Coffee Care and More

Knowing how to take care of your coffee is very critical. Fresh roasted coffee is very delicate and fragile. There is no point in purchasing fresh roasted gourmet coffee, if it is miss handled. Fresh roasted coffee beans will keep its full flavor for about three weeks if stored properly.

Storing Your Coffee

Roasted coffee is perishable and it must be properly stored away from light, humidity and Heat. It must be stored in an airtight container, in a cool and dry place. Your kitchen cabinet should do the job. We recommend buying coffee on a biweekly basis, and only grind what you plan to consume in one or two days. Whole bean coffee can generally stay fresh for up to four weeks when properly stored. Ground coffee stays fresh for just a few days, and it only takes a few hours to completely lose all flavors when left exposed to air and light. Avoid refrigerating coffee, as cold coffee beans immediately attract humidity from the environment when taken out of the refrigerator. Freezing coffee is even worse. Natural oils in the bean denature as moisture in the bean freeze. This changes the flavor of your coffee dramatically.

Grinding Your Coffee

Too fine a grind easily over extracts bitterness from the coffee, while too coarse a grind results in an under extracted, and weak brew. Also, it’s important to grind coffee evenly to assure uniform extraction during the brewing process.

There are two types of home grinders, blade-style and burr (mill-style). Blade-style grinders work like blenders, where the blades rotate at high speeds around a chamber containing the beans. Beans are broken down until particles are small or fine enough to be used. Grind for about 7-10 seconds for paper filter and 15-20 seconds for espresso. Blade style grinders generate heat as the blades beat and break beans around the chamber, resulting in the possible burning of natural oils. Also, blade grinders grind coffee unevenly, which could results in uneven extraction during the brew due to different size coffee particles.

Burr grinders on the other hand work by crushing the bean to a particular size by passing the beans between two rotating cylindrical crushers (burr). The coffee goes through the burrs once, yielding uniform coffee particles. Not much heat is generated by breakage of the beans, conserving the integrity of all natural oils in your coffee. All commercial coffee grinders such as the one found in our stores are burr style.

Brewing The Write Right Cup

Start with cold filtered water or bottled water. Heat water to boil and let it sit for about a minute before you pour it over the coffee grounds. Load 2-3 tbs ground coffee per cup into filter, and pour hot water evenly over the grounds. Water should drip down the coffee filter in about 4 minutes to avoid over extraction. Over extraction of your coffee results in a bitter brew. Under extraction can also occurs if water completely drips down the cone in less than 2 minutes. This occurs when your coffee is ground too coarse.

The Roasting Process

The coffee roasting is a time-temperature dependent process, where green coffee goes through physical and chemical changes induced by heat. Roasting coffee is not much different than conventional cooking, where the right amount of heat must be applied over the right amount of time. Most micro roasters use a drum-style roaster, a roaster that has hardly changed in the past 50 years.

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