If you’re anything like me, self-distancing has made certain hobbies much more viable.

I’m cooking way harder recipes, I’ve become a dangerously incompetent interior designer, and I’ve lost count at how many nonagrams I’ve completed.

This might be the first time many of you are brewing coffee manually.  If that’s you, that’s awesome.  Making coffee is one of those things that can transport you to a simpler, more focused place.  Though it might be cliché to say, manual brewing is the ultimate in coffee-as-a-ritual experiences, and in these really uncertain times, a little bit of ritual can be exactly what you want. I wanted to share four tips for first-time home baristas:

Use the equipment you’ve got.

If you look up pour-over recipes online, everyone always has every piece: brewer, grinder, scale, fancy kettle… You don’t need everything to make great coffee. Making coffee is the thing that will help you improve the most at making coffee.  If you don’t have a grinder, you can still learn so much with pre-ground coffee before making the upgrade.  If you don’t have a scale, try to get estimates in volume and learn to use your taste buds to make adjustments.  There are some professional baristas that have relied on scales their entire career, but don’t know how to trust their senses.  We’ve written articles about alternatives to the gooseneck kettle and you can check our Instagram highlights to find a tutorial we did where we made a brewing device with a a measuring cup and binder clips.

Begin thinking about coffee as an extraction

Become familiar with the terms “under-extracted” and “over-extraction”. Put simply, under-extracted coffee occurs when your brew happens too quickly, and over-extracted coffee occurs when the opposite happens.  Under-extracted coffee tastes kind of vegetal and sour, while over-extracted tastes bitter.  Think about where your coffee lies on the spectrum when you taste it.  You’re aiming for extracting perfectly at the point of balance!  To learn how to dial-in your coffee correctly, check out our article here.

Pick a recipe, keep that constant, and then change one variable (like your grind setting).

If you’re changing recipes, water temperatures, and your grinder every brew, you can’t tell which of your changes was the right one.  So, find a recipe online and stick to the parameters for a while.  You’ll learn a lot from just changing the grind setting!

Taste a lot of coffee, and taste them side-by-side.

When I was new to coffee, I thought all of the flavor note labels on the bags were bologna—fancy marketing words to sell the bag.  And it’s okay if you’re there too, but you’ll have to take my word for it that they’re real unless you begin to taste coffee side-by-side.  Buying a couple bags at a time will really highlight the differences.

Is there a weird conflict of interest when a coffee roaster recommends you buy more coffee? Maybe :D

Have questions?

If you’re new to brewing and have questions, send us an email at info@boomtowncoffee.com. We’d love to help! Stay safe and drink coffee; much love from the Boomtown Cru.