Sure, we get it, we make coffee making look easy. Not surprisingly, it took a lot of R&D, heartache and a lot of bad tasting coffee to get to this point. That doesn’t mean you need to do the same. We’ve done the hard work, you reap the benefits.
If you’re looking to step up your coffee making at home, here are our top 3 single cup brew methods that you all can easily do with some Ironsmith trick of the trade tips to step it up to the next level. You’ll probably impress your friends while you’re at it.
3. French Press
This method gets a bad rap. Not because it’s a bad method, it's just misunderstood. Doesn’t matter what kind of French press you’re using (you can totally use this French Press) , as long as you follow a few rules:
- Use anywhere between 15:1 to 17:1 water to coffee ratio. Confusing? If you have a scale, 15:1 would be 300g water and 20g coffee. The smaller the ratio, the stronger your coffee will be.
- Use the highest quality water you can get your hands on. No, your Brita filter won't cut it. Spring water is best if you want to just buy water.
- Grind the coffee around what you would for a pour over (trust us)
- Once you’ve added the off boiled water and coffee together, give it a few stirs with a spoon to agitate it just a bit.
- Steep for 4 min and plunge
2. Pour Over
This method probably gets the most hype. Yeah, it looks cool and instantly makes someone look like they know what they are doing when they set up their station. Trust us, it's not as easy at it looks. Out of all the brew methods, this is probably the most unforgiving, but if you follow these steps, you’ll be brewing some of the best cups of coffee you’ve ever had. Here's our favorite.
- We prefer a 16:1 ratio for pour overs. Stick to this with a slight caveat. Use 324g water and 18g coffee. Do that math and you'll see that 324 is more than a 16:1 ratio. That’s because the coffee will hang onto about 2g of water per 1g of coffee weight. We're compensating for this. Just do it
- Again, use the highest quality water you can get your hands on. If you really want to geek out, use water with at least 120ppm CaCO3 (water composition is another post)
- Don’t be afraid to agitate. Water cools down very quickly, even after you boil it. Everything acts as a heat sink. Agitating helps extract more, which means you can make a sweeter more balanced cup of coffee.
1. AeroPress
Probably our favorite method of making a single cup. Why? It’s simple, fast, but makes an incredible cup of coffee. It’s so popular that there are even World AeroPress competitions. Enough said. You can buy one here. Here’s how you use it:
- Use around 15g coffee, ground finer than you would for a pour over with 210g off boil water. This is a stronger ratio which will help with the extraction in a short period
- After adding water, stir 3 times and attach plunger but don’t press. Set timer for 1 minute. After timer, stir 3 more times and plunge over a cup.
- Enjoy:)
Most importantly, definitely use the best coffee you can get your hands on. Luckily, we got the coffee you need here!
photo: @kaidiaz