9 Decision Tips

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Every person has individual taste. That's why there isn't ONE coffee for everyone. However, there are criteria you can use to find your favorite coffee. In this post, we give you 9 decision tips.

1. Which coffee is right for you? Espresso, Moka, or Filter?

If you're sure you only want espresso, you can jump to the "Which coffee for espresso" section.

Every coffee drink has a psychological and social dimension. An espresso rounds off a delicious meal or provides a refreshing short break. For a longer conversation, a filter coffee or latte macchiato is more suitable.

Espresso

A concentrated espresso feels creamy and thick in the mouth. 7-10% of the drink consists of dissolved coffee particles. A flavor explosion in 25ml.

Filter Coffee

A filter coffee consists of only about 1% dissolved coffee particles and 99% water. It feels soft and tea-like in the mouth. The flavor doesn't explode but unfolds slowly.

Remember which category you fall into. Espresso or filter? Or somewhere in the middle, like Americano or Café Crème

2. Light, medium, or dark roasted?

Rule of thumb: The lighter a bean is roasted, the more differences you can taste. The darker the roast, the more the different beans taste alike.

Light roasts are more complex and contain sweet, fruity notes. If roasted too light, these coffees taste grassy and grainy. Dark roasted varieties emphasize chocolatey, roasty notes. Over-roasted coffees taste burnt.

The range between light and dark roasts is very wide with many nuances. These descriptions simplify the complex topic, but they give you a good direction.

3. Coffee Beans for Your Happiness: Arabica or Robusta

There are two dominant green coffee species: Arabica and Robusta (also called Canephora).

Robusta

Strong, earthy, and full-bodied—that's how you can describe the taste. It has higher caffeine content and tastes more bitter. It's traded at a lower price and often forms the base for instant coffees and inexpensive espresso blends. But that doesn't have to mean anything. As a strong coffee or as a base for milk-based drinks, robusta beans or blends are suitable. However, robusta beans have developed enormously, especially in terms of processing methods after harvest, and promise many exciting roasted coffees in the near future.

Arabica

Less bitter, fine acidity, and complex—that's Arabica. It's good for filter coffees or espressos. You can find it as a single origin or as blends.

4. Which Coffee for Filter Coffee and French Press?

For French press or plunger pots, you can use the same coffees as for filter coffee. Since filter coffee consists of only 1% dissolved coffee particles, its flavor variations are more subtle. We recommend light roasts, with which you can explore the flavor profiles of different growing regions very well. Central America or Papua New Guinea, Kenya or Ethiopia—all of it makes a difference in the cup. However, it depends on your personal taste! Try, try, try!

5. Which Coffee for Espresso?

Since espresso is so concentrated, it forgives hardly any errors in preparation. If it's too bitter, that bitterness cuts right through you. If it's too sour, it nearly knocks your socks off. But if the espresso is just right, then it's phenomenally delicious!

The art is to integrate the acidity into the espresso and bring all the flavor notes into an interesting, balanced relationship.

What type of espresso are you?

If you like espresso as if from an Italian vacation, then blends with robusta content, or pure robusta coffees, are what you're looking for. They taste dark, rather bitter, and strong. These descriptions are usually also found on roastery packaging. To perfect the Italian feel, the shot should be short and sharp. 7-8 grams of coffee to 15-18ml of drink.

Slightly longer and more balanced espressos stand in contrast to Italian roasts. These often lighter roasts should be brewed with longer ratios of 1:2.5 or even 1:3. 9 grams of coffee become 22.5 or even 27 grams of drink. This preparation brings out many nuances, and here you can hit the "sweet spot" of your coffee.

6. Reading the Coffee Label Correctly or What You Shouldn't Buy

The back of coffee packages reads almost as poetically as a love poem. But don't be fooled by that. The more precise information you find, the better.

Minimum standards when buying coffee should be the roast date (no older than 2 months), origin information, and the bean composition. Beyond that, there can be information about processing, the coffee variety, and even specific plantation details.

Unfortunately, this is still not a guarantee that you'll like the coffee, only that you've bought a high-quality coffee. Now it's up to you: train your palate. Try to taste precisely whether the coffee is too sour or too bitter (this is often confused!). If this doesn't happen due to preparation errors, you can talk to the roaster and consider their recommendations. Some roasteries also offer cuppings where perfectly prepared coffees can be tested. That way you'll quickly find your favorite variety nearby! If you want to know for sure, you can also take a sensory training course.

7. Which Coffee Is Healthy and Easy on the Stomach?

Whether coffee is explicitly healthy or unhealthy is a matter of debate. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. There are health-promoting aspects as well as potentially harmful ones.

Whether the coffee is easy on the stomach depends a lot on the quality of the coffee. Coffee should not be picked unripe or overripe. The ripeness of the fruit should be as homogeneous as possible so that follow-up problems (uneven fermentation, etc.) don't occur. Roasting unevenly sized beans is also more difficult. Your coffee should not be roasted too quickly or too lightly. Also, roasting that's too long or too dark makes it hard on the stomach.

8. The Best Coffee Is Freshly Ground

One of the most important points near the end. Coffee should be ground fresh before brewing. And really fresh, at that. Grinding the coffee bean makes the coffee extremely susceptible to reactions with its environment. The aroma disappears within minutes. The second advantage of fresh grinding is that you can perfectly adjust the grind size and thus the flow rate and extraction of your coffee. So never buy pre-ground coffee; instead, invest in a grinder, enjoy the aroma of freshly ground coffee, and prepare perfect drinks.

9. The Best Coffee in the World

You've probably already heard about the Kopi Luwak cats that eat coffee beans and thus detect exactly the right degree of ripeness. But this "cat coffee," just like Monsooned Malabar or Jamaica Blue Mountains, is primarily very well marketed. These coffees aren't objectively the best in the world; rather, they've managed to establish themselves on the market as exclusive luxury goods through partly bizarre stories. But with our tips in this post, you'll also find very good coffees from local roasters that won't break your budget!