How your coffee tastes depends largely on which coffee beans you choose. As with wine, different areas and countries grow different kinds of coffee beans. Therefore, there can be a big difference between different beans and different approaches to roasting the beans.
Join us for a little introduction trip into the coffee world.
Dark roasted or not dark roasted …
The way the coffee beans are roasted has a really big impact on how your finished coffee will taste. Dark roast means that the beans taste pray roasted. The more a bean is roasted, the less of its characteristic flavor you can taste in your brewed coffee.
However, this does not mean that it is best to choose as light and mildly roasted beans as possible.
Choose beans by brewing method
Beans for espresso machines are much more roasted than coffee for a regular coffee maker with filters. Brewing espresso on lightly roasted coffee beans can give a taste that is not completely balanced in relation to acidity, sweetness, and bitterness – but it can also taste really good.
If you instead use strong dark roasted beans for your regular coffee maker, you get coffee with a strong and bitter taste. But the taste is like the bake …! So what kind of roasting you want on your beans depends on both the brewing method and what flavor you prefer.
As fresh as possible
Your coffee beans should preferably be as freshly roasted as possible. In general, the beans should preferably not be older than 3 months from being roasted. The date of roasting is the same as the date of production.
If you buy your coffee at a regular grocery store, you can, as a starting point, deduct one year from the best date. This means that it would be best if you found a coffee that has 10 months left until the best date. However, it can be difficult to find such fresh coffee in the regular shops. So if you are a connoisseur, as far as coffee is concerned, you can consider going to a specialty store.
Storage is also important
How you store your coffee also has a bearing on how much of the flavor is preserved. It is therefore important that you store it in airtight packaging. If you go on holiday or do not brew coffee very often, we recommend that you store the coffee in the refrigerator. But remember, the best cup of coffee is brewed on room-temperature coffee. So if you have it standing in the fridge you get the best taste if you pour it into the coffee maker for a while before it’s time to brew.
Coffee from all over the world
As we mentioned before, coffee is a bit like wine. The taste varies from the country they come from, the area and in what surroundings and environments it has grown up in. Of course, it also varies how coffee is grown, how it is handled after it is harvested and how it is roasted. Most of the coffee we buy is actually blend products of coffee beans from South America, Africa, and Asia.
South American beans often have a more sweet and full flavor, while the African beans are often more acidic and fruity. The Asian coffee beans often have a more spicy flavor. By mixing the beans the flavors are leveled and you get a more balanced taste experience. If you choose to buy more expensive coffee, the coffee beans usually come from the same area. Really exclusive coffee often comes from a particular coffee farmer’s farms and sometimes from a very specific land, just as exclusive wines come from specific vineyards and fields. It provides a cleaner, more intense and more tasteful experience.
Experiment more
We definitely recommend experimenting between different coffee beans and coffee varieties to find your own favorite. Usually quality and price are interrelated, but as with wines, you can advantageously have a more festive coffee and another coffee every day. Many modern grocery stores have their own coffee grinder, where you buy whole beans and grind the coffee yourself in a machine. If you use whole beans, whether you grind them in the shop or at home, it is good if you sort out the defective beans. If the beans have small holes, there have been insects in them and beans that have been cracked are not very good.
