If you’re like me, you’re always looking for a  better cup of coffee… whether that’s using fresher coffee beans, trying a new method of brewing coffee or buying a new grinder. If you’ve purchased a new grinder, you may have noticed that it ground up the coffee really well at first and the resulting cup tasted amazing… but after months or years passed, the coffee didn’t seem to come out the same and the brew didn’t taste as fresh as it once did.

This is normal and is a byproduct of grinding coffee beans, as residual oils from coffee beans (especially dark roasts which typically cause the greatest amount of oil on the coffee beans) get trapped inside the grinder along with coffee grounds from prior grinds.

Ground coffee goes stale within 30 minutes of grinding and coffee oils go stale (rancid, really) very quickly. Anything left in your grinder will degrade the next batch of coffee you put through the grinder as old, rancid oils and stale ground coffee mix with newly ground coffee which ultimately get put back into the cup you brew. This cycle repeats itself and snowballs until the grinder is either cleaned properly or breaks down due to the stale ground coffee and coffee oils causing problems, such as slowing the machine down, meanwhile the cup you brew gets continually worst.

How should you clean your coffee grinder?
A really great way to clean out your grinder is to use uncooked, white rice. If you use a blade grinder (and we highly recommend upgrading to a burr grinder!), fill it with white rice up to the blades. If you use a burr grinder, put about 2-3 teaspoons worth of white rice and set the burr grinder to a fine grind (espresso) setting and start grinding.

After you’ve finished grinding, you’ll notice immediately that large clumps of previously ground coffee are now clinging to the powdered, ground white rice and after dumping the grounds out, you should see spots you could never clean before coffee-ground free. The inside of the grinder should also be a lot cleaner than before as most of the old, rancid coffee oils also attached themselves to the white rice (they’re attracted to the starch in the rice – that’s why this technique works so well).

Repeat this process until the ground rice no longer has any black particles in it. The first run will get most of the bigger coffee particles out. Subsequent runs will further clean the grinder. After the rice you run through the grinder no longer picks up any coffee residue and is just as white coming out as it was going in, run a small batch of coffee through the grinder… but use some cheap or not-so-fresh coffee you don’t mind getting rid of. The point here is to get rid of any remaining rice particles left in the grinder with this final run of low quality coffee so new batches come out tasting great.

Hope this helps you make a better brew. Please leave your comments below and share this post with someone who enjoys good coffee. Ken

My favorite way of making coffee has long been using a french press. I really enjoy the body of the coffee that comes from the french press as well as the flavors that result from the suspended coffee particles being saturated and mixing with the hot water. Coffee tastes so much better this way to me, rather than using a drip-brew coffee maker, where water simply gets dumped on top of ground coffee and brewed by gravity… not to mention, all of the precious coffee oils containing most of the flavor gets trapped in the paper filter.

When I first heard about the Aerobie AeroPress a few years ago, I was a little skeptical. Not only did it use a paper filter, but it also looked like something out of a hospital! Still, I kept reading the great reviews and decided I had to try it.

By the way, if you think the Aerobie brand rings a bell, you’re right – they’re the same makers of the Aerobie Pro Ring (the frisbee that looked more like a thin, small bike tire we used to throw around in the 80’s… then spend the rest of the afternoon trying to find, it just flew so far!).

I won’t go into all of the specific details on the basic instructions for how to use it (the video I’ve added at the bottom of this post gives a pretty good demonstration, and you can also view the product’s instructions here). Instead, I’ll give a very high-level overview of how to use the AeroPress, the pros and cons as well as some advanced techniques.

The Basics
The AeroPress is basically used like a giant syringe, where coffee, mixed with hot water for a few seconds, gets squeezed out into a mug in the form of an espresso shot. The basic process is to first place a paper filter into the cap which then screws onto the end of the cylinder. Then, the AeroPress should be placed so that it sits on top of a coffee cup or mug so that it’s resting completely on it. Scoop in freshly-ground, fresh roasted coffee (use a fine grind). Immediately pour in hot (but not boiling) water, mix for 10 seconds, place the plunger on top and push down for 20 seconds. That’s it. This makes a serving of espresso but you can always add more hot water for an Americano or build an espresso-based drink.

The Pro’s
*The coffee is remarkably smooth. This could be attributed to the fines (small coffee particles) not getting into your cup due to the filter, so you don’t get the bitter taste.
*Clean-up is a breeze. Simply remove the cap, remove the filter, push the plunger in as far as it will go and a nicely packed coffee puck shoots out. Rinse the end of the plunger under water and you’re done.

The Cons
*You might not want to use your favorite mug… I’ve never broken one, but I’ve heard it can happen to cheaper mugs due to the force of pushing down.
*You don’t get the body of coffee you’d get from a french press or other brewing methods.
*The AeroPress uses a paper filter, so coffee oils get trapped. See advanced techniques, though, as there’s a way around this.

Advanced Techniques
Although the AeroPress makes exceptional coffee, there are some limitations. For instance, using a paper filter traps the coffee oils. One option you have for this is you could buy a Swissgold filter and cut a circle out of the flat area in a way that it would fit right into the AeroPress cap. Some people use a micron polyester felt or other material instead of a Swissgold cut-out. These methods allow for more inflow of small coffee particles which creates a bigger body in the ultimate brew.

Another issue is that using the AeroPress with the directions it comes with doesn’t yield the best possible cup (even though it does give a pretty good one). The problem is, when you use freshly roasted coffee (within 7-10 days of roasting) and grind it right before brewing, it leads to a “bloom” (a layer that forms at the top of a mix of near-boiling water and coffee grounds due to C02 being emmitted from fresh beans). Within this bloom is the greatest concentrate of coffee oils. Using the AeroPress the way the instructions state, you’ll push the water mix and bloom down into the cup and the bloom will be the last part to go. The oils within the bloom get stuck in the puck and the greatest flavor from the mix never makes it into your cup.

Instead, try the “inverted method”. Basically, you set your mug aside and place the bottom of the plunger on a table and place the cylinder on top (you might want some paper towels, ’cause this could get messy). Add in the freshly-ground coffee and hot water, stirring for 10 seconds. Add the filter with the (hopefully not paper) filter and – positioning your mug just right – start pushing down in a way that the first few drops spill right in. You’re trying to capture the mix from the bloom. After a few seconds, you can (quickly) turn the AeroPress over and place it back onto your mug and push down like usual. You should taste a big difference.

There you have it. If you’ve never used an AeroPress before, I highly recommend it. Using the advanced techniques, the AeroPress can make amazing coffee. Below is a video I found on YouTube that has a pretty good demonstration of the AeroPress so you can see visually how to go about making coffee from it (note: the video shows the regular, not inverted method). However, you can see the bloom in the video and how, using the regular method, it is the last part of the mix attempted to be pushed out but gets stuck due to the puck that has formed.

Please leave your comments below and share this post with a friend.

What does the term ‘Fair Trade’ mean and what products are offered?
Fair Trade is a movement designed to help producers of goods in developing countries get a fair price so they can earn a living that makes what they do sustainable and help increase stability in a volatile market. Fair Trade products include coffee, fruit and spices as well as clothing and jewelry.

With Fair Trade coffee, farmers are paid a minimum Fair Trade price of $1.35 per pound of conventionally grown coffee ($1.55 for certified organically grown coffee). The hope is that with the increased prices, coffee producers can use the additional income to not only earn a fair living, but to also invest in their future and develop increased quality control procedures, typically (but not always) resulting in higher quality coffee to consumers.

How much have Fair Trade sales increased over the past several years?
The most abundantly available Fair Trade product on the market today is coffee. Demand for Fair Trade coffee in the US has grown at an average of 26% since 2004, growing by 56% in 2007 alone. Coffee roasters who have carried Fair Trade coffee since 2000 have also experienced an average yearly growth of 125%, so it benefits roasters to appeal to the movement and offer Fair Trade coffee to consumers. The amount of Fair Trade coffee purchased in the US has increased from 2 million pounds in 1999 to 70 million in 2008.

Any other insights on Fair Trade coffee in general?
The increased funds provided by Fair Trade allow producers the opportunity to improve their coffee by making the move to cultivating shade-grown coffee plants, which earn higher prices and is a more environmentally-friendly coffee plant variety. Most non-Fair Trade producers cultivate sun-grown coffee plants which are less environmentally-friendly as they can lead to deforestation and typically require more fertilizers and pesticides that contribute to polluting the environment.

It’s important to note that Fair Trade isn’t a type of coffee, but rather a label that can be placed on any coffee that is purchased at the minimum price designated as being “fair”, regardless of quality or method of cultivation. In fact, the very same coffee that goes unsold being labeled as Fair Trade typically ends up being sold some time later for lower prices without the Fair Trade label. This is one of the inherent flaws with Fair Trade.

Still, the Fair Trade label does increase the likelihood that the coffee was grown under environmentally-friendly conditions (approximately 80% of Fair Trade coffee is shade-grown) and is of higher quality, although this is not a guarantee.

If you like this post, please share with your friends (link below).

Ken

Have you ever noticed how after you buy a brand new coffee maker (drip brew), you’re able to make great tasting coffee… but after a few months, you start noticing that the coffee doesn’t seem to taste as good as it used to?

Cleaning your coffee maker is important and the best way to do this is to descale it.

What is scale?
Scale is the build up of minerals inside your coffee maker, generally referred to as “lime scale”. The build up is typically due to using hard water when brewing your coffee.

Why is lime scale bad?
Scale causes lots of problems in coffee makers. Not only does it make your coffee taste bad, it also causes other problems, such as building up over the mechanisms inside the coffee maker that make the water heat up, which means your coffee may not be brewed at the optimal temperature, it can clog up your coffee maker in different places inside the machine and scale can even make it malfunction or stop working altogether.

How can I prevent scale from building up in my coffee maker?
Many people use tap water for brewing their daily coffee. The hard water from the tap can quickly cause lime scale to build up over the course of 2-3 months. You can prevent scale from building up by using high quality water (bottled water). You’d probably want to use high quality water so you can make the best tasting coffee, anyway (if you think the water from your tap tastes gross, why would you use it to make your coffee?). High quality/bottled water may not completely eliminate scale, but it will slow the build up of it down some.

*It’s important to note that some coffee makers have special instructions for cleaning and descaling in any other way could void your manufacturer’s warranty; please review the instructions that came with your coffee maker and if there’s a discrepancy on how to descale, use your coffee maker’s instructions instead of the tips offered below.

How to descale your coffee maker
Now that we’ve discussed prevention, we need to get your coffee maker descaled and brewing better tasting coffee now. Here’s the process for descaling:

• Make sure your coffee maker is cold (hasn’t just been used)
• Place a new filter into your drip-brew coffee maker
• Fill the coffee pot half way with equal parts water and distilled white vinegar
• Run the mixture through the coffee maker, dump out the mixture once complete
• Repeat this 1-2 more times
• Let the coffee maker cool
• Remove the old filter and insert a new one
• Clean the coffee pot and add fresh water (no white vinegar this time)
• Run the water through the coffee maker, dump out the water once complete
• Repeat this 2-3 more times
• Not a bad idea to make 1 pot of coffee and dump out to ensure any remaining vinegar is completely removed… just don’t use Weekly Roast coffee, use some of the stale stuff you have in the pantry 

One word of caution, make sure you only use a mixture of half white vinegar and half water when going through this process. If you use only white vinegar, it will be a lot harder to get the vinegar taste and smell cleaned out. You can also use a citrus based decalcifying solution or a professional descaling solution. White vinegar works just as well and is typically cheaper.

Try descaling your coffee maker using the tips above and then enjoy a cup of freshly brewed coffee. Repeat this process every 2-3 months and I bet you’ll taste a big difference.