Brew Better Coffee At Home

Here are a few quick tips to make better coffee at home, no matter your brew method or situation:

1: Bloom It
Do you bloom your coffee? You really should. Any brew method that I have ever used has benefited from a bloom.  From espresso to pour over, blooming is essential to creating the sweetest experience in the cup.

What is a bloom? A bloom is adding hot water and then waiting a period of time before resuming. This allows the brew to be ready to extract!

We have had great success with blooms as long as 3 to 4 minutes. Even 60 seconds will make your coffee taste noticeably sweeter.

2. Hotter Water
Another common mistake is people using water that is too cold. Great coffee loves very hot water. We recommend water at least 205f for pour overs and at least 200f for espresso. Some brew methods benefit from water that’s 212f. Now that’s hot!

3. Less coffee
Most people are using too much coffee to make their morning brew. Try using less coffee! This will save you money over the long run and also lead to far more expressive and nuanced flavors in the cup.  That leads us nicely into the following tip:

4. Weigh Everything
Get a scale! You might already have a food scale. If you are making a paper filtered coffee, try using a “brew ratio” of 1g coffee to 18g water. That means if you want to brew a 360g cup of coffee, you will need 20g of freshly ground coffee. Give it a try and see if that doesn’t taste better.  For espresso, try a 1:2 or even a 1:2.5 ratio and see if that doesn’t sweeten up your cup.

5. More Brew Time
This could also be written another way- GRIND FINER! The most common mistake across all brew methods is grinding so course that the brew is over too fast.  Finer grinds can help extent contact time to around 4 minutes and that can turn your cup into a much sweeter experience.

That’s All!
We think anyone using these tips is almost always going to be brewing a sweeter and more nuanced cup.  Give it a try and see if it makes a difference for your coffee quality.

Brew with confidence!

The Farmers Union Coffee Roasters Team

Oh yeah, if you wanted to catch a quick video version with these tips, we've got that too.