Finding The Perfect Coffee

This is another blog post by my guest blogger, who has now dubbed himself the 'Coffee Guru'. As a trained Starbucks barista and coffee master he's the best person to give you the best tips and tricks for quality coffee at home.

Finally, after all these blog posts, we get to whole bean coffee. 

So what is whole bean coffee? What does that term mean? 

It's simple really; whole bean coffee is coffee beans that have been roasted and bagged up for the consumer. They do need grinding before use; you can't just throw the coffee beans into a cup of hot water and call it a day. Nope, they have to be ground. 

So, let's say you've looked around and found a bag of whole bean coffee in the supermarket that your curious to try. It needs to be ground, and in my next post I'll talk about grinders and if you should invest in one. For now, let's say you've just brought this bag of coffee and your curious to try it. Next question you've got to ask is, how are you going to brew it? What's your brewing method?

Are you using a pour-over, a French press or an espresso? Depending on how you want to brew your coffee will determine how you should grind the coffee. 

If you're using a French press use medium to medium-fine ground coffee. If your using a pour-over, a medium grind will do. A medium grind will look and resemble the same shape and size as granulated sugar. Another name for medium grind would be coarse. A fine grind will look like powder. 

That's enough about the grind. Now why should you use whole bean instead of instant? Well, instant coffee lacks a lot of the flavour characteristics as whole bean and although its quicker than brewing fresh coffee it tastes remarkably poor in comparison. I would highly suggest you put aside the instant coffee and invest your time into something you'll enjoy. 

If you like instant go with instant but from my own experience once you try fresh coffee is unlikely you'll go back to the Kenco jar. 

Once whole bean coffee is ground please keep the back closed shut, oxygen is your enemy. When coffee is exposed to the air for a prolonged period, it will go stale and taste repugnant. So please keep the bag closed and squeeze out any air. It will keep for two weeks once ground. If you want to keep it for longer, I do have a handy tip for you, but I'm not exactly endorsing it. You can keep the ground coffee in the freezer, and it'll stop it from going stale at the cost of some flavour.

If your willing to make that exchange because you don't drink coffee that often and it'll go stale I suggest it but keep in mind you don't want to take the entire bag out of the freezer as the coffee will be exposed to moisture and that will have the same effect as leaving the coffee to go stale. 

Use a notebook to note down your experience. I'll talk later in another post about how to do a coffee tasting and how to pair it with food that will complement the coffee. 

Well, that's it, for now, guys, keep exploring.