Is there anything more contentious on the food web than the rules for making great coffee at home?
Use a percolator. Actually, use a French press. French press? That’s for n00bs — obviously, if you’re not drinking pour-over you might as well be using a straw to suck water out of a mud puddle.
And so it goes.
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But British coffee shop Colonna and Smalls thinks they’ve finally cracked the code to perfect coffee. Working with chemists at the University of Bath, they discovered that the key to a smooth cuppa joe is freezing coffee beans before you grind them.
Apparently, colder beans break into more even particles when they’re ground, leaving you with a more consistent cup of coffee.
Of course, not everyone agrees. After doing a series of taste tests, Serious Eats concluded that coffee beans are best ground and brewed when fresh — but that the second-best option was to freeze coffee grounds in an airtight container just after grinding them. In their taste test, the coffee made from frozen whole beans that were then ground was lackluster. So, like, the opposite of what Colonna and Smalls said.
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And of course, there’s conflict with Serious Eats’ findings too — Stumptown Coffee Roasters says “Whatever you do, don’t grind and freeze” your coffee beans. It’s almost confusing enough for a girl to throw her French press out the window and just head to the nearest café, but that would be overreacting, right?
Instead, figure out which method works best for your palate. It seems like there might be something to this freeze-before-or-after-you-grind thing, but each method produces markedly different results, so try both and see which you like best. After all, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that you like the coffee you drink every morning, no matter how it’s prepared.
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