5 common coffee mistakes and how to fix them

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Mistakes are an essential part of growth. A tenor saxophonist doesn’t become an elite musician without first squeezing out a lot of clams. Same holds true for your morning ritual: You’ll brew a fair share of stale or over-extracted cups before you master the secrets of great coffee.

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The trick, if you want to call it that, is something you may not want to hear: You first have to desire a great cup, and not just a water-based stimulant to jump-start your day. Extracting the best flavours from your beans takes practice and an investment of time and money, all of which can be an immediate turnoff for folks just looking for a quick hit of caffeine.

Believe me, I get it. Some days, all I want is that shock to the system so I can shape-shift from a somnolent housebound zombie to a semi-functional member of society. But once you taste a truly outstanding cup, it’s almost impossible to go back to the bitter, over-roasted junk that passes for coffee at many shops.

If you want to join the good coffee club, you will have to change some of your bad habits, including the ones below.

In the 20th century, caffeine became hopelessly intertwined with worker productivity as employers realized that coffee could benefit their bottom line. We all bought into this: Coffee became a drug to prepare us for work, for study, for all those tasks that require more concentration than we can summon on our own.

But like wine, beer and spirits, coffee has pleasures beyond its psychoactive qualities. Depending on where they’re grown along the equatorial belt, coffee beans contain a world of flavors just waiting to be unlocked. Nutty flavors. Fruity flavors. Chocolate flavors. Floral flavors. Vanilla flavors. You don’t drink alcohol just for the buzz, or at least not every time you raise a glass. Consider doing the same for coffee.

You’re already in a supermarket, shopping for your groceries. Why not just grab a bag of beans from the shelves? The problem is this: You frequently have no idea how fresh those beans are, and roasters don’t always make it easy to find out. Some bags will provide an actual roast date. Many more will simply tell you that they’re best used by a certain date, often months in the future.

Neither date helps much unless you understand that coffee, like all agricultural products, has a limited shelf life. It’s a race against time, as oxygen, moisture, light and heat rapidly degrade your coffee once it’s been roasted and bagged. Nitrogen-flushed bags, which eliminate the oxygen that stales beans, can prolong the shelf life, but once you open the package, the clock starts ticking – fast. Numerous roasters say you should buy your coffee anywhere from a few days to a week after the roast – and brew those beans within the next week or two.

The best way to guarantee fresh coffee is to buy beans from your local roaster, who can tell you exactly when they were roasted and how long they’ll stay fresh.

We’ve all been there: You just bought beans from your favourite roaster (yay, you!) and the barista asks the logical question: “Would you like these ground?” If you say yes, you’ve just dramatically shortened the shelf life of your coffee.

After beans are roasted, they start a process known as “off-gassing,” or releasing carbon dioxide over the next 20 days or so. Carbon dioxide serves as a kind of protective barrier, preventing oxygen from degrading your beans and developing off-flavours. But as soon as you grind the beans, the off-gassing process shifts into overdrive.

“The CO₂ that is lost over weeks in whole bean coffee is lost in minutes after coffee is ground,” the Specialty Coffee Association writes.

The solution is obvious: Invest in a quality burr grinder – it’ll serve you well for years – and grind your beans daily right before you brew them. This step alone will improve your coffee exponentially.

There are many different ways to brew coffee: French press, pour-over, drip coffee maker, Chemex, AeroPress and others. Each one has its pros and cons, but for this exercise, I’m focusing on the pour-over, which is my preferred method.

You’ll need to invest in some equipment: a kettle with a gooseneck spout to help control the flow of water; a scale or other tool to measure the coffee and water; and a pour-over dripper, such as my preferred Fellow Stagg. There are countless pour-over drippers out there, each different in its own way. You will need to buy the right filters for your preferred dripper.

There are several variables you can tweak to find the sweet spot for your particular beans: grind size, water temperature and ratio of beans to water. It can take numerous experiments to discover the perfect combination, but to simplify matters, let’s stick to a tried-and-true formula: Use a 16-to-1 ratio, meaning 16 parts water to one part ground coffee. If you don’t have a scale to weigh your ingredients, you can approximate the ratio by measuring out 4 tablespoons of coffee to 1 1/2 cups of water (with a little more water in the kettle to account for the liquid that will evaporate as it comes to temperature).

Generally, you’ll want to heat the water to between 195 and 205 degrees. If you don’t have a kettle with a built-in thermometer, just bring your water to a boil and remove the kettle from the heat for about 20 seconds. Take the hot water and rinse your filter (and dump out the excess water) before adding your ground beans.

Add the water in phases: The first pour should just barely cover the grounds. Let that initial pour sit for 30 seconds as the grounds start to bubble. (If they don’t bubble, your coffee is probably stale.) Then add more water in batches, making sure to cover the grounds evenly with each pour. You’re aiming for a total brew time of between three and four minutes. If you’re not hitting those time marks, adjust your grind size: The finer the grind, the longer it takes for water to pass through.

Finally, use filtered water for your coffee, which makes sense, right? Coffee is mostly water. If you’re relying on the flow from your faucet, you’re gambling on the quality of the city’s tap water, which is not a bet I would take. Buy a filtered water pitcher and keep it in your fridge.

To keep your pricey beans fresh, you need to protect them from not just oxygen, but also light, heat and moisture, all of which will speed up your coffee’s decline. Some people store beans in the freezer – which is fine if you don’t plan to use them for a couple of weeks – but if you constantly pull beans in and out of the freezer, you can introduce moisture to the beans, which will lead to staling.

The best solution is a vacuum-seal canister such as this one from Fellow. It not only keeps the sunlight out, but it also features a pump to remove the air from the container, helping keep your beans fresher, longer. Professionals can tell the difference between beans stored in a simple airtight container verses a vacuum-seal one. So will you.

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