Coffee Nuts go gaga over the Niche Zero grinder. With virtually zero retention and infinite grind settings, this grinder it the ultimate tool to dial in a precision grind.
These gorgeous borosilicate glass tubes safely store a single serving of coffee beans per tube. A one way valve allows for proper degassing of those premium coffee beans so they don't sit in open bags and grow stale.
Humbly named, the Decent espresso machine brings data to espresso; setting the stage to revolutionize the way we drink and talk about coffee. This machine provides incredible value compared to anything else on the market.
This manual espresso maker will help your aspiring barista learn the true art of pulling a shot of espresso. A pressure gauge will help keep the 9 bars of pressure required to pull the perfect espresso shot.
I started experimenting with brewing in a large pot and filtering using a strainer and cheesecloth. I eventually discovered that a small investment in the Toddy cold brew system paid tremendous dividends. If filters out the grounds perfectly, leaving you with a sediment-free, crisp, smooth cup of coffee.
You may also use any other method of filtering the beans from the coffee. I have used all of the following with decent results in the past:
Here's my recipe:
5 cups filtered water at room temperature
8 oz course ground coffeeAdd the coffee beans to an appropriately sized pot (one that can hold 5 cups of water). Pour the filtered water into the pot. Stir to make sure all of the beans are wet. Cover loosely to allow for some of the CO2 to escape as the coffee brews. Wait 12 hours and filter.
You'll have made a coffee concentrate that you can dilute with ice, water, milk, or any other way you'd like!
Try "the natural" beans for cold brew, they make a delightful, slightly fruity cold brew that stands on its own or can be paired with a hint of milk and simple syrup.
]]>When it comes to coffee gear, there are three really good places to get the right gear: espressoparts.com, Seattle Coffee Gear and Prima Coffee. We've partnered with Prima Coffee as our referral partner. Here are some of our favorite products to get you started:
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Don't let a lack of equipment prevent you from enjoying a pour-over coffee. A few years ago, I poked a hole into the side of a paper cup and poured hot water into it to simulate a gooseneck kettle! Here are some other tips for when you don't have the right equipment:
15 grams of properly ground coffee for a pour over is about 2 tablespoons. Try using that, along with 8.5oz of water (a little more than a cup).
Buy a grinder.
Okay, okay, we get it. You're not quite committed to this just yet. And you don't want another appliance in the kitchen. And it's loud. And your significant other will kill you.
Before we say "sure, buy the pre-ground coffee," we must explain why a fresh grind is important. Coffee starts to "de-gas" after it is roasted. Degassing is the process by which carbon dioxide is released from the beans. Simply put, it's the process through which coffee grows stale.
When you grind beans, you increase the surface area of the beans, causing them to degas significantly faster than when they are whole. Thus, it is almost impossible to have a "great" coffee that is pre-ground. It's possible to have a perfectly okay coffee that is pre-ground. If that is indeed the direction you are going to go, we recommend that you buy your beans from a local shop and ask them to grind them for you at the time of purchase. Okay, stepping down from the soap box now.
Use a regular kettle, use a tea kettle, use anything that will allow you to pour hot water in a consistent way. Sure, gooseneck kettles look cool, but at the end of the day, the goal is to pour hot water onto coffee. Period.
Now, with those obstacles removed, let's get brewing!
The ritual of a pour over coffee is an intoxicating experience. An experience that engages all of the senses, it's the perfect way to enjoy a great cup of coffee. Here's a guide to brewing a pour over on the Hario V60.
Although the recipe is simple, it's the technique and refinement of the variables involved that produce a great cup. Let's jump in!
The recipe is simply beans & water. For every cup of water, you'll want to use about 15 grams of beans. To be more precise, for every 250g of water, you'll want to use 15g of beans. If you decided to make two cups, you'd double the beans and double the water (30g beans and 500g water).
Congratulations, you have brewed a pour over! As you drink the coffee, you'll notice that the taste evolves as the coffee cools. You may notice that the coffee is too bitter or a little sour. Bitter coffee is the result of over-extraction. Sour coffee is the result of under-extraction. Although there are many variables that can impact extraction, the one you should start with is grind size.
If your coffee is bitter, this means that your grind was too fine. A grind that's too fine will prevent water from passing through it as easily as a coarse grind. This means that water will be in contact with the coffee longer, which will lead to over-extraction.
If your coffee is sour, this means that your grind was too coarse. A grind that's too course will allow water to flow through too fast, yielding a coffee that's under-extracted.
If you don't have all of the equipment required to brew a pour over, have a look at our tips to hacking it!
The economics of specialty coffee cafes in metropolitan areas are becoming unsustainable. In this post, we'll work through the costs of serving a quality cup of coffee to provide transparency into coffee pricing, and then show you how much less you can spend on coffee by brewing at home.
There are a few large cost areas for cafe owners:
I'll apply some basic math here to get to an average price per cup to arrive at a break even point.
Retail rents in New York vary greatly based on size of space and location. When I was looking for a shop, I managed to find several spaces that averaged around $4,000/month for 300-400 square feet of space. That's tiny, I know. But it was what I could reasonably afford.
Even a small shop requires at least two people per shift: one person behind the espresso machine and another behind the register. If your shop is open from 7am-5pm, you'll need to cover 20 hours per day in salaries. At $15/hour, that's $300/day. Extend that to a month, and that's $9,000 in salaries for just two staff. Realistically, you'll need at least one more person, or a manager, so let's bump that figure up to $13,500/month. Let's assume a payroll burden of 25% (taxes, insurance, benefits, etc.). That takes our monthly staffing costs up to $16,875.
If you are a shop that is buying roasted specialty coffee wholesale, you're paying anywhere from $10 to $15 per pound of coffee. One pound of coffee will produce approximately 18 cups (12oz cups) of coffee. This sets our cost per cup of coffee between $.55 and $.88. If we add milk, and the cost of paper cups, that's an additional $.10 total. To make things simple, let's say the average cost of a cup of coffee is $1.
Fixed Costs | |
Rent | $4,000 |
Staffing | $16,875 |
Taxes & Utilities | $2,000 |
Monthly Cost | $22,875 |
Daily Cost ($22,875 / 30.42 days) | $751 |
If a shop sells a cup of coffee for $3, it is contributing $2 towards covering the daily fixed cost of $751. This means that a shop would need to sell 375 cups of coffee a day to break even. If the price of a cups goes up to $4, we're looking at a more reasonable 250 cups of coffee a day to break even. All of the above is excluding other costs such as corporate income tax, marketing, initial capital investment or debt, etc.
As the cost of doing business continues to rise, the price of a cup of coffee becomes more expensive for the consumer. This is why it's not uncommon to see prices in the $4-$6 range at specialty coffee shops. Let's keep playing with the math to see what a consumer that is having 2 cups of coffee a day spends in a week by buying coffee at a specialty coffee shop:
Cup of Coffee | $4 |
Sales Tax 8.8875% (NYC) | $.36 |
Tip | $1 |
Total | $5.36 |
2 Cups/Day | $10.72 |
5 Days/Week | $53.60 |
I believe that consumers will move away from spending $50+ a week in cafes to brewing more coffee at home. The reality is, you can make better coffee at home, for significantly less than what you pay at a cafe. All you need are a few basic tools and about 5 minutes every morning. Let's see how much you could save by brewing at home:
250g bag specialty coffee* | $20 |
25g / cup of coffee | $2 |
2 cups/day | $4 |
5 days/week | $20 |
Money saved/week | $33.60 |
Money saved/year | $1747.20 |
You're probably thinking: "yeah, but I'd have to buy all kinds of equipment", and you wouldn't be wrong, but the initial investment into brewing great coffee at home isn't as high as you would think. The basics you need are a quality grinder ($75), a proper setup for the kind of brewing method you prefer (pourover - $10, french press - $20-$100, etc.), and a scale ($25).
And, of course, you need specialty coffee!
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