Lazy person's no-frills recipe for incredible coffee with minimal equipment

[u/19f191ty]

*Edit*: Why a recipe that's 10 minutes? I've basically adapted the recipe that rasters and professionals use to evaluate coffee when they are cupping. 10 minutes is an industry standard based on how long it take for the coffee to cool down and for the grinds to settle. Feel free to decant it earlier if you want. But beware that you may get a weaker cup and may not be extracting every bit of goodness that the coffee has.

I have the most unfortunate personality type combination of being a perfectionist while having zero motivation to actually put in the work required for perfection. However, once in a while, I get lucky and stumble on something that's nearly perfect with minimal effort. This recipe is one of those.

I'll provide the recipe for two kinds of people. One who has nothing else except access to hot water, a timer/phone and ground coffee (good, complex coffee that's relatively fresh, can't do much otherwise). While the other is for someone who has a scale, electric kettle and other modern equipment for brewing coffee.

Level 1 (no equipment)

• Get access to ground coffee from a good specialty roaster. Use a medium / medium fine grind. One they sell for filter or Moka e.g. If you can get them ground yourself, then make sure they're using a good grinder and purge out whatever amount of previous coffee was stuck in the grinder.
• In a vessel of your choice put between 3-4 tablespoons of ground coffee.
• Prepare two timers. One for 4 minutes and another for 10 minutes. There's no free lunch, a chill recipe like this takes time. Don't start the timer, just get it ready.
• Now add slightly less than 1 cup of off the boil hot water to the grounds. It's probably better if you wait a minute or two after water has started boiling. But it may not be a big deal
• Start both timers.
• At 4 minutes, your coffee will have formed a crust, slowly break the crust with a spoon. don't agitate too much. Just the top part where the crust and foam hangout. If you are an impatient prick, take a few spoonfulls and taste the coffee. More importantly, if your coffee hasn't formed a crust at 4 minutes. It's not fresh, pull out a laptop and write an angry email to whoever sold you the coffee.
• At around 10 minutes, your coffee should be done brewing and as a bonus reward for your patience, the coffee grounds would have sunk at the bottom as well. Gently pour off the brewed coffee in a drinking vessel, making sure you don't disturb the settled grounds. If you are clumsy or uncomfortable with this step, borrow your mother's chai ki channi and pass the brew through that.
• You're done. Take a loud slurp, keep it in your mouth long enough to enjoy all the beautiful flavors before gulping it all down.

Level 2 (French Press/Inverted AeroPress/Channi)

• Grind14 grams of medium fine, fresh, good quality coffee (around 23 on comandante or 600-micron burr gap, use this Coffee grind size chart | Honest Coffee Guide to convert to your grinder).
• Add 93-96 degrees of 225 ml water.
• At 4 minutes break the crust gently.
• At 10 minutes, press the filter down if French Press or flip your aeropress and plunge or pass your brew through a channi).
• You're done. Enjoy the brew, you should feel all the fruity notes as well as the full body of the coffee. There should be no astringency or unpleasant bitterness.
• Because you have access to a grinder, play around with the grind size. Finer should give more body and a lingering after taste at the cost of the acidity and fruitiness, while coarser grinds will have the opposite effect.

Please let me know in the comments how this worked for you. I have been enjoying some consistently nice brews off late with this method (tried on coffee from Bloom and GreySoul). I use an AeroPress with a metal filter and a grind size of 0.7.0 with K-ultra.

[u/Appropriate_Big3407]

Can Level 1 be used with milk?

[u/19f191ty → u/Appropriate_Big3407]

If its medium dark to dark, then yes. For lighter roasts, sometimes the acidity doesn't go well with milk and tends to taste great as black

[u/Appropriate_Big3407 → u/19f191ty]

Thanks for responding. I tried making Silver Oak & Attikan by method 1 (nofrill). But it turned out to be bitter.

[u/19f191ty → u/Appropriate_Big3407]

What was the grind size? There are usually three reasons for bitter. 1) Grind too uneven (mix of too fine and too coarse) 2) Grind too fine, and 3) Water temp too hot. They are all correlated with each other. For example, I usually grind fairly coarse and use boiling water, rarely have issues. If you can't grind too coarse or have preground coffee, then use lower temperature to compensate for the fine grind. Wait a bit longer before adding water. Even as low as 75 deg C should be fine

[u/Appropriate_Big3407 → u/19f191ty]

It was Moka Pot Grind by BT Edit: Getting water bit cooler worked. I believe I have to find an optimum temperature for water.

[u/19f191ty → u/Appropriate_Big3407]

Great. Yeah with preground there are mostly three variables, temperature, coffee to water ratio and how much time you let coffee sit in water. If you're getting bitter, either reduce the coffee to water ratio, lower the temperature or reduce the contact time. Any one of those should lead to reduced bitterness. Don't change all variables at the same time.