I like cof­fee. You know that by now. I’m also very com­mit­ted to the idea that you can have cof­fee that’s bet­ter qual­ity than the cof­fee served by 90% of cafes at home (with­out being crazilly obses­sive and buy­ing a com­mer­cial machine — but don’t tell my wife).

There are two essen­tial ingre­di­ents to good cof­fee that make even the most rudi­men­tary brew­ing meth­ods pro­duce a pass­able cup of cof­fee. Freshly roasted beans, freshly ground. That’s it. If you have those ingre­di­ents you can pro­duce a great cup of cof­fee just by mix­ing the cof­fee with (almost) boil­ing water.

The freshly ground part requires a grinder. Most cof­feesnobs will argue that you should spend more on your grinder than your machine. The grind is the most impor­tant vari­able when pro­duc­ing dif­fer­ent types of cof­fee in dif­fer­ent ways. Most cof­fee snobs say the only way to go is for a con­i­cal burr grinder — but I think given a lit­tle devel­op­ment of tech­nique (ie fig­ur­ing out how long to push the but­ton for) even a spin­ning blade grinder will pro­duce a bet­ter cof­fee than a lot of cafes if you have the right beans.

Lets face it, dud beans=dud cof­fee. It doesn’t mat­ter what other vari­ables you throw into the mix . Give a World Barista Cham­pion a box of Lavazza beans from the super­mar­ket and they’ll still turn out cof­fee that tastes stale and muddy.

Get­ting the beans right means get­ting the beans at the right time. Ide­ally 2–14 days post roast. The sweet spot tim­ing wise depends on the type of bean and how roasted they are. The darker the bean the stronger the flavour and the thicker the “body” of the cof­fee — and the lighter the bean the more com­plex and tasty the bean is (and the less bitter).

There are two ways to ensure you’re hit­ting that tim­ing sweet spot — one is to find a roaster who labels their cof­fee by roast date — the other is to roast your own. Buy­ing roasted cof­fee is expen­sive — Cof­fee Domin­ion in Townsville roasts won­der­ful cof­fee — but charges $8 for 250gm — or around $30 if you buy a kilo in bulk. That’s a lot of cof­fee to get through in two weeks.

Buy­ing green beans is much cheaper — Min­istry Grounds — the online co-op I buy beans through sells green beans rang­ing from $6 through to $12 per kilo — you’ve got to throw postage costs into the mix — but it’s much, much cheaper. Neil Atwood, who runs the store and the asso­ci­ated blog, is a cof­fee snob and a church min­is­ter. He’s very approach­able and help­ful. The cus­tomer ser­vice is great — and all the green beans come with a “serv­ing sug­ges­tion” roast­ing notes to help you get the best from dif­fer­ent bean varieties.

Roast­ing at home is easy. There’s a plethora of infor­ma­tion around the web. I got most of my tips from coffeesnobs.com.au (who inci­dently also sell green beans once a month through a first come first served “bean­bay”) and my roast­ing set up cost me about $40 thanks to ebay and some astute garage sail­ing. I use a heat gun/breadmaker combo as do many peo­ple from the cof­feesnobs forum — but roast­ing sim­ply requires heat and agi­ta­tion — you can roast beans in a pop­corn popper.

Home roast­ing is cheap, easy, and has that do-it-yourself ele­ment that adds a whole lot of self-satisfaction to every cup. And it tastes bet­ter too.

If home roast­ing sounds like too much has­sle you could always ask your friendly neigh­bour­hood home roaster and they might do it for you… it’s well worth it.

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

Read Nathan's 3814 articles.