What's your coffee making style?
What's your coffee making style?
Are you a fan of espresso, cold brew, aeropress? Do you try new beans and roasters regularly, or stay with what you know and love?
I generally prefer filter coffee (with a re-usable filter, no oil sucking paper!) or plunger, but currently have only the plunger because of lack of space. A good syphon can also be supurb. I've also started roasting my own beans - I'm definitely a long way from expert, but am getting pretty solid results and am am slowly improving.
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Do you use the same amount of coffee (by weight?) in the plunger vs espresso? I always felt the plunger needed more, and felt like it was a waste, to get a reasonable tasting/strength plunger coffee.
I guess I've never done any research on how to make a good plunger coffee and never been amazed by the result, so I'm interested in how you make it?!
It’s one of those “it depends” things. You need to play with the quantity, temperature and time depending on the beans you get. If the beans aren’t freshly roasted, you really notice the difference with plunger coffee – it’ll taste flat or stale. In general, the more bitter flavour components take longer to come out. The longer you leave it in the plunger, the more bitter the coffee will be.
I hardly put any milk in my coffee, so I don’t like stuff that’s under-roasted. It needs to be roasted dark enough that it doesn’t taste acidic. (It isn’t an issue if you’re putting more milk in your coffee, because the milk acts as a pH buffer and you won’t get that acidic taste. A flat white or latte is far more tolerant of a light roast.) But if it’s roasted too dark, like a typical French roast, it just ends up tasting bitter.
Thanks for the detailed response! I'll play around with those variables and see how I go, I've probably been using water that's too hot and leaving it for too long!
I don't make espresso, so I can't compare how much coffee it actually uses. Espresso tends to need to be stronger as it is often used in milky drinks. Plunger coffee is often ruined by using water that is too hot, it should cool a little from the boil as the hotter water extracts more of the bitter flavours. Different styles of beans and roasts also work better for the different methods - espresso tends to focus on dark roasts, plunger and similar methods tend to favour lighter roasts and more subtle variations. Some of the difference between them is just what you are used to and looking for - a bit like with wine you can't really compare a rich high-tannin red with a more delicate fruity white. They are both good in different ways.
Thanks for the reply! I'll have to play around with the temp and beans a bit more!