The Bloom — proper brewing

A life without good coffee is hardly any life at all. Indeed, on many days, our most urgent mission is to brew the finest cup possible, and to reach this higher plane of achievement, we seek out the world’s best varieties and stock our kitchens with the perfect equipment. Yet here’s a secret that’s often overlooked: Without the right grind, even our best and most fervent intentions won’t amount to a hill of beans.  Grinding coffee beans is the key to releasing the essence they contain. It’s the action through which the coffee we seek becomes real and perhaps the...

Last time out, we looked at how to set up a proper coffee cupping, the practice of consciously sampling the coffees we love. Now we’re ready for the fun part: actually tasting some! Coffee has three main components: Aroma, taste, and body. In a cupping session, you’ll explore all three. There are whole guides to the process, but here are the basics: Taste several coffees at once. The more you taste, the more comparisons you can make, and the more comparisons you make, the more apparent the differences between individual coffees become. Since it’s these differences that lead us to...

Thankfully, coffee isn’t what it used to be. Gone are the days of horrific gas station cups filled with overheated mud so lifeless we can be forgiven for thinking it came from a pot brewed during the last World War. In their place are magnificent custom roasts carefully curated and treated like the fine wines they resemble, complete with flavor notes that speak of things like berry and nutmeg, hazelnut and hay. For many coffee drinkers, such language is a bit of a mystery. We drink our coffee, and we love it, but rarely do we pause to tease it...