9 Decision-Making Tips

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Everyone has individual taste. That's why there isn't ONE coffee for everyone. But there are criteria you can use to find your favorite coffee. In this post, we'll give you 9 decision-making tips.

1. Which coffee suits you? Espresso, Moka, or Filter?

If you're sure you only want espresso, you can jump to the "Which coffee for espresso" section.

Every coffee drink also has a psychological and social dimension. An espresso rounds off a delicious meal or provides a lively short break. For a longer conversation, however, a filter coffee or latte macchiato is more suitable.

Espresso

A concentrated espresso feels creamy and thick in the mouth. 7-10% of the drink consists of dissolved coffee particles. A flavor explosion in 25ml.

Filter Coffee

A filter coffee consists of only about 1% dissolved coffee particles and 99% water. It feels tea-like and smooth in the mouth. The taste doesn't explode, but unfolds slowly.

Note where you fall. Espresso or filter? Or in the middle, with Americano or Café Crème

2. Light, medium, or dark roast?

Rule of thumb: The lighter a bean is roasted, the more differences you can taste. The darker the roast, the more similar the different beans become in taste.

Light roasts are more complex and contain sweet, fruity notes. If they are too light, these coffees taste grassy and cereal-like. Dark roasted varieties emphasize chocolaty, roasted notes. Coffees roasted too dark taste burnt.

The range between light and dark roasts is very wide with many sub-nuances. The explanations shorten the complex topic, but they give you a good direction.

3. Coffee beans for your happiness: Arabica or Robusta

There are two dominant raw coffee species: Arabica and Robusta (also called Canephora).

Robusta

Strong, earthy, and full-bodied – that's how you can describe the taste. It has a higher caffeine content and tastes bitterer. It is traded more cheaply and often forms the basis of instant coffees and inexpensive espresso blends. But that doesn't mean anything. Robusta beans or blends are suitable as a strong coffee or as a base for milk-based drinks. However, Robusta beans have developed enormously, especially in the area of post-harvest processing variants, and promise many exciting roasted coffees in the near future.

Arabica

Less bitter, delicate acidity and more complex – that's Arabica. It's good for filter coffees or espressos. It's available as a single origin or as "blends".

4. Which coffee for filter coffee and French Press?

For the French Press or plunger pot, the same coffees can be used as for filter coffees. Since filter coffee consists of only 1% dissolved coffee particles, its flavor variations are more subdued. We recommend lighter roasts, which are excellent for exploring the flavor profiles of different growing regions. Central America or Papua New Guinea, Kenya or Ethiopia – all of this makes a difference in the cup. However, it depends on your own taste! Try, try, try!

5. Which coffee for espresso?

Since espresso is so concentrated, it hardly tolerates any mistakes in preparation. If it's too bitter, that bitterness will permeate you. If it's too sour, it will almost knock your socks off. However, if the espresso is spot on, it's phenomenally delicious!

The art is to integrate the acidity into the espresso and to set all the flavor notes in an interesting, balanced relationship.

What type of espresso drinker are you?

If you like espresso like you would on an Italian vacation, then blends with Robusta content, or pure Robusta coffees, are what you're looking for. They taste dark, rather bitter, and strong. You'll usually find these descriptions on the roasters' packaging. To make the Italian feeling perfect, the extraction should be short and crisp. 7-8 grams of coffee to 15-18ml of beverage.

Slightly longer and more balanced espressos contrast with Italian roasts. These often lighter roasts should be brewed with longer beverage ratios of 1:2.5 or even 1:3. 9 grams of coffee will yield 22.5 or even 27 grams of beverage here. This preparation brings out many nuances and here you can hit the "sweet spot" of the coffee.

6. How to read the coffee label correctly or what you shouldn't buy

The back of coffee packages reads almost as poetically as a love poem. But don't let that fool you. The more precise information you find, the better.

Minimum standards for buying coffee should be the roast date (not older than 2 months), origin information, and the composition of the beans. Beyond that, there can also be notes about the processing, the variety of the coffee type, and even a precise plantation indication.

Unfortunately, this is still no guarantee that you will like the coffee, but only that you have bought a high-quality coffee. Now it's up to you: train your taste buds. Try to taste exactly whether the coffee is too sour or too bitter (this is often confused!). If this doesn't happen due to preparation errors, you can talk to the roaster and include their recommendations. Some roasteries also offer tastings where perfectly prepared coffees can be tried. This way, you'll quickly find your favorite variety near you! If you really want to know, you can also take a sensory training course.

7. Which coffee is healthy and digestible?

Whether coffee is explicitly healthy or unhealthy is a matter of debate. The truth probably lies in the middle. There are health-promoting aspects, as well as potentially harmful ones.

Whether coffee is digestible depends a lot on the quality of the coffee. Coffee should not be picked unripe or overripe. The ripeness of the fruits should be as homogeneous as possible so that subsequent problems (uneven fermentation, etc.) do not occur. Roasting uneven beans is also more difficult. Your coffee should not be roasted too quickly or too lightly. Roasting it too long or too dark also makes it indigestible.

8. The best coffee is freshly ground

One of the most important points, almost at the end. Coffee should be freshly ground before brewing. And by "freshly," we mean really fresh. Grinding the coffee bean makes the coffee extremely susceptible to reactions with its environment. The aroma fades in minutes. The second advantage of fresh grinding is that you can perfectly adjust the grind size and thus the flow rate and extraction of your coffee. So never buy pre-ground coffee, but rather invest in a grinder, enjoy the scent of freshly ground coffee, and prepare perfect drinks.

9. The best coffee in the world

You've probably also heard of the Kopi Luwak cats that eat coffee beans and therefore taste exactly the right degree of ripeness. But this "cat coffee," as well as Moonsooned Malabar or Jamaica Blue Mountains, is above all very, very well marketed. These coffees are not objectively the best in the world, but they have managed to establish themselves on the market as an exclusive luxury good through sometimes bizarre stories. With our tips in this post, however, you will also find very, very good coffees from local roasters that won't break your budget!