What’s wrong with Buzzfeed’s 5 Ways You’re Drinking Your Coffee Wrong video advice
I saw a video clip purporting to fix coffee problems online this morning. I have a few thoughts about it. Of course, the problems depicted are genuine, well most of them. But are their fixes good, effective ones? Here’s my feedback.
1. You Pour Out Leftover Coffee – Freeze Your Old Coffee in an Ice Tray – The concept of freezing coffee to make ice cubes is genuine, and I’ve been recommending it myself for years. When it’s old, however, it’s no longer a good idea. If the coffee is more than a few minutes old, and it’s been either on a warming plate, or in a thermal carafe, don’t do it. If it’s been in an unheated open vessel, and it’s been allowed to cool naturally, great – do it. As far as adding milk and instant latte powder to it later, um, I wouldn’t. But, that’s just me.
2. You power through bitter coffee – Instead they recommend adding a pinch of salt to deaden your taste buds. This is akin to taking off your glasses when you rent a bad video. Why watch it, as I’d say why drink coffee if it doesn’t taste good. The fix for bad coffee is to learn to make it better. As far as the salt solution, wine merchants have known this for years, which is why they feature cheese at tastings. I lost a lot of respect for Alton Brown, who recommended this. Even his nerdy looks couldn’t save him in my mind after this cooking expert recommended a way to deaden your taste buds while tasting.
3. You drown your coffee in sugary flavoring – Instead grind in some natural flavor. Cinnamon, orange rind. I fail to see a philosophical distinction to this fix – what was the problem again? Hmm. Oh, if you want to add flavorings as a culinary experiment, there’s nothing wrong with ito of course. But tossing anything, but coffee, into a coffee grinder taints it forever. That’s a high price to pay, for you and everyone else. So, just so you know there’s no going back after this, truly.
4. You add cold milk to coffee – Then they show a 30 second shake/microwave. Good one, actually. Kudos, although part of the reason people add cream/milk at all to coffee is to lower its temperature to increase taste, to go from scalding the taste buds to being its most savory drinking temperature. Otherwise, rather good.
5. You drink old coffee – Use two old foam cups to track when coffee was made. Ok. Not sure why two are needed. They also show a Mister Coffee machine I tested that’s coffee was what I’d label as “out of service” when it was fresh made, but that’s another article.
I think one or two of these might be helpful. Here’s my list:
1. Learn to brew better coffee. Is your coffee fresh? The water good? The coffee maker clean?
2. Learn the brewing parameters: 196°-205°F water. Contact time between 4-6 minutes.
3. Toss our remaining coffee after 30 minutes. If you are doing this too often, replace the brewer with one that makes what you consume within 30 minutes.
4. Buy coffee that tastes like the flavor you wish to drink. Buy it from a place that samples. You’ll be surprised that many of the world’s coffees have different flavors due to their geography, climate and agricultural care and feeding. How they are roasted makes a huge difference.
5. Choose a brewer that makes coffee the way you like it. A Hario manual drip and a French press are both good methods, but differ vastly in their output in your cup. Even a casual drinker would easily tell the difference.
Instead of fixing bad coffee, I propose making and drinking only good coffee. It’s not that hard.
SCAA Brewing Standards: We’re Committed
I realize this article will be read mostly by coffee enthusiasts already so involved in brewing that they likely have their own views regarding brewing, and its three most important variables: time, temperature and grind particle size. But, lately there’s been dissention over what for many years appeared to be consensus among the trade. As brewing as an art and craft (hence my book’s title) has developed, there are those who question the basics.
Questioning the basics is, I think, a good thing. Anyone who’s been in family counseling knows it’s a healthy thing to revisit how you divide labor. When it comes to processes, it’s a good thing to reconsider the variables. My observation is that coffee brewing is still being analyzed. Don’t forget that as roasts, types of beans, brewing methods and consumer tastes change, it’s a good idea to do a few experiments. If they confirm the basic parameters, so be it. But, they may not, and why keep doing something wrong?
Historically, much coffee was boiled. I can think of all kinds of reasons for this: pre-chlorination food safety, ease – the bubbles tell you the water’s ready, and thrift – the cheapest way to maximize extraction strength is to use the highest temperature.
The Coffee Development Group, or was it the Pan-American Coffee Council – some predecessor to the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), did extensive testing, using food experts, not just coffee folks, which resulted in the standards that have been in place for many years.
They include:
• Grind size specifications, basically finer for short extraction times, coarser for longer ones. The current challenge with enthusiasts likely to grind at home, is how to confirm this. It used to be written right on a coffee can.
• Brewing Temperature – It’s easy to tell consumers: “Under Boiling”. Everyone seems to get that now. The last percolator I came in contact was in my late Aunt’s estate sale. BTW, 195°-205°F just tightened to 196°-205°. The extra degree may or may not matter to you, but according to my little birds, the US and European specialty coffee groups wanted to share the same standards for a variety of reasons.
• Contact time – In my observation, this is the one most difficult to control, partly because it’s so difficult to measure, especially in intermittent drip methods. Ever tried?
Recently, I’ve run into a number of enthusiasts, baristas, brewer designers, who complain like music composition students do about tonal scales. Recently, I was sitting in the office of one of the most influential big-coffee business owners, who many would say personifies the word establishment and he told me he believes 200°F is too high a brewing temperature. I’m sympathetic. After all, what kind of thinker would I be if I didn’t like to challenge rules? “Question Authority” – That’s my bumper sticker!
But, I’m here to re-commit CoffeeCompanion to following the rules, at least for now. We need some kind of reference point, or a dialogue is useless. The fact is that a great number of culinary experts were consulted in creating the standards. These folks had taste buds. This wasn’t a casual industry lock down for convenience.
I will always challenge the established rules. I will also follow the standards and use them for my tests. I may expand my tests in certain instances but I will always strive to identify those instances.
Meanwhile, I urge those of you who are doing your own home experiments, playing with brewing parameters to customize your methods to your individual tastes, a worthy pursuit even within the parameters, to start off following the standards. If you decide your Chemex or Aeropress tastes milder, better straight (minus cream or sweetener) when brewed at 180°F, no one is going to take the children from your home.
But, as my music theory teacher said to us in college, “Learn the rules so they can be broken by design, not ignorance.”
We are living in a golden age of brewing. There are all kinds of new brewers, the re-discovery of old ones. The profession of barista confirms that the industry gets that how its coffee is created in a coffee establishment makes a difference. Remember: Wine tastings don’t need bartenders, but coffee tastings need baristas.
CoffeeCon, my ‘lil ol’ coffee show is great fun, but I have an agenda as plain as Karl Marx at a school board meeting. I want consumers to discover coffee as a culinary art and invest the same passion they do into cooking into brewing their coffee. Anyone can do a coffee tasting. We are a coffee university.
So, just FYI, I will keep taking any coffeemaker’s temperature, use a stopwatch to check how long it subjects your (ever-increasing-in-cost) ground coffee to hot water, and play with grind and include those results in my reports.
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