With wide variety of brewing tools & recipe, roasting types, green bean origins & its processes; specialty coffee might look daunting on a first glance. However, if you are a beginner wanting to start your adventure in this wonderful world of coffee, all you need to have is a grinder, a scale & a timer. Here are the reasons why:
Why Grinder?
Regardless of your preference of the tasting notes, almost all people I consult put aroma & fragrance on their top list. Bad news is, grounded coffee do a terrible job in withholding these important elements intact. Because they have much bigger surface area, most of aroma & fragrance that you are looking for have already dissipated by the time you start your brew. Resulting in a sup-par cup of coffee.
On the other hand, the whole-beans have much less surface area that interact with the air. Thus, they do a much better job in retaining the much important pleasant aroma that was creating by the roasting processes. So, there you go, the solution! Buy a whole-beans coffee, and grinded just when you are about to brew your coffee. Believe me, you will immediately feel the difference.
P.S: If you are confused on what kind of grinder do you want to buy for a start, click the link here.
Why Scale & Timer?
Brewing quality is one of the three important factors in a good cup. Regardless of what brew method you have/prefer, scale and timer is the essential tool to improve your brew as a beginner .These two devices serve similar purposes: control and consistency. They allow you to (1) recreate brewing recipes from your friends or the internet, (2) create your own brew recipe that you like, and, most importantly, (3) consistently brew the same coffee goodness everyday.
As for recommendation, we recommend anything digital for a beginner scale for the ease of use. You can even use your digital kitchen scale along with the timer in your cell-phone. If you don’t have any digital scale to begin with, we recommend you to buy a digital scale with a build-in timer in it (P.S: you can easily find it online. It’s cheap too!)
Conclusion.
There you have it! A grinder, a scale, and a timer; Three most essential tools in making your coffee better overnight, and first initial step of your journey into specialty coffee. These procedure takes more work compared to buying the grinded coffee, but those extra work will bring your experience to the whole new level. The next part of our series, we will go over what brewing tools should we buy first. Stay Tuned!
