My significant other doesn’t care nearly as much about coffee as I do, so we always have pre-ground supermarket coffee at home. Tastewise, it’s usually rather dull and bitter because apparently, that‘s what people expect coffee to taste like around here.
I wonder if there is a method/recipe that can compensate for those flaws. The Aeropress is pretty versatile, so going for lower temperatures and/or shorter extraction times comes to me as a natural first step in this investigation. Doing a pour over with this stuff feels like I‘m wasting precious V60 filter papers though tbh 😄
Any further suggestions? I own a V60, an Aeropress, a cheap drip coffee machine and the (in-) famous IKEA french press. My kettle only allows for adjustments in 10°C steps, but features a temperature display, so I can go reasonably precise on that end.
Cheers! ✌️
Cold brew, followed by French press. With cold brew you want a coarse grind but it doesn’t really matter THAT much compared to pour over. You just dillute to taste. I do it in a french press so it’s easily filtered. The french press is also forgiving. I’ve oversteeped by 5 minutes and the coffee is still drinkable. Lately I’ve been mostly drinking supermarket generic Arabica bean brews since I’m on a tight budget but I wouldn’t do cold brew with specialty coffee anyway!
Did the cold brew in a french press, and it was great! After 18 hours of steeping, it was perfect (given the temperatures outside). After that, it went bitter again, but also, the ratio of coffee to liquid had shifted quite a bit as I started to drink the coffee without removing grounds.
Filtration also was great, no sediment whatsoever.
Pour over is probably it. I got my mum, who prefers simple solutions, a steel filter. It’s got little holes in it. Got a v60 as well. It’s done really quickly and is very forgiving with grind size. Most demanding step of the whole process for her was pouring it over in circles.
Still pulls out the percolator sometimes though. Doesn’t like standing over the stove doing nothing. Tastes bitter as all hell but hey, she’s done her coffee that way her entire life.
Others have suggested that pour over would even emphasise the bad taste. Hm, I might conduct a single cup experiment one day none the less.
But yeah, in my family, I also have those people who actually seem to want their coffee taste as bitter as the 8th season of Game of Thrones was. Offering them anything else feels like throwing pearls before swine.
There is a video from Lance Hedrick for the aeropress on making old coffee taste passable. I know you can’t control the grind size, but try it out if you already have the aeropress handy.
Personally I think a cooler temp aeropress is the way to go. Cold brew is a good idea too, but if you are looking for your morning cup of coffee, you might not want cold. You can steal a trick from the beer industry and add some calcium chloride to the coffee. Chloride ions suppress the “harshness” of bitter tastes. Some people add salt to their coffee to get the same effect, but then you get the saltiness in addition to the chloride ions.
Really, I think for the most part, the beans make the biggest difference, so there’s only so much you can do. When I end up drinking mass market coffee, I’ll sometimes just add cream. There’s a reason so many people do.
I second cold brew. I don’t know how you do yours, but Toddy is a cheap system and brews coffee concentrate (~3:1). I do a pound of beans at a time and keep the jar in the fridge. When I drink it, I fill a cup about 1/3 full and pour boiling water from a kettle to fill the cup. One brew lasts about a week.
With the right system, there’s no need to drink cold brew cold; and I agree that as a method, it’s more forgiving of bean quality. It was a good suggestion.
That’s just the sort of gadget I’m very likely to buy, please don’t point me to that kind of stuff! 😄
I might implement a routine though where I always have some cold brew concentrate available in the fridge in case I need coffee and can’t put in the time & effort of a pour over etc, so good suggestion!
It’s, like, $50. When I said “inexpensive,” I wasn’t exaggerating.
In order of importance for good coffee, are:
- the beans themselves, and in particular, the age and type of the roast. If you’re getting French roast (or darker), the coffee will always taste burnt; dark roasts hide many ills, which is why Starbucks mostly uses them. Something like Toddy helps here because once you brew the coffee, the beans stop oxidizing and aging, and you can brew an entire bag at once. Cold brews are often milder and can reduce the bitterness of dark roasts.
- the grind. Again, cold brewing helps minimize the negative effects of an inconsistent grind.
Everything else is preference, or mitigation. Since you can’t change the beans, getting a good grinder isn’t going to help much, and I’d suggest spending the $50 on a Toddy. It’s the cheapest single mitigation with the biggest impact for shitty beans that you can make. It also makes fantastic coffee from good beans and is super convenient.
You don’t seem to be looking for the answer coldbrew, but it’s coldbrew.
Nice, I hadn’t thought of that! I’m eager to give it a try. Got a favourite recipe utilising one of the brewers in my collection?
I have a 1L french press jug that I fill with 80g of coffee, coarse grind (34 on 1zpreszo JX) and top with cold water making sure all the grounds are wet and stirring lightly to make sure they’re all wet. I leave it in the fridge for 12-18 hours and filter through the mesh. I dillute with hot water or just microwave it after dillution if I’m too lazy to boil (blasphemy I know). I sometimes mix it with tonic water or ice and drink chilled.
Make sure to pop it in the fridge. Room temperature extracts the acids somewhat which isn’t to my preference.
That sounds really good. I‘ve got a french press already and at the moment, the nights are so cold here that I just might just let it steep outside over night.
Microwaving isn’t anything I‘d frown upon, apart from my bias at least that I almost exclusively associate that with old, stale and overall horrible taste when it comes to coffee. But I might just try that as well. Thanks for the suggestions!
