Better Coffee at Home

Better Coffee at Home

The 3 foundations of good coffee are quality coffee, water, and grinder. If you’re missing one of these elements, the coffee will suffer no matter what else you do to it. Many brew methods can work well but none of them will save a coffee lacking these three key pillars.


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01. Good Coffee

This may seem obvious but many people don’t even consider the actual coffee beans they’re purchasing and instead just concentrate on roast level or a country of origin they like. These aren’t wrong by any means but these things don’t indicate anything about the quality of the actual green coffee that is roasted. It is a minor miracle to have an excellent cup of coffee. Here are all the steps needed to produce stunning coffee:

  • Proper elevation
  • Quality coffee varieties (which are usually lower yielding)
  • Lots of hard work cultivating, pruning, fertilizing, etc.
  • Discerning picking standards for only ripe coffee cherries
  • Quality processing methods that yield clean coffee
  • Constant turning of coffee as it dries to ensure even drying
  • Proper storage and transport of coffee to the United States
  • Proper storage and consumption before undesirable aging occurs
  • Extensive knowledge and standards for roasting
  • Consuming the coffee before it gets too old
  • Using good water and equipment to brew
  • Knowledge of brewing basics to ensure good extraction of the coffee

When you know all the steps that have to go right in order to achieve desirable coffee flavors, it almost seems ridiculous to use anything other than high quality coffee if you are looking for a cup to savor.

It doesn’t have to be from us (although that will guarantee quality), but it’s imperative to find a roaster that sources good coffee and knows how to roast well.

02. Best Water Possible

Is your water letting you down? Possibly one of the worst culprits for bad coffee is bad water.

A cup of coffee is 98% water. On top of this, different water compositions actually differ in how they EXTRACT the coffee and make drastic differences in how sweet, clean, and vibrant a coffee will taste.

Most professionals (including us) use reverse-osmosis plus remineralization to achieve the best results. The reverse-osmosis strips everything away from the water (good and bad) and then the right minerals in the right amounts are added back in to produce ideal water for coffee brewing. It’s hard to overstate how much of a difference good water makes.

There is also plenty of misinformation on coffee water out there as well which makes this issue especially tough to change. Pure reverse-osmosis water or distilled water is NOT good for coffee flavor. It will yield an empty, lifeless cup. You need certain minerals to extract coffee compounds and also for something for those compounds to attach onto. Good spring or mineral water tastes good to us because it has some of these minerals. Any water that brings the TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) close to 0 will NOT work well for coffee.

Using a carbon filter pitcher or system is good but it’s not perfect and it is highly dependent on your municipal water source. Some areas have good water for coffee to start and others can be downright offensive. In any case, a carbon filter won’t hurt but it may not give you the best results.

Buying quality mineral water is a good option but it’s not a guarantee and it can also be expensive. If you can get it relatively cheaply, this can be a great option.

There are some other excellent options for the home brewers who want the best water. Check them out below:

Sufficient: Carbon Filter Pitcher
Good: Quality Mineral Water
Better: Third Wave Water/Global Customized AB Formula

03. Dialed-In Grinder

In deciding the difference between good and great coffee, a dialed-in grinder is probably tied with good water in terms of importance.

The grind level and quality of the grind have a huge impact on how long the brewing lasts and how each coffee particle is extracted along the way. If you have relatively uniform particles that aren’t too big and aren’t too small, the water will penetrate them evenly throughout the brew and flow through the grounds at an even rate to give you clean and balanced results.

If the particle sizes are very uneven, too fine, or too coarse, you will get a very unbalanced cup that will brew too fast or too slow and make for either sour or overly bitter coffee (or both!).

SHOP COFFEE