Brew guides

Good coffee is mostly four things: fresh beans, the right grind, the right ratio, and water that is hot but not boiling. Get those roughly right and the rest is preference.

We grind to order, so choose your method at the point of ordering and we will match it. If you own a grinder, buy whole bean and grind just before you brew. It makes more difference than almost anything else.

Coffee

Water

Just off the boil, around 92 to 96°C. If you have no thermometer, boil the kettle and wait thirty seconds. Filtered water if your tap water is hard, since heavily mineralised water flattens the flavour and furs the kettle.

Cafetière

Order ground for cafetière, which is a coarse grind roughly the texture of sea salt.

• Use 60g of coffee per litre of water, so about 15g per mug.
• Pour, stir once, and put the lid on with the plunger up.
• Leave it four minutes.
• Press down slowly, and decant straight away. Coffee left sitting on the grounds keeps extracting and turns bitter.

Filter and pour over

Order ground for filter, a medium grind like granulated sugar.

• Again 60g per litre, adjusted to taste.
• Rinse the paper filter with hot water first and discard it.
• Pour a little water to wet the grounds and wait thirty seconds while it bubbles. That is the coffee degassing, and it is a sign of freshness.
• Pour the rest in stages. The whole brew should take about three minutes.

Espresso

Order ground for espresso, a fine grind. Espresso is the least forgiving method, and a domestic grinder gives you far more control.

• 18g of coffee in, about 36g of liquid out.
• Aim for 25 to 30 seconds from the moment the pump starts.
• Running too fast and tasting sour means grind finer. Running too slow and tasting harsh means grind coarser. Change one thing at a time.

Which coffee for which method

Our product pages say what each coffee suits, and those notes come from the roaster. As a rough guide, the darker blends stand up to milk and make the strongest espresso, while the single origins reward filter brewing where their fruit has room to show.

Storage

Airtight, cool, out of the light. Not the fridge, and not the freezer once the bag is open, because coffee takes on other smells and condensation ruins it. Buy little and often rather than a kilo you will still be drinking in three months.

Tea

One bag or one heaped teaspoon of loose leaf per cup. The variable that matters most is temperature, since green and delicate teas scorch at boiling point.

• English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Darjeeling, Chai. Freshly boiled water, three to five minutes. Milk optional on Earl Grey and a matter of strong opinion on Darjeeling.
• Green and Jasmine. Around 80°C, two to three minutes. Boiling water makes them bitter.
• Chamomile, Peppermint, Rooibos, Red Berry, Lemon and Ginger. Freshly boiled water, five minutes or longer. These are hard to over brew.

For clubs pouring at volume, warm the pot first and brew slightly stronger, since urn tea sits before it is drunk. Our club page covers catering quantities.

Hot chocolate

These are real chocolate rather than a powder mix, so they need melting properly rather than stirring into cold milk.

• Beamer and Ramp. Melt 30 to 40g with a small amount of hot water to form a paste, then add hot milk. Ramp is white chocolate curls, and also works for mochas and for baking.
• Jaffa. A sweet powder rather than drops. Mix 20 to 30g into a paste and add hot milk.

Quantities are per 10oz of milk, which is a generous mug. Those figures are the ones on our own packaging.

A note on these guides

Our coffee is roasted by Limini Coffee, who publish their own brewing calculator if you want to work to exact weights for a particular batch size.

These recipes are our starting points and are awaiting a final check by the roaster. (not yet confirmed) If you find something better, we would genuinely like to hear about it.