How to Brew at Home like Barista

I love going to coffee shops, I like how each one has a different feel, smell, and style. Each one more inviting and relaxing then the next. But let’s be real, most of us can’t afford to go to a coffee shop everyday but we still want good coffee everyday. Also relationship coffee is growing, a huge industry that once kept it’s consumers blinded to how it was produced is being revealed, and there are artists doing business honestly and justly. That's the coffee I want to be drinking everyday, the kind that blood sweat and love was poured into it, a kind that is promoting justice and dignity. That coffee tends to be of the highest quality so let’s learn the proper way to drink it.

What do you need?

-       A manual brew- a few of our favorites are the Chemex, Kalita, V60, Aeropress, and French Press.  My personal favorite is Chemex since it’s larger, and comes with a pourer. But each method will bring out different flavours in your coffee.

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-       Grinder: we recommend a hand grinder, or Baratza. We use Baratza Virtuoso and it is like specialty coffee shop grinder but for home. 

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-       A scale

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-       Mugs

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-       Proper filter for brew method

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-       Goose Neck Kettle, or a regular kettle: Goose Neck Kettles allow for slower and more controlled pours which greatly affect the interaction between water and grinds.

What do you do?

Step 1:

Boil some water- if you want to get particular the ideal heat is 205 degrees Fahrenheit. (yes heat matters)

Step 2:

Measure with a scale the exact amount of beans you will grind and brew. Specialty coffee shops use a ratio of 1:15 grams (1 being coffee, 15 being water) So for instance you could do  30 grams  of coffee to 450 grams of water.

Step 3:

Grind your coffee, this will depend on what kind of coffee you have, what amount your brewing, and what method your using. Grind size is one of the most complicated aspects of brewing. I would recommend researching according to your coffee, asking your local specialty coffee shop, or just playing around with it (this is what I do).  Also for grinding, make sure you do it right before you brew. If you grind and let it sit out it’s going lose some of that flavour and aroma.

Step 4:

Place in your filter/brew method. Take the boiled water and do a series of pours, the first pour is important because it's what we call the bloom (the initial pour releasing gases and rich flavour, the coffee grinds rise up). The first pour you want to use an amount of water that is triple the amount of coffee. Example: if you use 30 grams of coffee your first pour should be 90 grams of water. Pouring can be another complicated part because it depends on the coffee, and brew method but again ask, research, or just play around. I typically like to do about four pours, and you want to make big and small circles slowly on top of the grinds.

Step: 5

 Pour some hot water in the mugs you will drink in to make them hot (remember heat matters). Dump the water when the coffee is ready, swish the finished brewed coffee around a few times pour it in the cups and enjoy.

Note: If you decided to play around with the variables (water, temperature, grind size, agitation) a way you can test and tweak is the way it tastes. For example if it has a bitter edge, maybe your grind size is too small. But honestly coffee is fun to play with and ask experienced people and you will find your perfect cup. This may seem meticulous but it is honestly one of my favorite morning routines, and makes you appreciate and enjoy your coffee so much. But all of this doesn’t matter if the coffee you buy isn’t good. So I’m going to list some incredible coffees you can order, we know all of these roasters personally and they buy honestly, fairly and care about the connection between crop to cup. So enjoy connecting with these amazing coffee shops, and start discovering the beautiful world of brewing!

Seeds Coffee

Open Seas Coffee

Pilcrow Coffee

Phoenix Roasters

Utopian Coffee

Land & Water

For more detailed information on brewing see these links

Grinding Guide

Brewing Science

Why Does Coffee Really Matter

   A small holder coffee farmer wakes up at 5am. The year has been filled with endless cutting of grass by hand, he can’t afford to buy weed eater. His family all puts time in except his eldest son. He is the one they decided to keep in school, he only helps on the weekends. The man went into debt this year to the local chemical companies, they promised it would double his yield and kill the weeds. His daughter ran onto the field after being freshly sprayed and she has an infection in her foot. They are already in debt, and can’t afford a hospital.

 

  The rains ended, the fruit starts blooming red. He gathers his relatives to pass through his hectare of land, picking anything pink, throwing in some yellow too perhaps. The trucks that will come pick it up doesn’t care. They work late into the afternoon, sweating, hands covered in cuts. They bag up what they have, and wait for the truck to come get it. It pulls up loaded with coffee already; they weigh the kilos in each bag. The man in the truck gives his price. It’s lower then last year. The farmer thinks quickly. Nobody may come again, and if they do it probably is the same price. If he waits his coffee will rot and it will lose all value. He takes the cheap price. He will never see the coffee again. He won’t know where it goes, or what it tastes like. He scratches his head, not knowing how he will make it through the year. The money immediately goes to his debtors. His son talks about dropping out of school to work at a foreign construction company, for cash to buy food and medicine. They have no other choice.

The next year, it is always the same, monotonous work. No goal. No profit, only survival.

 I want this post to be informative. The story above is based off of so many stories in our village. This is a reality. Their reality.

I wanted you to hear it to understand WHY we are doing coffee, why it’s important. I talk a lot about poverty and one of my goals is to educate people on how to effectively help them. We don’t want this harsh reality for our farmers anymore. We don't want them to be excluded from the market that takes advantage of them over and over. But we want THEM to be the ones to pull themselves up. This idea of Great White Hope needs to be put in the grave, handouts need to be given up as well. We can look back and see that it hasn't created freedom and brought people out of poverty, but rather kept them there. 

The way to get them out is this; Treating them with dignity and equipping them to help themselves.

Coffee is the second most traded commodity behind oil. Yet coffee producing countries are amongst the poorest in our world. Most farmers here know very little to nothing about coffee. They strip cherries. Hand it off to Nestle or other big companies. Truly they don’t know where it goes or what happens after they hand it off to whoever drives down their street.

The way most coffee is processed pollutes water, takes advantage of farmers, and takes coffee with bugs, insect damage, rotten, or under-ripe mixing it together. Most companies have little to no contact with the farmers producing. They hire the poorest to do their labor for a small wage. As I learned more and more of this I didn’t feel despair, but excitement. What an opportunity to go in and change the way things are done. From exploitation to justice.

There are a few things that must happen to create justice. Give the farmer:

11.   Purpose and pride in their work (laboring manually mindlessly day after day…kills the spirit sometimes. Especially when you know nothing about your crop or have no goal to improve it.

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   2. Ownership and power- The farmers need to feel like they aren’t excluded from the market, but understand and participate in it. They feel freedom to choose who they sell too.

   

   3. Trust and Responsibility- They need to be trained and then trusted to do a good job. Foreigners with knowledge have their place, but they eventually need to take a backseat and let the locals lead their own country, and projects.

   4. Creating Unity- This product can’t be excellent without the group working together to make it.

We are starting a cooperative, and letting the Khmu people lead it. Our roles will be training, equipping, final processing and connecting them to the market. The further along, the less involved we get to be. We are training in specialty exportable coffee that is excellent (because why should we do things average?) and will create profiles that give Laos a good name. It’s also expensive coffee, so the export is worth it and the farmers get paid well. It also allows passion and goals for the farmers, each year is another opportunity to experiment with fermentation, flavor and farming practices to get a better score. 

This is what we have chosen to do because it’s job creation, and empowerment. Instead of my Farmer and I forever giving fish, we will create fisherman. Sustainability. We don’t want people to support our farmers forever, we want them to support themselves. Coffee professionals. If people spend their life farming coffee, they should know everything there is to know about it. 

Now the beauty of coffee is you can do a lot with it. We want to change the way it’s done, down to the soil. Part of our job right now is also teaching organic practices and helping the farmers transition into that. Most farmers are in constant debt to chemical companies because they have plants addicted to chemicals, and each year more and more is required. This past harvest my Farmer’s family didn’t make any profit, they owed so much to chemical fertilizer companies. It gets them into a vicious cycle. There are many other reasons to go organic (soil depletion, health of the farmer, taste of the fruit etc.).

We also want to teach and promote no waste. We have some super gifted friends that show so many ways to utilize every part of coffee. A huge way is to raise animals with it. Coffee cherries provides free feed, and the animal provides free fertilizer. This is one example of ideas we have for the future.

But for now, we are at the beginning, and planning our first harvest. We have friends who are already producing a lot of good coffee here, so instead of stressing on filling a huge order to export, we will get to do a small amount and piggy back it to the states. We are meeting with several trusted local leaders, to form this cooperative. To decide how we want to pay people, how we want to organize, where we will get the money to pay people, how/where to process etc.

Our life is filled with a lot of meetings, and there is a whole lot to get done. Planning this company but not having a place to put my clothes, has been really difficult for me. Or talking about paying farmers, but not having enough to finish our home, it’s hard. But I’m learning (slowly) to walk in courage and faith, not in fear and worry.

I’m learning to trust the poor, that they are filled with gifts and don’t need me to hold their hand. They need me to advocate for them to pull themselves out of poverty. They need me to love them, and to accept their love too.

As Kingdom people, we are compelled to walk in justice, excellence, love and unity.

Think of us as we begin this company. It is a daunting and difficult task my Father has set before us. It will never, ever be easy.  Swallowing that pill has been hard. But when you drink our coffee one-day with it’s unique Lao notes, and our farmers can look at each other and say “We did that”, what a day that’ll be. And we can all sit back in wonder. Beautiful wonder at what justice can bring.

Click to learn more buy visiting Auxano Coffee

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7 Reasons You Should Drink Specialty Coffee

(modeling a real cup of specialty coffee from Laos: the best looking farmer around)

So most of you know we are starting (very beginning stages) a coffee co-op for specialty coffee in this region. Right now we are using most of our time getting more educated on the topic and educating others, farmers and the consumer. We just started our first trial of one of the specialty coffee processes, the honey process. It’s funny when I first started with coffee I really only thought about organic, which was a great start, but organic doesn't effect the taste as much as it makes the product perhaps more honest and your soil more healthy long term. Making coffee taste amazing...that is a whole other ball game. The more I learn, the more passionate and excited I get about specialty. If you don’t know what specialty coffee is, it is coffee that is single origin (meaning coming from one single area, not mixed or blended with other beans), is scored by SCAA and receives an 80% at least. The scoring is based on on flavor, quality, body, little defect etc. I know most of my friends are big coffee drinkers, so here are some reasons you should switch to specialty and why it matters.

 1. It is DELICIOUS. There. Simple as that. With most coffee at any cutesy coffee shop I always take cream. Because it makes it rich and tasty. But if I am drinking a specialty coffee done manually, no way will I ruin its pure distinct flavor with anything. I drink it black because it actually tastes amazing by itself. Most companies process by washing their beans and overcook them because they are trying to produce a consistent coffee flavor, because most people are hooked on caffeine they just want that coffee taste with cream and sugar. But when you start to try flavors of specialty coffee, you will be surprised that some coffee doesn’t taste at all like the coffee you know. Also you can buy different types and brew them according to what kind of tastes you like. Some coffee’s are fruitier and acidity, while others have more chocolaty and nutty tones. It all depends on what your in the mood for.

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      2. Every cup is different. It's like an adventure every cup. When your drinking coffee from one location, processed a certain way, cooked a certain way, and then brewed a specific way, there are endless possibilities of flavors. In fact you can get certified to be an expert on this endless palate of coffee flavors, a coffee Q-grader. It’s actually a super hard certification requiring focus, and engaging flavors you never have before. My particular favorite taste is honey process coffee (that is why we are trying to create first). You dry, and let the coffee ferment with all the mucilage still on it. It has a fruity taste like natural process (drying it in the coffee cherry) but not too acidity; a nice balance and if done right and really smooth. 

 3.You learn about the region your drinking from. Every region has signature flavors. If you really become pro you can guess where your cup is from and how it was processed. Like Sumatra coffee is known for it’s earthy flavored coffee, because of the unique way they wet process it, which is generally only done there. Your learning the area, what makes it's coffee unique, the way it was made and the people behind it. So if your drinking specialty you are really connecting with the product your consuming. And Who doesn’t like learning and enjoying coffee at the same time?

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    4. It is connecting the Farmer to the consumer. We eat and drink stuff everyday without thinking of who is laboring for it. Thats why there is so much illegal slavery happening. The journey for a product all the way to a consumer is so tricky, long and confusing it's easy for illegal activity to occur. Single Origin coffee is basically making a bridge connecting the product at it's beginning and the consumer at the end. Another great thing I'm learning about specialty coffee is it requires the farmer to be more educated and involved. There is this wonderful opportunity with this coffee to be a storyteller and allow a farmer to have pride and artistry in his/her beans that are being appreciated for their full potential and unique taste.

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       5. It can quickly become a fun hobby and lifestyle. If you’re a foodie, a wine lover, or a coffee enthusiast you will want to make the switch. Specialty coffee can quickly open new activities and opportunities for meeting new people and developing a sort of coffee community. If your are traveling in America or overseas, every country has some sort of coffee scene, and when you drink specialty and start to learn more about it, it’s easy to connect and explore new flavors and shops all over the world. Also specialty coffee shops and roasters do cuppings, (similar to a wine tasting but more involved). Coffee Cuppings are a super fun thing to do with friends or as a date. Look up cuppings in your local shops to see if you have any roasters that are holding one. It’s an easy way to learn more, expand your palate, taste great coffee, and do something fun.

     

 6. When you buy and drink specialty you are feeding a good industry, that isn’t just looking to make a buck, but really create something amazing. And it is trickling down (for the most part), to the farmers. For us just to be able to really pull off specialty, we have to train our farmers on coffee tastes, the market, quality control, processing methods and much more. Helping them obtain opportunities and be in control of their product. Our farmers have known little to nothing about the market, other types of coffee or processing, they have been paid poor wages, I'd say 80% of them are in debt, and have a sense of shame because of their profession. Specialty coffee changes that if you can pull it off. They get paid more, they have control, they get more educated in agriculture and coffee processing. Specialty coffee farmers typically know every little part of their bean and sell it to small companies that will tell their story. With the mass amounts of slavery we find today in the products we consume, products like this are changing the game. If done right it is giving a lot of freedom to farmers, and preventing injustice. 

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    7. It’s an art. Come on millennials, we love genuine products that are artistic. Manual brew and specialty coffee requires a lot of skill and artistry. Also it’s a product that has almost endless possibilities of creating new tastes, so farmers and processors can play. We dream of having a coffee lab like our friend Pendy here (pic to the left). He was a coffee genius, never measuring only smelling to create the perfect cup. Specialty gives so much room for creativity whether it’s growing, processing, or brewing. Ever heard of civet coffee? Some might think it’s gross or weird, but hey it’s creative. Already the young people in our village are thinking of new ways to process, I love watching their creativity have an outlet.

There are so many other reasons but basically, if you have money to be choosy about your products, which honestly even as a poor college kid I had that choice, be intentional with what you buy. A cup of coffee doesn’t just have to be a cup of coffee. You can make a difference in the products you buy, whether it’s paying the hard working producer more, creating more organic products, helping end slavery and changing demands for the fat cats, what you buy DOES matter. So many people ask me how they can make a difference well here is one way you can, and have fun while you do it.

Credit too:

scaa.org

perfectdailygrind.com

http://www.cornerofthecafe.com/the-coffee-belt/
http://www.ecnmy.org/engage/three-slaves-modern-slavery/