Reply #27: Don't feel ignorant...I actually drink instant many mornings. [View All]

[Chan790]

Okay, there's nothing wrong with using a brewer, it's how most people prepare their morning brew. They tend have the same issues over and over again though and that consistency is actually our friend in this case.

The most common issue they have is pretty simple...all tap water contains minerals and other trace elements in solute...from the pipes, from lime and calcium from water-treatment, from added minerals like fluoride. Ever look at the inside of a water kettle or a water heater and see all that built-up chalky minerally scale? It's a mess. The same thing happens to a brewer. Now think about all that oily residue from the coffee, it too collects inside the brewer and it can go rancid and become a gummy mess that holds onto even more scale and those deposits then get deposited into the coffee. There are two solutions to this problem used in coffee-shops: we use filtered water and we run a solution to clean out the build-up daily. For most home brewers, that would be overkill...you can use tap water provided you know that your tap water is fairly clean (the stuff that comes out of my mom's taps back in CT is so limey and hard that it leave chalk-shadows on the dishes. Her tap water is not going to work, as an example) and run a vinegar solution monthly to clean the brewer. (http://www.howtocleanthings.com/how-to-clean-coffee-maker.htm)

That covers pretty much everything from the first set of questions...except the grind ones. I didn't ask what I needed to know very clearly...I'm just trying to make sure you're using the right courseness of grind for your maker. It seems like a dumb thing and I always feel like I'm accusing people of idiocy unfairly to ask it...but I once had someone who wanted to return a brewer I sold them because they thought grind is grind and tried to run their drip-brewer with Turkish (aka. powder) grind and then when it clotted up, nothing came out the bottom and the chamber eventually started to flood out the top were convinced it was my fault for selling them a broken machine. Usually though, it's people either trying to run a drip machine on course (French Press) grind and getting slightly tan water or people trying to run drip on espresso grind and getting something so dark and acrid and bitter that it's undrinkable. So...you're using the right grind for the machine, yes? If your home-grinding, then you probably know that the correct grind is somewhere in the range of medium-fine to medium for a drip brewer.

As for beans, I see a lot of good recommendations so I'm going to let you sort out that on your own and take this in a different direction, pointing you to this blog post on how to compare coffees to determine your likes...mostly pay attention to the "tastes" page, I find it best to actually try coffees the way your drink coffee making the rest of this less-relevant. http://coffeegeek.com/guides/beginnercupping/tastenotes