How I Brew Coffee

Regardless of how you brew your coffee at home, the most important thing is to be consistent and tweak your preferred method based on what you discover from the coffee. There’s so many variables with coffee that providing a specific recipe for each coffee is a bit of a fool's errand but having a general “stock” approach is useful.

Keys to getting good coffee at home:

• To start, regardless of brew method you need a quality grinder. I use a Fellow Ode gen 1 with SSP burr grinders. Grinding right before brewing ensures you get the best flavor out of the coffee.
• Use a scale to weigh the water and coffee regardless of brew method. This will allow consistent measurement of coffee and water weight.
• Good water. Generally speaking, you don’t want to use water straight out of your tap. Using filtered water (e.g. Brita or from a refrigerator) is my default approach. The next step up would be to start with distilled water and use a mineral additive similar to Third Wave Water. 

At home I brew using a V60, Chemex, or Aeropress. 95% of the time I use the V60, which is more out of habit but also a good benchmark for me to evaluate or compare different coffees. 

Recommended equipment:

• Quality burr grinder
• Kettle with temperature control
• Scale
• Good water source

The following is my stock approach to a V60, using a 1:16 ratio of coffee to water (for lighter coffee try 1:17, for bolder go with a 1:15 - see what you prefer).

This recipe yields about two cups of coffee and it calls for 32g of coffee and 500g of water heated to 205F.

Step 1: Weigh out 32g of coffee and grind to medium/fine.

Step 2: Heat 500g of water to 205F (run some hot water through the filter before coffee to get the paper flavor out)

Step 3: (Bloom) Pour about 50-60g of water and let sit for 30 seconds (ensure all grounds are wet - I do a little stir using a plastic spoon)

Step 4: (Pour) after 30 seconds, pour water to 200g, allow drawdown, then pour another 200g. Wait, then add the remaining water up to 500g.

Target a time of about 3:30 to draw the water down. This is not a hard and fast rule as certain coffees can go longer (or shorter) but this is generally what I aim for.