Coffee Bean Basics

Coffee Beans play one of the biggest roles in making great tasting coffee.
Using high quality, fresh coffee beans will give you the best chance at making delicious coffee but these aren't the only factors, there are several hundred different factors that determin the taste of your coffee and we will aim to cover the top most important ones here.

How coffee is graded

When it comes to grading coffee beans there are hundereds of different ways that coffee roasters categorise their coffees, in fact here at Basic Barista we categories coffee as Filter Roast, Espresso Roast and Exotic Coffees.
But as you can imagine there is no continuity across coffee roasters, so to assess and score coffee there is a universal way that coffee quality is graded, it's called 'points' where coffee is scored based off a chart of 100 points (100 points is the highest level of quality).

What is Specialty coffee?

When coffee is graded on this points system we have 2 main categories, 'Specialty coffee' and 'commodity coffee'.
A coffee can be considered 'Specialty coffee' if it scores 80 points or higher. Anything less than 80 points and this coffee can be considered 'commodity coffee'.

DIFFERENT ROASTS

COFFEE PROCESSING

  • WASHED PROCESS

    Washed coffees (aka wet process) use water to remove the coffee seed from the cherry. This has the least amount of contact with the fruit and has a clean and often creamy taste. Washed coffees are commonly known to carry more flavours from the origin, terroir and variety rather than the processing flavours.

    TRY A WASHED COFFEE 

  • NATURAL PROCESS

    Natural coffees were popularised by producing countries that did not have as much access to water, this processing technique has since been adopted all over the world and tends to carry through a rich fruity flavour from the extended contact with the coffee cherries.

    TRY A NATURAL COFFEE 

  • FERMENTED

    There are many coffees that fall into this third category of coffee processing, the most popular being Anaerobic fermentation and Carbonic Fermentation (CM).
    Expect funky fruity notes and an intense alcohol / boozey taste

    TRY A FERMENTED COFFEE 
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EXOTIC COFFEE BEANS

Exotic coffees are rare and flavourful beans that every now and then we are lucky enough to be able to stock something very special.

POUR OVER COFFEE QUADRANT

READ FULL BREW GUIDE

  • POUR OVER RATIO:

    Generally Pour Over and Filter Coffee have a water to coffee ratio of 1:15.
    Although it is important to know that some coffee tastes better at a lower or higher ratio and that numbers are just a guide.

    Read More 

  • POUR OVER BREW TIME

    Depending on a range of different factors your pour over coffee might be really quick and only last 1 minute or can last up to 10 minutes. Most pour overs generally take around 2-4 minutes and consistently long pour overs may be a result of stalling.

    Read about Stalling 

  • WATER FOR POUR OVER COFFEE

    The hotter your water is the higher amount of extraction will occur. Put simply, this is all you need to know but when it comes down to dialling-in your coffee you can change your water temperature to change the flavour of your coffee.

  • BREW METHODS

    The method, technique and overall recipe you use to brew your pour over coffee is known as your 'Brew Method'.
    Depending on how many pours your use, the level of agitation when pouring and the brewing equipment you use will all determin how your coffee will taste.

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READ FULL BREW GUIDE

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