First Guest Takeover

BowTiedBernard Goes Full ☕️ Autist

Greetings Frens, 🏝

Thank you to everyone for all the feedback and kind words since the Octopod Culinary site launched last Friday. A work in progress… and already tweaking improvements.

In honor of the Premium Coffee Subscription going live, fellow Jungle Denizen BowtiedBernard has kindly agreed to drop a full ☕️ coffee knowledge 💣!

Please, if you haven’t already, sign up for his Substack (currently free) and follow on Twitter for coffee, mindset and other eclectic knowledge drops!

BT-Bernard… it’s all you 🤝

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Hello everyone!

I’m honored that BowTiedOctopod asked me to write a guest post on coffee for his launch. We’ve been in the DM’s since I first burst onto the scene with a coffee thread on Twitter, and have been sharing alpha ever since. 

I’ve written a larger three-part series on coffee on my own Substack (LINK), but this will be a distilled version, perfect for anyone who just ordered a subscription from Octo’s new site (LINK).

I had the pleasure of getting to try both coffees before the subscription went live, I’m particularly partial to the Guatemalan as the cold winds blow through. It’s a cozy drink.

We need to start with the proper framing for coffee. Coffee is as complex in flavor as wine, but often enjoyed like a cocktail. How you drink it is up to you, but I want to show you the whole picture. I’m not a maxi for any method or version of coffee other than good coffee.

This post will show you everything you need to know from the ground up (literally) to find and brew amazing coffee.

Arabica vs. Robusta

These are the two most common bean varieties. Arabica is a naturally sweeter bean, and contains less caffeine, which gives it a more pleasant taste, but they are harder to grow. Robusta has double the natural caffeine and half the natural sugars, so it’s overpoweringly bitter, and easier to grow and much cheaper to produce. Your K-Cups and bottom of the barrel supermarket coffee often have a percentage of Robusta to increase margins. 100% Arabica is the bare minimum for quality.

Buy from a local high-quality roaster and avoid the grocery store. You won’t have to worry about this distinction again.

Terroir

Just like wine, where the coffee is grown will affect the taste. The coffee plant will absorb nutrients and minerals from the soil, and differing quantities will affect the flavors of the coffee bean. I personally drink mostly Central American and East African coffees. 

Higher elevation brings cooler temperatures, and a longer growing season. A longer growing season leads to complex sugar development within each coffee cherry, leaving you with a more intense and distinct flavor in the final drink.

In the chart, the higher in elevation, the more fruity and distinct notes the coffee takes on compared to lower and shorter seasons.

4000 ft and above is my preference, as the flavors become distinct. I recently had a coffee from Mexico that tasted like raspberries, followed by an Ethiopian coffee that tasted like citrus.  

Process

Once coffee cherries are picked, the bean needs to be removed and dried. The two main methods of processing are washed vs. natural.

Washed

The washed method involves peeling the cherries, and soaking the fruit in a tub full of water. This breaks down the layers outside of the bean via fermentation, and floats the spoiled fruit to the top. The beans are removed and dried either by machine or the sun. Washed processing encourages anaerobic fermentation, and beans often described as having a clean and bright taste.

Natural

The natural process is similar to cacao pod processing. The berries are laid to ferment aerobically and dry in the sun. This gives these coffees a funk to them rather than the clear distinct flavor of the wash, as more variables are in the ferment. These have a less consistent flavor between batches as the weather changes compared to the washed process.

There are other methods, but are mostly variations of these two. A favorite variation of mine is the honeyed process, which gives an extra sweetness to the drink. 

Roasting

Light, medium, and dark. In roasting terminology, first crack, second crack, and beyond the second crack.

As you roast coffee, the coffee goes through the Maillard Reaction. Sugars and amino acids begin to break down and caramelize, browning and become sweeter. This is the same concept as what happens as with searing meat, or a more complex version of the same process when making caramel. Please note that caffeine content remains the same at any level. 

Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts have set the American standard for coffee as dark, strong, and needing milk and sugar to tone down. Only recently via third wave coffee have lighter roasts and higher quality begun to shift the focus. 

Each roast, based on the Maillard reaction, will have distinct tasting notes. A light roast should have fruit, nut, or spice taste. A medium roast has more of a nuttier earthy taste, and a dark roast has spicy, cacao, and bitter notes. The longer you roast, the less subtle and delicate flavors you have. The roasting brings out the flavors in the natural sugars, leading to the distinct flavors. However, when roasting, beans begin to create more oils and chemicals that taste bitter and metallic, and sugars can burn the longer the roast. That metallic flavor is what most people think of when they describe coffee as acidic. If your coffee tastes like pennies, you’ve done something disasterous.

As soon as coffee is roasted, it begins to oxidize, and will replace good flavors with a fishy taste. A good coffee will be roasted to order (like Octopod’s!), and should be stored in an airtight or vacuum container at home. 

A brief note on decaf, there are two methods, one involving chemicals, and another that uses green coffee extract (Swiss Mountain Water method). I don’t drink decaf, and there’s no taste difference, but I prefer to stick with natural decaffeination via green coffee extract for any health reasons.

Brewing

We’ve covered a lot, but now you get to drink your coffee. How you want to brew determines what beans you should buy. The only one you shouldn’t drink is drip coffee. Drip coffee is often over-extracted, full of bitter oils, and uses bottom of the barrel grounds. And that says nothing about the chemicals that leech into your drink from the plastic coffee pods in a Keurig.

A few tips before we begin: 

Your water should be filtered, and 200F, not boiling. Boiling water will make your coffee very bitter. 

Purchase a burr grinder, which gives consistent ground size every time. Using the wrong ground size will result in either weak coffee, or over extracted coffee that is full of bitter oils. In general, the longer the steep time, the larger the bean grind.

A coffee “cup” depends on the brewing method. Some are stronger than others. Being stuck in the imperial system doesn’t lend to easy understanding. One cup of espresso has a different volume than one cup of cold brew. The strength of the drink determines cup size.

Metal vs. Paper

Thicker paper in a pour over is designed to catch all the bitter oils. This leads to a thinner drink vs. a thicker cup when using a metal filter. If you go the paper route, I’ve found that unbleached filters can leave you with a papery taste, but bleached doesn’t. I prefer bleached.

If you drink 3 cups of coffee a day, (200mg of caffeine), you’ll use exactly 6oz of beans a week. A 12oz bag will last two weeks for a solo drinker on a reasonable amount of caffeine. 

Recipes

Espresso or Percolator:

Medium to dark roast

Fine grind

Fill the basket with 18-21g of grounds (machine dependent) 

French Press: 

Light to Medium roast

Medium grind

Ratio: 1tbsp (8g) ground coffee to 4oz water (1 French press cup)

Pour over:

Light Roast

Medium Grind

1tbsp (8g) of coffee to 5oz water (1 pour over cup)

Cold Brew:

Light Roast

Coarse grind

1g of coffee to 8oz water (1:2 or 1:4 for concentrate) direct weight

Steep 12-24 hours in the fridge

Thank you!

I wrote this post while sipping on a cup of the Guatemalan coffee from Octo’s subscription. Two bags of high-quality single origin a month for $45 is a price that’s hard to beat. His dedication to excellence doesn’t stop at his food.

Pick up a subscription now to get a new set of delicious coffees delivered to your door every month.

If you want to hear more from me, head over to Twitter @BowTiedBernard where I post about coffee, culture, and how we can shape the future. 

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Bernard absolutely crushed it! Many thanks to him, and get on the Bernard Substack and Twitter feed 🙌

Don’t forget, Thanksgiving is coming up soon… next week the Turkey Day guide will drop in 2 parts… and got something tasty for you all this Friday!

Until next time 🥂