5 things that make or break the taste of your coffee

There’s a lot that goes into a great coffee. 

Grind, roast, the water, dosage, tamping, temperature, humidity, shot time, the milk, cleanliness of your utensils & equipment, and so much more.

Here are 5 of the more interesting things that can make or break your coffee drink.

1. Grind: When you hear that “Whirrrr” sound in a coffee shop you’re hearing the grinder. Coffee beans are ground down into a powder, water is pushed through those grinds and what comes out is espresso. 

We explain the grind like this; if you pour water over a colander of rocks that water will pass through more quickly than pouring the same amount of water over those same rocks after they’ve been ground down into sand in the same colander.

This analogy represents the speed an espresso shot based on the grind.

Too fine and the water takes too long and the shot will taste bitter or burnt. Not fine enough and the water doesn’t take long enough and the shot will taste sour or weak. 

2. Temperature: The temperature that we're talking about and sneaky-important is the environmental temperature or the ‘ambient’ temperature. At Wild Things HQ we face this on a daily basis.

One of our walls is a giant window on the south side of the building. We get a ton of sunlight and during the summer it can raise the temperature inside by double-digits. 

Ambient temperature influences the stability of the espresso machine. Too cold, heat loss while pulling the shot can lead to sour espresso shots. Too hot, the coffee can overheat or behave differently during grinding, impacting dose and water flow.

3. Water: Hard water is full of minerals that harm the taste of espresso.

TDS stands for Total Dissolved Solids. These are things like calcium, magnesium, bicarbonates, sulfates, iron, and healthy microbials.

The presence of TDS’ is critical for the overall flavor of espresso with too much or without health levels of TDS’s espresso can end up tasting pretty poorly.

Quality water filtration system gets you healthy levels of TDS's and cleaning out what you don’t want (hard water minerals) while keeping pH levels right where they need to be. 

4. Freshness: The shelf life of coffee beans is short.

The bottom line is that the less fresh the coffee is the bigger the impact it has on the espresso.

The longer the beans sit there are a few things that happen. Flavor takes the kind of nose dive appreciated by a WWII Kamikaze pilot, pulling a quality shot of espresso gets as wild as a wal-mart on Black Friday and in rare cases can even damage equipment. 

5. Cleanliness: Cleanliness is another silent killer of great espresso. Contaminating the beans, the utensils and equipment with dirt and nasty stuff can have a drastic impact on the flavor of the espresso that goes into your coffee. 

It’s important to always keep a close eye on the cleanliness of your work station.

Keeping things clean will help you stay ahead of a lot of potential issues and expedite the troubleshooting process if anything does go wrong.