This is the first in a series of blog posts that will attempt to answer one of the most common questions we get asked by our customers:

“What’s the best way to brew your coffee”

First, an introduction:

We own a small-batch coffee-roasting company in the suburbs of Seattle, WA called Valente Family Coffee. This started as a hobby, mostly for our personal consumption but quickly turned into a passionate business endeavour sucking in our entire family.

Our first year as a business, we delivered fresh-roasted coffee to our friends and family around town… sharing what we roasted and the story behind the beans.

Year two, we put up a website, pushed into social media, and started shipping across the US. During that second year, my son, who was 7 at the time, pointed out on a trip to our local Farmer’s Market that we should roast our coffee there. This simple observation set in motion an 8 month sprint to create a mobile coffee roasting rig that would house our coffee roasters.

Our first Farmer’s Market was a huge learning experience... it turns out that it’s hard to sell coffee if you don’t have samples and if you give too many choices, customers can’t decide and walk away empty handed. By the second week, we were fine-tuning our sales process and selling bags of coffee to actual paying customers. In the two years of roasting coffee at our Farmer’s Market we have met tens of thousands of people, listened to their coffee stories, have answered their questions, and done our best to educate them about coffee. Currently 80-90% of our business is through repeat customers, many of whom we consider our extended family.

Overview of this series.

Part 1 we will explore arguably the most important component of making a great cup of coffee. Water.

Part 2 will explore how Grinding your beans can make or break your cup of coffee.

Finally Part 3 will be broken up into the various methods of brewing coffee. Each method will have it's own post and will talk about the tools and tricks for each of the brew methods.

Now, back to the subject at hand… What is the best way to brew (our) coffee?

Part 1: Water

Water has 2 roles in the preparation of your daily cup of coffee.

First, is as the main ingredient of coffee… making up 90% of the actual cup you drink. Secondly, water acts as a solvent to extract the soluble flavor from the ground coffee beans.

Water overview

In an ideal world, the water you use for brewing coffee should have the following qualities: a ph level of 7.1, less than 100 ppm of total dissolved solids (tds), and no noticeable smell or taste of chlorine. Many municipal water companies publish this information but the best way I have found is the good old taste test. If your water tastes bad out of the faucet, it will likely affect the quality of the coffee you brew using it. The quick experiment is to brew two cups side by side using tap water and bottled spring water… if everything else in the brewing process is kept constant, tasting a difference in the cup brewed with your tap water will tell you if there is a problem.

If you live in an area where water is of poorer quality and has a "funky" taste, you can either brew coffee using bottled water, or install a Reverse Osmosis filter which will remove the impurities that cause the flavor to be off-tasting.

Ideal water temperature for brewing.

The ideal temperature range for brewing coffee is 190-205 degrees. Water boils at 212 degrees fahrenheit. Coffee brewed at that temperature will likely be over-extracted and bitter. If your water is not hot enough, the result will be a bland, under-extracted and underdeveloped cup.

If you are doing a pour-over, french press, Aeropress or any other brew method that requires an external source of hot water, you’ll want to use some type of stovetop or electric kettle.

We have tried a number of electric kettles and have found that, while all work the same, having one that you can specify the ending temperature takes much of the guesswork out of the brew process. Otherwise we let the water come to a boil and wait a few minutes for the kettle to cool slightly before pouring water.

We use two electric kettles regularly:

This Bonivita Kettle allows you to adjust the temperature in increments of 1 degree and the gooseneck design offers great control when doing pour overs.

Our everyday kettle (the one our kids are allowed to use), is a big Hamilton Beach one that has two settings On and Off. For this we let the kettle shut off automatically and then cool for a few minutes before pouring.

Most consumer coffee machines have no way to tell (much less control) the temperature of the water it heats. Keurig machines, while convenient, are not able to heat water to the proper temerature. We regularly use 3 that reach the correct temperature (we use the Bonavita and Behmor to brew samples at the Farmer's Market).

We will talk about these in greater detail when we go discuss Brew Methods.

The last thing to keep in mind when brewing a cup of coffee is the amount of time the hot water is in contact with the grounds. As a general rule, 4 minutes is the ideal time you want your coffee grounds to be in contact with your hot water. We use our Alexa to keep track of time but a kitchen timer, cell phone, or even an old-school watch will work.

To summarize. Water is important. Use clean, good tasting water… heat it to between 190-205 degrees, and let the grounds brew for 4 minutes.

Next Up: Grinders and Grinding Beans

Our Coffee Blog

Valente Family Roastology

How We Brew Coffee