Browsing all posts in Coffee help.

Espresso tutorial video from Intelligentsia

Thanks to @marscafe on Twitter, I just stumbled upon this Espresso 101 video from Intelligentsia. This is a basic explanation of the process of making espresso in very simple, understandable terms. Anyone who makes espresso knows that this subject matter is as deep as it is wide, but this is one of the best coffee [...]

Announcing the 417Coffee Google Map

I’ve been working up a 417Coffee Google Map for some time.  I did some updating today, and I decided I should make the link public. This map is an attempt to lay out all of the shops that focus on coffee in the 417 area code in these Missouri Ozarks.  It’s easy for us to [...]

Notes & photos from today’s Coffee Ethic cupping

This morning, The Coffee Ethic in downtown Springfield, Missouri hosted a coffee cupping for a small group of tasters.  Our friend Adie Williams took part in the cupping, which used coffee beans roasted by PT’s Coffee out of Topeka, Kansas, and she’s submitted the following cupping notes and photos from the event.  Thanks to Adie [...]

Single origin Burundi coffee poured over ice

Today I stopped by Hebrews Coffee on Republic Road in Springfield, Missouri to get a single-origin coffee brewed via pourover. Kevin Roy, who runs Hebrews, suggested I try it iced instead of hot. That sounded intriguing. He told me that a couple days ago, he tried the Ethiopia Sidama Ardi from PT’s Coffee iced, using [...]

Make your own drip pourover station

A  method of brewing coffee that is growing in popularity is manual pourover drip.  This method involves pouring hot water from a hot water kettle through a pourover filter cone coffee dripper (such as the Hario V60 Ceramic Coffee Dripper, the Frieling Cilio Porcelain No. 4 Filter Holder dripper, or the Melitta Perfect Brew Filter [...]

In support of hand grinding your coffee

A couple days ago, Oliver Strand of the New York Times Magazine blog offered his support for hand grinding coffee. I strongly agree with Strand’s stance on this matter. Years ago, after buying pre-ground coffee for a while, like most people who delve into the world of grinding whole bean coffee, I started grinding my [...]

Brew Methods: the new brewing how-to collective

James Hoffmann (@JimSeven on Twitter), who was the World Barista Champion in 2007 and the UK Barista Champion in 2006 and 2007, has posted at his blog JimSeven about a new site called Brew Methods that is very promising.  It’s a site collecting all of the videos and tutorials around the Web for each method [...]

Pursue great coffee and don’t settle for less

Daniel at Daniel’s World of Coffee posted a review on the Zoka coffee shop in Kirkland, Washington in the Seattle area.  On first look, I was about to be unimpressed because it’s another coffee shop in the Seattle area that’s making good coffee, but something about this review hit me differently.  What he’s really trying [...]

Sweet Maria’s studies steep time & brew strength for cupping

I always say that making good coffee is just chemistry.  If you don’t believe that, check out this video from Sweet Maria’s.  They’re analyzing the brew strength of light roasts versus dark roasts in cupping and determine that they may need to actually grind light roast differently and also possibly adjust the steep time of [...]

Coffee tutorials and taste tests thanks to the St. Petersburg Times

The St. Petersburg Times had a day of coffee features yesterday, and it ended up producing some pretty informational articles. First was an article about the lingo of coffee tasting. Tasting coffee in a group setting — called cupping — can be somewhat intimidating, but I find that it’s one of my favorite ways to [...]