Grind Your Way to Glory: Top Tips for Killer Coffee

The secret to brewing the most incredible cup of fresh roasted coffee really isn’t a secret at all. In fact, it’s right there in the name – fresh coffee is all about freshness.

When you pick up a bag of fresh roasted coffee beans from a specialist supplier, there’s a good chance they will have been roasted and packaged to order. As a result, you’ll be looking at a bag of the freshest coffee beans money can buy, with which you can make perhaps the best ground coffee there is.

That being, the fresh ground coffee you grind yourself.

Realistically, therefore, brewing fresh roasted coffee at home that’s as good as any coffee shop isn’t particularly difficult. Nevertheless, there are several common mistakes made by the enthusiastic yet uninitiated. Most of which centre grinding and storage.

The thing is, if you’re paying good money for fresh roasted coffee beans to make fresh ground coffee at home, you may as well make sure you do it right. The good news being that armed with a few helpful tips and guidelines, you’ll be well on your way to barista-quality results in no time.

For the most part, here’s all you need to know to grind your way to glory with your next batch of fresh roasted coffee beans:

1. Tempting as it may be for the sake of convenience, grinding fresh coffee beans in advance is the ultimate sin. The only way to create fresh ground coffee at home is to grind fresh coffee beans, as and when you need them. Use only the beans you need right now and save the rest for later.
2. Getting to grips with coarseness can seem tricky, but is actually surprisingly easy when you’ve covered the basics. For example, brewing using a coffee filter pot means grinding your fresh coffee beans somewhat aggressively. You want the grounds to be particularly fine, in order to produce the best possible results.
3. At the opposite end of the scale, brewing using a French Press means keeping the grounds considerably courser. Just be sure to get out of the habit of creating ‘one size fits all’ grounds…as there’s really no such thing!
4. As a rule of thumb, the courser the resulting grounds, the longer you’ll need to leave them to do their thing. If brewing a batch of fresh coffee using a French Press, you’ll need to give it a fair amount of time for the grounds to infuse the water.
5. Don’t make the assumption that the latest electronic grinders on the market are always the way to go. In reality, a manual grinder will have far more control over the resulting coarseness of the grounds. It can also be uniquely therapeutic to grind fresh roasted coffee beans by hand.
6. Last but not least, if you’ve been told you can substitute a grinder for a clean cloth and a rolling pin, you can. However, this pretty much guarantees quite horrendously inconsistent grounds, therefore should only be turned to as a last resort.

And there you have it – all you need to know to master the art of making your own fresh ground coffee at home!

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* Nespresso ® is a registered trademark of Société des Produits Nestlé S.A., unrelated to Hayman ®.