well. The finer the grind the shorter steep time is needed. I saw a video some time ago about this (there were a well spoken snob whose name I’ve forgotten, will find later) and the conclusion was that pretty much any grind will make good coffee.
Edit: I use one of these old timey grinders and I love it. Fair bit of grind variance being a perk. https://dygtyjqp7pi0m.cloudfront.net/i/25278/22826331_1.jpg
Fair bit of grind variance being a perk
I don‘t mean to put you off a wonderful vintage grinder, but isn‘t grind variance considered bad? If with that you mean, using the a more technical terminology, heterogeneous particle size distribution. Because that would result in both over- and underextraction happening in your brew at the same time.
Again, if everything works fine for you, don’t let me try fix a problem you don’t have.
You are probably 100% right that a more heterogeneous grind would make a better brew. And tighten steep times. While I try for something around 5-7 minutes it isn’t uncommon for it to be 2-20 minutes. It has still been good coffee, way better than any drip. Frech press is ridiculously robust.
At some point I should borrow a great grinder and test out a bunch of grind/steep time combinations to see what I prefer. And compare it to my normal brew. Perhaps there is a light for me to see.
I believe we misunderstood each other here. I was under the impression that a homogeneous particle size distribution was desirable, as this allows for the most even extraction, where a heterogeneous distribution would mean that the finer particles are extracted too much (hence make for unwanted bitterness), while the bigger pieces are extracted too little (so that sour notes creep into the coffee). Am I getting this wrong?
Sorry for derailing btw 😄
You don’t seem to be looking for the answer coldbrew, but it’s coldbrew.
Nice, I hadn’t thought of that! I’m eager to give it a try. Got a favourite recipe utilising one of the brewers in my collection?
I have a 1L french press jug that I fill with 80g of coffee, coarse grind (34 on 1zpreszo JX) and top with cold water making sure all the grounds are wet and stirring lightly to make sure they’re all wet. I leave it in the fridge for 12-18 hours and filter through the mesh. I dillute with hot water or just microwave it after dillution if I’m too lazy to boil (blasphemy I know). I sometimes mix it with tonic water or ice and drink chilled.
Make sure to pop it in the fridge. Room temperature extracts the acids somewhat which isn’t to my preference.
That sounds really good. I‘ve got a french press already and at the moment, the nights are so cold here that I just might just let it steep outside over night.
Microwaving isn’t anything I‘d frown upon, apart from my bias at least that I almost exclusively associate that with old, stale and overall horrible taste when it comes to coffee. But I might just try that as well. Thanks for the suggestions!
French press as stated and aeropress will give you the most consistency across grind sizes. But a burr grinder is the most important piece of equipment for coffee. I was sceptical uuntil i got one. Surely the difference isn’t that big? Boy was I wrong.
Consider a hand grinder, even something cheap like a Harrio annoying as it is to use, it is passable at like 20 bucks. It was my first grinder, it did the job, but adjusting the settings is limited and annoying and it took forever to grind a cup, I quickly bought a Mignon Chrono.
If this isn’t an option, then maybe consider buying preground in smaller batches from a local place? The place I order my beans from offers to send them ground in a couple of generic preset sizes.
But the problem is not only the quality of supermarket coffee, and the preset grind size, it is also that ground beans will oxidise much more quickly and even when vacuum sealed, the moment you open the bag it will start to deteriorate and quickly. I would possibly even consider a blade grinder over buying pre-ground coffee, especially supermarket coffee.
I do own a hand grinder and make nice pour overs and such most of the time. Thing is that the rest of my family hasn’t found the same joy in coffee as I have (yet), so they continue to buy the awful stuf. For many reasons, I’d like to make the best of that sort of raw material.
