Brewing at Home Guide

17 Mar, 2020

Brewing at Home: Kaldi’s Tips for Making it Great

At Kaldi’s, we view our cafes as a hub to connect with people and to have a chance to live in the moment with some of the best coffee in the world. But brewing coffee at home is its own rewarding ritual. Our baristas go through extensive training and we use the best equipment to ensure that each coffee reaches its highest potential, but there’s no reason that you can’t make a great cup at home and still have a memorable coffee experience.

Here’s our tips for how to get the best possible cup, no matter who you are and what equipment you have. We have it broken down for different levels of coffee knowledge and expertise for those that want to delve a little deeper into the world of brewing coffee.

No matter who you are or how you like it, we hope this helps you further enjoy this wonderful beverage.

At Home Coffee Brewing Set Up with Chemex, Kalita, Scale, Grinder, and Kettle

Best Practices for Any Coffee Brew

Buy fresh coffee!

Coffee never goes “bad” in the typical sense (like milk), but it does lose more and more flavor as it ages. We find that coffee is best in the first three to four weeks after roast, so only stock up for as much as you’ll use in that period of time.
If you aren’t going to use it immediately, it is perfectly fine to place a sealed bag in the freezer. Just bring it up to room temperature before opening it.
Insider tip: This is one major benefit to buying straight from kaldiscoffee.com: Coffee is roasted to order, ensuring that you get your bag when the coffee is at its freshest. Check out our blog about the benefits of fresh roasted coffee to learn more.

Grind fresh if possible, and ideally with a high quality burr grinder

We love the ageless Baratza Encore for its durability and grind quality (and exceptional customer service).
Hand grinders have improved exponentially in recent years. Offerings from Timemore and 1ZPresso have really changed the reputation for manual grinding. Check them out!

Use a scale

This is key for consistent ratios of coffee and water, which leads to a more consistent, better extracted cup. We like the 1:16 ratio, meaning that if we are brewing 40g of coffee, we use 640ml of water.
Link to Escali Scale
Link to Acaia Scale, if you want to get really nerdy!

Use fresh, filtered water no matter how you are making your coffee
Check out our home brewing page

Get a few more details about brewing, like specific recipes for different brewers

Kalita and Chemex

Interested in getting a little more in depth?

Making a French Press?

Check out our French Press tutorial here and watch our video below.
Need a French Press? We like the Yama French Press, but all French Presses essentially make the same cup with this method.

Making a pour over?

Here’s our tried-and-true Chemex recipe, especially good if you’re making for more than one. You can also watch our Youtube video!
Brew on an automatic machine and interested in getting into pour over? Watch our very simple Kalita 185 recipe.
V60: Get an in depth analysis and a brew guide

Get your water good and hot

Have an auto-brewer? It can be hard for less expensive brewers to get the water up to proper brewing temperature (195 - 205 F). Heating it up a little in the microwave first can really help.

Want to get way, way into your brew?

Stir or swirl your bloom.

This helps saturate all grounds immediately and evenly, leading to better extraction.

Grab an Aeropress and go through a myriad of different recipes.

Here is our own Aeropress recipe
Each year, there is a World Aeropress Championship, and recipes are posted on their page. The best thing about the Aeropress is its versatility, and we definitely recommended having some fun with it.

Cup coffees next to each other.

Here’s our video for cupping coffee at home using our Blend Sampler Box. This is a great way to try coffee alone or have a little "event" with friends and loved ones.

Coffee cupping bowls

Experiment with different coffee brewing devices.

We’ve loved playing with things like the Fellow Prismo, the Melodrip, or the Able Kone.

Make your own water (well, add minerals to it, don’t do advanced chemistry or anything)

We won’t get too geeky here, but water plays an enormous role in the quality of your coffee. Filtered or bottled water is great, but there are a couple products that are specifically made to bring out the best that your coffee has to offer. You just add these to a gallon of distilled water, and voila! Perfect water for brewing.

Want to ensure coffee keeps coming?

We have subscriptio n s! Recurring subscriptions save 10%. Choose Roaster’s Choice single origin if you want to get a little variety mixed in.
Our partners at Mistobox offer an even more curated service. Kaldi’s is proud to be a listed roaster, but Mistobox also offers many other coffees from our other friends in the coffee community.

Want to try something new?

Our Blend Sampler gives you a chance to try Haya, Cafe Kaldi, and 700 next to each other.
As mentioned, our Roaster’s Choice Subscription is a rotating single origin selection chosen by our awesome roasting team
Keep an eye on our Single Origin page. We are dedicated to sourcing and roasting the freshest harvests and the finest coffees in the world. Each coffee comes with a “Why we love it” and a graph showing the basic flavor profile. We know you’ll find something you love!

Don’t want to have to brew at all?

Grab Haya Cold Brew Cans at these locations! Or, brew it at home.
Cold Brew every day the easy way:

Make a concentrate, add water to it every morning (dilute to taste), and walk out the door or grab your favorite book.
Learn how to make Cold Brew in a French Press

And that’s just a taste of what you can do with coffee. The beauty of coffee is that it can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. So, whether you’re looking for simplicity or for something complex, coffee can be that thing for you.