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Everyday Beans Podcast - Mostly About Coffee and Other Stuff
It's about coffee, food, life and what other randomness I feel that'll be helpful to the common coffee drinker or to anyone who likes to be entertained by a stranger, briefly.
Everyday Beans Podcast - Mostly About Coffee and Other Stuff
Temperature Secrets: Finding Your Coffee Zone
In this episode, I dive deep into one of the most overlooked aspects of coffee brewing: water temperature and how it dramatically affects your cup's flavor profile. I share my personal journey from being a high-temperature brewer (205-212°F) to discovering my sweet spot at 190°F (87°C), and why I've been consistently brewing at this temperature for months.
I explain how my pursuit of sweetness in coffee led me to experiment with lower temperatures, moving away from the harsh acidity and astringency that higher temperatures often produce. Through personal experiments and taste comparisons, I discovered that 190°F allows me to extract the elusive sweetness that makes coffee truly magical while maintaining the right balance of acidity. By listening to this episode, you'll learn how to identify your own temperature preferences, understand the relationship between brewing temperature and flavor extraction, and discover practical techniques for fine-tuning your coffee brewing process to match your personal taste preferences.
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[00:00:00] We're live right now. Today is June 24th, 2024, 4:17 in the morning. I hope you're doing pretty well. Today, we're having a good time.
[00:00:23] We're going to be talking about temperature and personal preference. Me, in particular, lately, actually the past couple of months, I've been really enjoying 190 degrees Fahrenheit. That's about 87 degrees Celsius. I believe that's what that is.
[00:00:48] And I've been loving brewing my coffees at that temperature. We're going to get there, but first, we're going to be talking about preferences. Preferences is everything in anything that we do actually, particularly in coffee. We have different palates, we have different experiences, we like different things. And as long as we are pushing ourselves to try different things at times, I think we're going to be in a good place.
[00:01:22] And truthfully, I don't think you really need me to tell you that. But I'll just tell you about myself in particular. I used to be an above 205, 212 coffee brewer temperature person. That's kind of weird saying that. And I just thought that it was fine at that level. I didn't understand anything lower than that. And for the longest, I thought everybody was talking about nonsense. But at the end of the day, it's about your coffee journey, what you're going through, what you like, what you don't like. And the reasons why you're doing the things that you're doing. But for a very long time, I was at that level.
[00:02:11] And then as I started to delve more into tasting coffees and enjoying coffees and just seeing what was out there. At least for me, I realized that the thing that I care about the most in coffee is sweetness. I like balance, don't get me wrong. I like a decent amount of balance, depending on the coffee, depending on the situation and all that. But at the end of the day, I like balance, but I was chasing sweetness. Because I think acidity is mostly always there. You can get acidity in the Brazilian coffees, the Mexican coffees. You can, but that thing about sweetness is very elusive. Like when you taste a sweet coffee, to me, it kind of makes you stop in your tracks. Because you don't really experience that as much, especially at a higher temperature.
[00:03:12] And for instance, yesterday, I was trying out another recipe. And I did 212 just for experimental reasons. Just to bump up the extraction to see what I can do with the particular grinder that I was playing around with. And I didn't like it. It had this weird acidic, astringent type of taste that I don't really care for. It, to me, didn't really present the coffee really well, really balanced at all.
[00:03:44] I tend to get that at 190 degrees. I can go lower, but to me, that kind of dulls out the coffee to an extent. 190 gives me that chance, that opportunity, that I can actually taste sweetness in a coffee. And that's why I've been rocking with it for a very long time. Sometimes I'll go up to 195, 200, just to bump up the extraction, to see if the coffee tastes any different from there. But I just tend to go back to 190 degrees.
[00:04:19] It's fun, and it's exciting in most coffees. It lets me know that I'm on the right path here. And if that coffee is still very acidic, then I'll probably just change up my pour structure or go down even more with my temperature. And I think that's the biggest thing that we have to take away with all of this, is that as we mature in our coffee journey, we're like, okay, where's this really going? What are we really tasting? What do we really care about when it comes to coffee?
[00:04:56] Those are some of the things that I think about constantly in this whole coffee game thing, because at the end of the day, you are on your own journey. And then when you have the opportunity to taste and to love and to cherish coffee the way that you think that you want to, it gives you that big sense of, you're in control.
[00:05:21] So I guess what I'm saying here too is that it's okay for you to venture out from time to time, or all the time. Because it's your coffee, it's your drink, it's your moment. It's romanticizing the whole brewing aspect of it all. It's all about you, and once we realize that and get to a better place of understanding the things that are already out there for us, I think we can understand our coffees even more so, even to an extent ourselves, right? So 190 is my sweet spot right now.
[00:06:03] It's where the coffee is less offensive, if it is offensive. It is where I can truly find the good balance of acidity in my cup. And I get excited a lot of times, especially when I just nail that perfect cup of coffee. At least that morning, it's like, wow, I found it. This is so good. This is so magical. This is something that I can drink every single day, all the time. Because something about that sweetness part is extremely elusive.
[00:06:44] So what about you? What about, what do you go through? Because at the end of the day, if we're not testing, and we're not pushing ourselves, we're not experimenting with so many different variables. But in this case, we're not playing around with temperatures and being objective and being honest with ourselves. I think that's where we do ourselves a disservice in this whole coffee game. Because if we care about the type of water that we use, some of you guys do or don't. We care about the bean selection, it being a washed, natural, fruity, anaerobic, whatever it may be.
[00:07:33] We care when we actually brew the coffee, if it's a couple of weeks off roast, or even to a month. What about the other things, aspects that we care about? We got to start paying attention to the grinder. I mean, we care about the grinder. And I think one of the easiest things that we can do in order to enhance our palates even more so, getting the coffee a little bit more closer to what we want to drink in coffee. It's the temperature. And I'm not saying that you need to go at 190 degrees Fahrenheit or 87 degrees Celsius in order to get that aspect of what you're really trying to taste.
[00:08:22] I'm just saying, test, analyze your actual preference. Do you care about more acidity? Do you care about one being more than the other most of the time? Or do you let the bean talk to you? No matter what, I think even in a 4 to 6 ounce bag of coffee, I think you have enough tries in order to get that coffee as close as possible to your preference. If we're not playing around with temperature, the water temperature, I think we're doing ourselves a disservice.
[00:09:08] Because that's probably the missing link that you're actually probably thinking that you need to find in this whole thing. And yes, you do need a variable temperature kettle. It doesn't have to be crazy expensive like the Fellow that I have right there. It can be a Bonavita that I've had for many years. It can be whichever brand that you want to use. It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, I think that's where you can fine tune your taste preference, your pouring structure, the way extraction actually comes out at those temperatures.
[00:09:49] So that being said, I do want to leave you off on one last thing when you actually start to change your temperatures. For the most part, I've done many experiments already. I think I've documented quite a bit of them. Some of them are still in the pipeline to come out to be edited. It's that you know the pros and cons of whichever brewing temperature that you're using.
[00:10:16] Also, be mindful of your technique too, meaning that even though that kettle may say 190 degrees and it may be extremely accurate, do realize that if you wanted to really stay at that temperature for the majority of your brew, is that you're going to have to put a decent amount of water inside the kettle so it can stabilize that temperature. If it's too low, it's going to be sporadic as you pour because there's not as much water in the kettle unless you keep putting it back when you're actually brewing a cup of coffee between pulses, between whichever brewing structure or recipe that you're doing.
[00:10:58] Do realize though that if you go to an extent, depending on what you're trying to do, lower in temperature, the extraction levels are not going to be as high. So adjust for that. Taste your coffees. See what you like about it. Change another variable that's within that whole room. And then just play. That's really what I'm saying here. Play, experiment, change one variable, see what it's all about.
[00:11:31] And then once you play and see what it's all about, then you can probably start to notice a pattern in your preference in the way that you actually enjoy and drink your coffee. And then go from there. That's what I got for you right now. Let me know what you think. And I do think temperature is one of the things that we kind of overlook. And it's cool to get recipes from people and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, that doesn't matter. It matters about what you care about in that particular coffee at that time. So if you have to change the temperature for whatever reason, change it. Explore. But I will tell you this. You probably already know this. Is that I think eventually, no matter what, you will still lean, tend to gravitate, cling to a temperature that just works for you.
[00:12:29] So this is me, Okey at Everyday Beans signing off. I'll talk to you later. Bye.