How To Brew The Cleanest Coffee At Home
Photo Credit to Woon Man
Serving clean coffee is the No. 1 priority for the best roasters & cafes around the world 🌏 It’s the only thing that differentiates the best cafes from big chains and other cafes!
Clean coffee means coffee free from any defects, made with sparkling clean dust-free brewing equipment & brew with precise extraction for the sweetest cuppa 😍
While it sounds kinda complicated, it’s actually super easy and everyone can do it at home! Here are a couple of top tips for you to brew the cleanest coffee by yourself at home 😉 Let's go!
Get Only Specialty Grade Coffee
First thing first, only buy specialty grade coffee that has minimal to zero defects!
Lower range commercial-grade coffees have loads of defects like insect damage, fungus, unripe beans that will ruin the coffee. Of course, these defects are not good for your body too 🤮
Specialty grade coffee went through several sorting to eliminate defect. Terms like Triple Pick means that that coffee went through 3 times of sort picking by manual labour. Imagine all the hard labour that goes into sorting clean coffee
Besides, all our roasters do a final sorting after roasting to keep defects as low as possible too. This ensures you only get the best beans in the bag!
Do a final sorting before you send the beans into grinder
Always do a final sorting before you grind the beans, especially for filter coffee!
It's real easy. Once you pour & weight your beans, just take a very close look at every single bean that you are going to brew and pick out any ugly looking & uneven colour defect beans 👀 This ensures zero defect goes into the grinder & your coffee!
This step only takes 1 minute max & the result is absolutely rewarding!
Always flush your grinder before grinding the beans
Before grinding the coffee beans that you are about to brew, grind about 5-10 coffee beans to get rid of the grounds & fines leftover from the previous brew. We called this flushing your grinder!
Coffee beans are brittle and easily produce tiny particles or powder like fines. It's inevitable that there are some fines left in your grinder every time you grind your coffee beans.
If you are as picky as we are, you definitely don't want to taste the grounds left since yesterday. Who wants to drink stale coffee right 🤢
Deep clean your espresso grinder regularly
This is especially important if you are changing coffee beans like grinding for cupping or cafe filter bar operation ⚠️ If flushing is not done properly & sufficiently, you’ll make a wrong cupping assessment. The filter coffee will be off for sure 😢
Ideally, you want to use a blower to blow off the internal part of grinder in every grind. This will further eliminate all the grounds inside the grinder and keep fines to minimal 🙌🏼
As for espresso grinder, flushing some beans may not be sufficient as espresso ground coffee is too fine and easily stuck inside the grinder 😮
The best solution for espresso grinder is to do a total deep cleanup to eliminate every single fines. You can also use a vacuum cleaner (with dedicated vacuum adapter for hygiene reasons) to do a quick cleaning 😉
Follow the recommended brewing recipe
Always brew with recommended brewing recipe provided by roasters to ensure you get the right extraction & sweetest coffee every time! 😉
As every coffee beans & roasters have different roasting profile & characteristics, there is no one brewing recipe suit all. It's simply impossible.
This is especially important for espresso brewing! By following the recommended brewing recipe, you can keep the guess work minimal. Also you keep the wastage down too!
Deep clean your grinder regularly
Cleaning your coffee grinder is the most important maintenance you have to do on regular basis. You must do it at least once a month ☝🏼
Clean grinders not only ensure your coffee is clean and delicious at all times, it also prolongs the life of the grinder’s motor 🙌🏼
Cumulated fines are stuck on the burr and give resistance to the motor to perform at its ideal performance. This slows down the grinding speed and of course, coffee tastes dirty, bitter & horrible aftertaste 🤮
Look at how dirty a grinder can be
If your coffee tasting unpalatable aftertaste, that means your grinder is dirty and it’s time for a deep cleaning! Here are a couple of grinder cleaning tips for you 😉
1. We highly recommend having a dedicated brush for your grinder. This is for hygiene reasons & you can easily brush off all the fines. Food grade brush is the best!
2. Use a toothpick or skewer to pick out all the fines that are stuck in the burr. A wooden toothpick is best and you can dispose of it after each use.
3. Use a tissue to wipe off all fines & oils inside the grinder. The kitchen towel works fine too.
4. A vacuum cleaner is a great tool to speed up the cleaning! We highly encourage to have a specially dedicated adapter just for grinder for hygiene purposes 🤗
5. Once a month cleaning is a MUST for 1-2 cups daily. If you brew more coffee on daily basis, monthly or bi-monthly is highly recommended. For cafes, please clean them every day!
6. Pick a lovely weekend afternoon & slowly take your time to clean your grinder! We like to listen to an record album while doing the cleaning 🎶
7. Once done, pick the best coffee you have and enjoy the cleanest tasting coffee 😍 Worlds Best Coffee is the best choice!
Clean your brewing equipment
Maintain clean brewing equipment on daily basis, especially espresso machines! Any dirt, stains and oils will affect the taste of your coffee 🥴
The espresso shower screen is a must clean every single time after you brew espresso! If you don't clean it, you'll be drinking the brewed ground coffee left yesterday (or don't know when 🤮)
This also includes the water kettle that you boil water with. Cumulated limescale on the heating element of water kettle will neutralise acidity in filter coffee. For that, just soak with lots of baking soda and some water will do 😉
Look at the cumulated coffee stains and oils on shower screen
Change your water filter once a year
Lastly, change your water filter once a year. If you have a main water filter tank, do back flush once a month. For cafe, do it every week!
A clean water ensure you get clean coffee & drinking water. If you don’t have a water filter, try DIY your water for coffee 🤓
These are the pro tips from the best cafes in town. If you brew lots of coffee every day or cafe operation, espresso machine & grinder cleaning have to be done on daily basis (weekly backflush for water filter).
As a rule of thumb, clean equipments makes clean coffee! Make sure you have every thing clean and let's enjoy delicious clean coffee together. Happy brewing!
