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.

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