AEROPRESS BREWING

Is commercial coffee always bad?

Goshhh! I so much want to talk about this topic, but the content comes hard. Not because I don’t know what I want to say, but because it is very complex. It's worth a book. Let’s make this article as short as possible and highlight a few things to pay attention to.

Above all, when choosing coffee, you need to be honest with yourself and your taste buds. Don’t choose your coffee beans based on a price mark. Try different kinds and then look for the one who will give you the best mood every day. There is no point to drink the most special smoky whiskey and tilt your face at each sip. You need to choose the one you can really enjoy. Same for coffee.

Later, when you are ready, dive deeper. Start to analyze. Ask the “why” questions. One thing is for sure, the coffee industry is highly grown in the last few years. Yes, it comes with some shadow sides, but not everything is so dark as seems in the first place. Commercial – there is nothing bad with the word by itself, it just says you are popular, hehe. But nothing is so simple, huh? When you start to produce your product in a huge quantity, mostly (but not always) you lose some quality and start to jump over the tiny details. That’s why you, as a consumer, should pay more attention to the real facts on the package, so you can be safer about quality.

How to choose the good coffee in the store?

• I recommend to invest in a grinder, so you can always choose whole beans in a shop. Why does that matter? When you look at the roasted whole coffee beans you can evaluate them – how clean they are, how similar they are, how evenly roasted they are, are they damaged, are they oily from the outside or they shine just as little to show they cannot wait for you to grind them? And freshly ground coffee always offers a richer bucket of aroma and taste.

• 100% Arabica. Does it really guarantee the quality? Not exactly. For example, your education goes step by step, starting from kindergarten to one or more university diplomas, Master’s Degree, or even Doctorate and then the different level of job experiences. If you will live and use only your kindergarten knowledge, will you succeed to grow the quality of your life? Probably not. For improvement you need to combine your knowledge, so you can live better every new day. 100% Arabica can be in very low quality to high quality (there are many more levels than you can imagine) – good quality coffee mostly will be in whole beans.

• A fairy tale on the package. It may sound good and even expand your imagination of how you will enjoy the coffee after going home. But is that what defines quality? Look for much detailed information – not only the big country where coffee comes from but the name of the plantation, the height at which coffee trees grow, how coffee beans are processed, and similar information that adds value to the coffee and doesn't play with your emotions.

I hope these very few points will help you to be more selective and more interested in what is actually in the pack you are ready to buy. For many of us drinking coffee is a daily ritual! Don’t hesitate to be a bit pickier to choose the coffee beans good for your taste buds and health.

Specialty coffee? Wait! What?

It is not so easy to define specialty coffee, because it consists of so many stages of the whole chain and quality is the main goal at each of them. But in the end, you need to get 80+ points for your coffee, so it can step in the specialty range. As Specialty Coffee Association says: “This is not the work of only one person in the lifecycle of a coffee bean; specialty can only occur when all of those involved in the coffee value chain work in harmony and maintain a keen focus on standards and excellence from start to finish. This is no easy accomplishment, and yet because of these dedicated professionals, there are numerous specialty coffees available right now, across the globe, and likely right around the corner from you.”

For me, specialty coffee was the reason why I started to drink coffee at all. I was the person who resisted the coffee because of its bitter taste. And only after I sipped some specialty filter brew I realized that coffee can actually taste fruity, light, and more tea-like. I started to search out why it is so and I realized that there is a big world behind this simple word “coffee”.  Those who already know me will approve that I don’t like routines, I always need to seek for more. I can get excited fast and also lost interest in something easily, but once I found a thing I truly love, no one can stop me from exploring it more. 

The specialty coffee and coffee world, in general, is like a never-ending story. I couldn’t be happier to work in the coffee industry for almost 4-years now. I am glad and proud to grow my professional experience at the Baltics best coffee company “King Coffee Service”, but still I am constantly learning a lot about coffee, coffee equipment, and full coffee concept solutions. And that is the true beauty in coffee, that I never get bored!