Coffee topics
Everything on the site sits in one of six topics. Each hub opens with an orientation, says what you will learn, and answers the questions people most often bring to it.
Brewing
Almost every complaint about home coffee — bitter, sour, thin, harsh — traces back to one of four variables: how much coffee you used, how finely it was ground, how hot the water was, and how long the two were in contact. Change one and the cup changes predictably.
Espresso
Espresso is not a bean, a roast level or a flavour. It is a brewing method defined by pressure: roughly 9 bar of water forced through a compacted bed of finely ground coffee for 25 to 30 seconds. Everything else — crema, the small cup, the intensity — follows from that.
Cold Brew & Iced
Cold brew and iced coffee are frequently treated as synonyms and are not. Cold brew never meets hot water: coarse grounds steep in cold or room-temperature water for 12 to 24 hours. Iced coffee is brewed hot and then chilled, which takes four minutes rather than a day.
Roast Levels
Roast level is a measure of applied heat and time, marked by two audible events. First crack, around 385°F, is when moisture inside the bean flashes to steam and the structure pops. Second crack, near 435°F, is the cell walls fracturing as oils migrate to the surface. Light roasts stop shortly after first crack; dark roasts run into or past second.
Caffeine & Decaf
An 8 oz cup of brewed coffee averages about 95 mg of caffeine, a single espresso shot about 63 mg, and a cup of decaf about 2 mg. Those averages hide a wide spread: bean species, grind, dose and brew time all move the number, and two cups from the same café can differ by 50 percent.
Beans & Origins
Coffee is the seed of a fruit. A coffee cherry contains two flat-sided seeds, and everything between the tree and your grinder — picking, pulping, drying, hulling, sorting, shipping, roasting — is processing that seed without spoiling it.