The Perfect Cup

What to do with whole beans

A jump start on what to do with whole bean coffee...

Storage should be in the refrigerator in an airtight container. Unopened containers can be kept in the freezer for long-term storage.

Grind your beans to the desired consistency. Obviously the finer the grind; the more flavor will be extracted from the bean, altho it shouldn't be so fine that it clogs the filter. Make it easy on yourself and go a little coarser at first and experiment over time with finer grinds. Only grind what you plan to use right away.

Measure the coffee to your taste. Regular North American coffee drinkers use roughly a tablespoon to a cup. As an avid espresso afficcionado, I prefer my coffee stronger, and will normally go with around 3 tablespoons to the cup, although with Tesoros Del Sol, I get by with 2 tablespoons. TDS has more flavor than regular coffee.

Water temperature should be near boiling (196° - 204°). Bring your water to a boil, remove it from the heat, and let it sit for a minute before pouring it through the grinds.

Melita - Pour the water slowly and soak the grounds. Stop a moment and let the grounds absorb the water and swell, then slowly proceed until your cup is full.

French Press - boil the correct amount of water, freshly grind the beans using the largest grinder setting, take out the plunger, place the grounds at bottom of the glass, add the hot water, stir, and after 4-5 minutes press down plunger to separate the grounds from the extracted coffee.

Drip Coffee Makers - this is the easiest way to brew, but you are almost entirely at the mercy of the machines settings to get the water temperature and flow right. We like the Techni Vorm brand. Also, it is recommended by the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA).

Blade Grinders:
These are available for around $20.00. They consist of a rapidly spinning blade that cuts/breaks the beans into a consistency that will render an acceptable cup of coffee. They are the most common grinder around, probably because of its relatively low cost. This is a better option than buying your coffee already ground. Users get accustomed to the amount of time required to get the consistency that they desire, but still some granules are pulverized into a powder, while some others remain in a courser grain. Since there are various brewing methods, each requiring a unique grind, the shortcomings of the blade grinder quickly become apparent. Not to mention that the noise generated by the whirling blades colliding with the beans has reportedly caused a number of early morning familial fracases, adding yet more weight to the list of unfavorable aspects of the blade grinder.

We don't recommend blade type grinders due to their consistently inconsistent results.

The Bean

This is the single most important step you can take in achieving the perfect cup. We have taken care of this particular concern. Tesoros beans are arabica, gourmet, high-altitude, shade grown, hard bean, first quality. It doesn't get any better than these beans. Simply stated, when you purchase Tesoros Del Sol ™ coffee, you will have the finest quality beans available... period.

Roasting

Apart from selecting the right bean, roasting is an extremely important step in getting to that perfect cup of coffee.

Unroasted coffee is referred to as "green". Green coffee has a shelf life of about one year. Once it is roasted it becomes more perishable. With good packaging, the roasted bean can last for several months. Once it is opened, though, it should be consumed within two weeks.

Roasting occurs in the 370° to 450°F range for 8 to 20 minutes, depending on the volume of beans being roasted. There are literally hundreds of chemical compounds that make up the composition of green coffee. Among these are oils, complex polysaccharides, sugars, starches, fats, waxes, and others. Some of these are broken down by the heat and driven off. Many compounds extracted during brewing are not present in green coffee at all. Rather, they develop as the coffee is roasted. Some are starches which are converted into sugar. The sugar, when caramelized, accounts in part for the brown color of the coffee.

As roasting progresses, additional complex proteins and organic acids are broken down and transformed. The bean develops further in size and becomes a darker brown. To produce the darker roasts, the beans are left in the roaster for a longer period of time. As the temperature continues to build, the aromatic oils volarilize and boil toward the surface, causing a second crack or popping.

Finally the roastmaster determines that the roast is done. The beans are emptied from the roasting drum into the cooling bin. In the cooling bin the beans are cooled down rapidly to stop further development and loss of aromatics.

The roastmaster, or in the case of Tesoros Del Sol, the roastmadame, has to be the equivalent of an artist at her trade. She pays attention to the color, smell, and sound of the beans, and knows the precise moment when to drop the beans out of the roaster.

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Grinding

Each brewing method requires a different grind size: Drip coffee requires a medium size grind, espresso requires a fine size grind, a French Press requires the largest grind size, while the vacuum pot also requires the largest grind size. For cupping, it is preferable to use a French Press size. There are essentially two types of grinders. Blade and burr. For the purist, there is really only one type of grinder, that being the burr. Below is a description of both.

Burr Grinders:
These run in the area of $60.00 to $125.00 for the most common, with the actual upper end price being somewhere up in the heavens. The burr grinder is a vital step toward achieving "the perfect cup" of coffee. The bean is systematically cut in a controlled manner resulting in a uniform grind that is entirely controlled by the settings that the user chooses. Also, they are simple to operate and are not quite as noisy. There are two main types of burr ginders: The "Wheel Type Burr Grinder" usually less expensive, and the "Conical Burr Grinder" often more expensive. The "wheel type" is a wheel with burrs imbeded into it that spins at a very high speed. The coffee beans fall through the grinding chute which are then crushed between the grinding wheel and a stationary grinding surface.

Recommended Makes and Models:

The Water

A typical cup of coffee is 1.15 - 1.35% coffee, and 98.65 to 98.85% water. From this we can conclude that the quality of the water is of the utmost importance. Most Municipal water sources utilize chlorine to assure killing any micro-organisms that may have survived the treatment facilities. There are usually additional impurities that will affect the flavor of the cup. There are a number of solutions to the water concern. Some use bottled water for their coffee needs. Others pass their water through an activated charcoal filter. Charcoal filters generally produce a clean tasting water. Reverse osmosis units produce water clean enough to do surgery with... it also makes great coffee. Whatever method you choose, the point is to try and avoid using the water right out of the tap.

The ideal temperature of the water is 196° - 204°F. This can be achieved by bringing your water to a boil, remove from heat, and wait one minute. This will give you the desired target temperature.

Coffee Makers

There are various schools of thought on what is the best apparatus for making coffee. We are not going to talk about espresso machines here, but we plan on having a section for that in the near future.

The top methods for making coffee are the French Press and manual drip; sometimes simply referred to as the "Melita" for the company that made them popular.

French Press - Preheat the pot and plunger with hot water.
Add 1 tablespoon coffee for each 6 ounce cup to the glass cylinder.
Slowly pour the water into the cylinder and stir the grounds.
Set the plunger on top of the cylinder and steep 4 minutes.
Press plunger down slowly (if the plunger does not press down easily, try a slightly coarser grind.)
Allow sediment to settle for 30 seconds before pouring.

Chemex - The Chemex Coffeemaking System was developed to achieve one result: brew a perfect cup of coffee everytime. The keystone to the Chemex method is the fractional extraction of only the desirable parts of the coffee bean. Fractional extraction at 200 degrees F. leaves the coffee fats and bitter elements in the coffee grounds, not in your cup. Chemex-Bonded filters make this possible. They are 20 to 30 percent heavier than other filters and filter out all sediment. They have been specifically designed to give balanced performance with the Chemex Coffeemaker. The filter combines a very fine grain with the right filtration speed (not too slow, not too fast) which promotes proper infusion. The filter is designed not to burst under the weight of the liquid during infusion, and to not break when lifting out the grinds. No other coffee filter is made to the Chemex specifications.

Manual Drip - Preheat the carafe or cup with hot water.
Add coffee to the filter and place it on top of an insulated coffee carafe or cup.
Evenly moisten the grounds (with water off the boil).
Wait a few seconds, then add water to the top of the filter. (For more flavor let the grounds coat the sides of the filter and not settle into the middle).
Remove filter and stir coffee.

Ordinary Coffee Machine - Fill the coffee maker with cold water.
Place a filter into the basket.
Add 1 tablespoon ground coffee for each 6 ounces of water.
Place coffee and filter into the holder, close lid, and turn on the machine.

Percolator - These are to be avoided since they burn the coffee. There is no point in purchasing gourmet coffee if it is going to be used in a percolator.