What is so special about a bean?

If this is your first time getting outside the world of drip coffee, or even something outside of the standard office keurig. Then the seemingly most simple part of coffee is about to get a lot more complicated. Most folks outside of the espresso world don’t do much more than go to the local grocery store and either grab some beans out of a large bin, or just grab something preground out of convenience. I am going to tell you right now, this is the bottom of the barrel and probably the worst beans you can find. That begs the question, what is good coffee? The answer to that question is fairly complicated, and gets to a point where it is very subjective. That said, good beans will improve both “regular coffee” and espresso. 

To keep things simple for now, we can say that you typically want to get whole beans and grind them yourself. Grinding beans accelerates the staling process, so you want to do this as close to the actual brew as possible. We can also say that you want to get the freshest beans possible. That to say, you want your beans roasted no more than about a week from when you intend to consume them. These two pieces of information are going to make a world of difference in brewing espresso, and very likely will be the best “bang for the buck” in terms of upping your espresso game. Everything from this point out that would be related to beans would either be more subjective in nature, for example light vs dark roast. Or would get very expensive rather quickly, for example upgrading your grinder.

We will go over a few pieces of basic information about some terms you might hear about beans just to get you started, but for the time being suffice it to say, fresh coffee you grind yourself is going to be “good” coffee, and if the beans don’t have a “roast date” stay away.

Roast Level: What is means and why it matters

Roast level is typically one of three things. Dark, medium or light. Generally speaking coffee on the darker side of the spectrum will be less bright and more bitter, while lighter roasts will be more bright, and less bitter. This will show up in drip coffee assuming you have a trained pallet. However, it will be exaggerated in espresso. Bitter will become dry, and bright will quickly become sour.

What exactly is roast level? Exactly what you would think! Coffee beans are actually the pit of a cherry like fruit, before we can consume it, we have to cook it, or roast it. The longer we roast the bean, the darker it will get. This is what is meant by roast level.

In addition to sour and bitter, there also used to be a notion that the lighter the roast the more caffeinated the bean, however the more we learn, the less we believe this. The train of thought was that caffeine was burned off in the roasting process, but as it turns out, caffeine is rather stable in the temperatures used in roasting. Caffeine generally varies more with extraction than it does roast. To touch lightly on this, dark and light roasts will vary in terms of extraction. As an example, dark roasts are less dense, which means you will need to grind more coarse to get the same extraction. If you ran these same settings with a lighter roast, you would have under extracted espresso, and therefore a higher caffeine ratio. All that to say, if you have an objectively good dark roast espresso vs an objectively good light roast, the caffeine content will be similar.

Altitude and Location: What it means and why it matters.

Altitude and location for growing coffee could be a whole research paper itself. In fact, extensive research has been done on this and we will get into some of that in the theory section. However for now, we will give the highlights. Location of coffee has three important aspects as far as coffee growth is concerned, those being climate, soil, and altitude. Climate is important because coffee plants like warm wet weather, typically plus or minus 30 degrees from the equator as far as location goes. Soil is important because coffee plants typically require the nutrient rich profile you would find in volcanic soil. The most interesting and perhaps important aspect is coffee growth however is the altitude. The higher up the coffee plant, the slower it will grow, as such, it will focus more on reproduction. This will lead to a sweeter coffee cherry, and therefore a more complex flavor profile in the bean. Generally speaking, the higher the altitude the better. Mix these three things up, and you end up with very few places coffee can grow. 

Grind: Now or later? And why are grinders so important?

The short answer is you want to grind your beans yourself and you want to do so as close to brew time as possible. First and foremost, grinding your coffee accelerates the staling process. Staling of coffee is largely due to oxidation, moisture and C02 depletion. We will go over all of this in depth in the theory section, but the long and short is that coffee has various oils in them. These oils are what makes the coffee taste good, and the C02 in the beans is what allows you to emulsify the flavors into the water used in brewing with it. So as time goes on, not only do you lose the oils, you lose the ability to transfer them into the water.

Lastly, beans vary drastically in roast, and by extension density. With this you may need to grind some beans more fine vs others more coarse to get an ideal extraction. A solid adjustable grinder is going to be your best tool while dialing in espresso.