USE THE COFFEE COMPASS TO DIAL IN THE ULTIMATE FILTER BREW
The coffee compass is a helpful tool that can help you optimize brewing conditions for a new coffee you’re trying!
Sampling unique and exciting beans is one of the great joys of making coffee at home, but it’s not without challenges. Every time you work with a new coffee, you need to adjust the brewing variables to get a balanced cup.
A coffee compass can take some guesswork out of this process, which is particularly important if you have a limited supply of specialty coffee. Read on to see how it works and how useful it can be for your brewing.
What Is A Coffee Compass?
A major upside of manual brewing is that you control all the variables that affect the taste of your coffee – water temperature, grind size, coffee-to-water ratio, etc. The downside is that it can be confusing to discover precisely what needs adjusting to brew a perfect cup.
Years of barista experience are incredibly valuable in this regard, but barring that, think of a coffee compass as your brewing cheat sheet.
The compass tells you exactly what needs to be changed based on what you taste, even if you don’t know which variables affect coffee characteristics (1). The goal is the ideal balance of sweetness, bitterness, and acidity.
It’s easy to say that you don’t like the taste of a cup of coffee, but identifying exactly why you don’t like it is more challenging. Is it too acidic? Too bitter? Too strong or too weak? The compass has your answers, so let’s learn how to use it.
How To Use The Coffee Compass: Step-By-Step
First things first, start with good coffee beans. Adjusting your brew ratio or extraction time won’t solve problems caused by stale or poor-quality coffee.
I know the compass looks a little overwhelming at first glance, but once you get the hang of it, I promise it’s a useful and flexible tool to help you nail the perfect brew. Here’s how:
- Brew your coffee using any manual method, like pour over, French press, or Aeropress.
- Taste the coffee, paying attention to negative flavors in particular.
- Look for the flavor on the map. This is where you should place the center of the compass.
- Find the arrow that points to the center of the green zone.
- Follow the instructions on that arrow for your next brew.
- Repeat the process, moving the compass for each brew until you get the flavor you want.
Tips For Making Changes
How you implement these changes depends on the brew method and your available equipment. For example, it’s better to fix an under-extracted French press coffee by increasing the brew time by 30 seconds rather than opting for a finer grind, which might yield a silty cup.
Ratios are generally flexible across manual brewing methods. However, you might be restricted by the physical limits of the brewer – such as with an AeroPress – or by the amount of coffee you want to brew. The best strategy is to keep the amount of water constant and adjust the amount of coffee as per the directions on the arrow.
Make sure that you measure your coffee by weight. This is the only way to get a consistent measurement, as different types and roasts of coffee beans vary considerably in density.
Finally, although water temperature is one factor that affects extraction, you don’t need to worry about it when using this compass. It’s best to keep to the recommended coffee brewing temperature of between 195 and 205℉ and tweak the other key variables.
Other Ways To Use The Coffee Compass
The compass isn’t just for fixing issues with your coffee extraction; it can also help you to fine-tune your brew to your tastes.
…using different brew ratios for the same coffee is like playing the same song with different arrangements.
Even if your brew is in the green zone of the map, you can still use the compass to explore new characteristics of the beans or bring out the flavors you like best. If you’re not accustomed to picking out specific notes in your coffee, you might want to check out the coffee flavor wheel first.
Final Thoughts
The coffee compass is a valuable tool for any coffee lover, but it’s especially useful for anyone newly passionate about specialty coffee. Whether you prefer classic blends or exotic single origins, it explains how to adapt your brewing ratio and grind setting to extract the perfect cup.
Give it a try, and let me know in the comments if you found it helpful for dialing in your morning java!
FAQs
The ideal coffee-to-water ratio for brewing pour over coffee is 1:18, according to the Specialty Coffee Association. This is a suggested starting point that will likely need to be altered slightly for the individual beans and your taste.
The coffee compass in this article is for manual coffee methods only, including filter coffee and immersion techniques. There is an espresso compass, but it’s a little more complicated (2). Espresso machines have less flexibility when it comes to coffee dose and grind size compared to manual brewing methods.
Yes, the coffee compass works for decaf and half-caff coffee beans, provided you’re brewing coffee and not espresso. The only time it isn’t particularly helpful is when brewing flavored beans. The chemical flavor additives tend to mask what’s really going on with the extraction.
If you were thinking, “There should be an app for that,” you’re not wrong. Barista Hustle offers a coffee compass web app to automate the process (3). Just don’t confuse it with the Compass Coffee app in the Google Play and Apple stores; that’s for a particular coffee shop.
References
- Boydell, H. (2018, November 22). Understanding coffee extraction for your perfect cup. Perfect Daily Grind. Retrieved from https://perfectdailygrind.com/2018/11/understanding-coffee-extraction-for-your-perfect-cup/
- The Espresso Compass. Barista Hustle. (2021, September 28). Retrieved from https://www.baristahustle.com/blog/the-espresso-compass/
- Barista Hustle. (2021, September 4). The Coffee Compass. Retrieved from https://www.baristahustle.com/coffee-compass/
