What's your idea of quality coffee? Is it just picking up a coffee from your busiest coffee shop in town? Or is it buying those little pods and brewing your own coffee?
There is an art to making and serving quality coffee and simplifying the process into an automatic brew cycle or convenient sized pod isn't the same. Call us old-fashioned but some we believe that some things are just best left the way they've been done for years. We will go through the lengthy process that leads to quality coffee. The first and most important part is the coffee beans. Coffee beans lose their flavor and aroma rapidly after roasting and grinding because of the interaction with oxygen in the air. This causes the coffee beans to oxidize and very quickly lose its flavor. It is essential that when you are looking for a quality coffee, that you make sure that your beans are freshly roasted and ground. The second most important thing to be aware of is the batch size of the beans. When your beans are roasted in smaller batches, you are going to get more of the flavor that the beans harness. Coffee beans are roasted in ovens at high temperature. In order to get a consistent and flavorful roast, all of the beans need to be exposed to a similar amount of heat.. Some of the bigger coffee chains are not able to do this because of the volume of their operations. Typically you will find that a corporate brand will not have the same flavor or maybe tastes burnt. This is usually because the coffee beans do not get exposed to the same roasting process as they do in smaller batches. Another thing to consider is, where your coffee beans are coming from. There are four major coffee growing regions in the world. Generally, these are in the equatorial regions of the world namely - Central and South America, Africa and the middle East, and Southeast Asia. Each of these regions produce a coffee with a distinctive flavor. Often coffee from these regions will be blended. My personal favorite lately is Costa Rican coffee which has almost chocolatey flavor to it. I find I really enjoy it with a small amount of milk in the mornings. This following point is why it is hard to brew quality coffee at home. Filtering the coffee requires that the water be at the appropriate temperature. This is between 195° and 205° F. Many homebrew coffee filter machines do not achieve this temperature and that is why your coffee may taste weak and unflavored. There are many different methods to brew quality coffee. At Uptown Bean, we utilize the drip coffee method every day - this is also the most common method. Under this method, hot water is slowly dripped through the coffee grounds releasing the coffee flavor. If the water is not hot enough or if the coffee is ground too coarse, you will not extract enough of the coffee flavor and the coffee will taste watery as a liquid. Other methods of brewing coffee include the French press and pour-overs. Your barista should be able to provide you with a number of these options. French presses and pour-overs are very loved because they really bring out the flavors in the coffee. These methods are also able to be done at home as well, but they will only taste great if you use quality coffee. This is because when you use poor quality coffee, instead of good flavors, you'll be able to pick up on the poorer traits of that coffee. Espresso has become particularly popular with the advent of lattes as a popular drink. Espresso is brewed by pushing hot water under extreme pressure through the grounds. This extracts the maximum amount of flavor and results in a strong flavored drink. Most consumers will then mix this with milk, often steamed so that it is lighter, or with a number of other additives. Of course, the other additives are the following: different flavored syrups, sugar and many others. Steaming milk not only makes it lighter, it also creates a fluffy texture which is a great combination with the strong tannins of espresso or even drip quality coffee. Any good coffee outlet should be able to provide you with a good selection of coffee beans and blends. At Uptown Bean we obtain our coffees freshly roasted every week. We select a number of different beans from different regions every week that we order. We offer drip, pour over, French Press and Espresso coffees. All our specialty coffees are handmade by expert baristas who have been properly trained and are proud of their ability to produce great coffee. Come in and give us a try. You will realize there's more to a cup of coffee than just the brand on the cup. Now, what is your idea of a quality coffee?
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