What if you could learn to make the best gourmet coffee at home for yourself? The true key to gourmet coffee is understanding what it is and how to correctly read labels and understand different types of coffee. It’s also important to know how to store it correctly.
Most coffees are not sold in packaging that is designed to help them last for a long time. You will want to transfer these high-quality beans to a better long-term storage solution to keep them fresh and preserve that quality flavor.
What is Gourmet Coffee?
Before we can talk about how to make it at home, let’s have a look at the definition of gourmet coffee. Gourmet coffee, by definition, is hard to say. There is no official definition of the term. In general, what people mean when they say “gourmet coffee” is coffee that was carefully cultivated and that is flavored.
While there is an official coffee grading system, it doesn’t actually use the term “gourmet” at all. In general, gourmet refers to a higher quality or higher class of coffee or coffee bean. We can interpret this to mean premium or specialty coffee.
Tips for Making it at Home
When you decide you want to enjoy gourmet coffee at home, the first stage is to choose the right coffee beans. After that, it’s also about how you prepare it, how it’s brewed, and what you add to it after brewing. Will you drink it black? Will you add sweetener or creamers? These are all things that can impact the overall flavor.
Here are some tips to help you have enjoyable gourmet coffee at home:
#1. Know your coffee bean
The first step to great gourmet coffee at home is to understand where your bean comes from. Where did it grow? What kind of coffee bean is it? The flavors you get from the coffee will depend on where it comes from so this is an important part of the process.
#2. Buy the beans whole
When you buy whole beans and wait to grind them at home, you can seal in that delicious flavor until you’re ready to brew up your fresh coffee. Be sure you only grind what you need for each specific time.
#3. Invest in a scale
In addition to buying your beans whole and using a high-quality coffee bean grinder, you will also benefit from a kitchen scale. To make the perfect cup, you can’t just “guesstimate”. You need to be able to properly measure the coffee to water ration for the best gourmet coffee possible.
#4. Try your coffee black first
When you don’t add anything to the coffee, you get the true, full flavor of the coffee. If you’re not used to drinking black coffee, this might seem a bit much at first, but you can try just a few small sips and see how it sits on your taste buds. When you’re drinking coffee for the flavor and not just to get a jolt of caffeine, you learn to appreciate the flavors that are available.
#5. Don’t make it too strong
Some people love bold flavors, but it usually takes time to acquire the taste for it. If you’re new to drinking coffee black, then you may not want to brew it too strong. More isn’t better when it comes to coffee flavors. A good guideline is two tablespoons of ground coffee for each six ounces of water.
#6. Clean your coffee maker regularly
It’s important to clean your coffee maker regularly and well so that you preserve the natural flavor of the coffee and don’t get any old coffee gunked up in the machine.
#7. Try an espresso
Another way to enjoy and fully appreciate gourmet coffee is to try an espresso or espresso type of drink. This gives you more preserved flavor from the coffee so you can really appreciate the higher quality coffee.
Things to Know about Gourmet Coffee
It’s important to understand that gourmet coffee isn’t technically a real type of coffee. It’s more of a marketing term, and one that has gained popularity in all food and drink industries. Essentially, it’s a buzzword. There is no objective meaning when it comes to classifying coffee.
However, the term has come to be used in conjunction with higher quality coffees, as explained above. While it’s all up to interpretation, gourmet coffee is typically expected to be a higher quality of coffee than a generic or store brand coffee.
When choosing your gourmet coffee, it’s all about brewing what you love. If something tastes great to you and makes you happy, that’s more important than what anyone else thinks about it. Coffee enjoyment isn’t about snobbery.
How to Choose a Good Gourmet Coffee
If you’re going to make great gourmet coffee at home, you need to know how to choose a good coffee. Here are some things to consider.
- Look into the sustainability practices of the coffee brand you are considering. What are their farming practices? Do they pay their farmers fair wages? How are the beans packaged? The demand for coffee is increasing regularly around the world so it’s more important than ever before to use sustainable farming practices.
- Look into their coffee sources processes – Green coffee beans are typically ordered through a supplier called an importer. This importer is the middleman between the farmer, the exporter and the companies who help transport the coffee beans out from where they are farmed. Some coffee is direct trade. When purchasing gourmet coffee, look into their processes and make sure you agree with their practices and policies.
- Look for their certifications – You can also look for certifications like fair trade, certified organic, rainforest alliance, and bird-friendly. When the environment is important to you as well as your coffee, it pays to see what certifications a particular coffee has. Even though these certifications don’t focus on the quality of the coffee, they do help improve the quality of the coffee industry as a whole.
Conclusions of Making Gourmet Coffee at Home
At the end of the day, great coffee is subjective. What tastes magnificent to you may not be good to someone else. If you’re enjoying your coffee and the experience, that’s what matters. At the end of the day, coffee is the highlight of the day and it’s important that you enjoy what you make.
