Silver always says that coffee is the best thing in the world. Right after me, that is.

Coffee marks one of the highlights of his afternoons, and allegedly when that perfect cup of coffee is made by me, it makes it taste that much better. And so, me brewing the coffee has formed into a kind of daily tradition. By default, that also makes me the coffee master at our house, and I don’t take the title lightly.

I like the thought of perfecting that cup of coffee and experimenting with different tastes and brewing methods instead of doing it the easy way – straight from a box. I simply like the ritual of buying your own beans, grinding them and brewing. There’s a kind of magic in that process.

The good news is: it’s not a hard skill to learn. You just need some basic equipment and a place to get coffee beans and you’re good to go. As a fairly cheap first investment I’d recommend a burr grinder and a french press. And lets not forget the beans. We buy them in the greatest smelling coffee shop here in Frankfurt. The fragrance in there is so amazing, that it causes me to fantasize of diving into a pool of coffee beans and swim in them à la Skrooge McDuck.

Apart from loving the fragrance, I myself am not a coffee drinker. I love drinking tea the most, but through experimentation with Silver’s coffee even I have found certain types of coffee that taste delicious to me. Blue Mountain beans form India are to die for and Ethiopian Sidamo comes as a good second. Both of these are high on Silver’s list too, although he is more open minded and probably would list many more varieties that he loves.

Now, learning about different beans has been a long hit and miss process, and even now I’m not too much wiser that when we started. But I feel I am past the point where I randomly pick beans just to see how they differ from the last batch we bought. I wanted to do some information digging to get a better understanding of the dozens of choices that are out there. Eventually, I feel I pieced together a comprehensive enough picture of some basic information and I’d like to share it with you in a form of an infographic.

Maybe it’ll give a good starting point to other thirsty information seekers out there. See what I did there? ;)

 

 

And now a demonstration from the Coffee Brigand himself:

 

Smiles,

Kaija

 

Tell me all about your coffee dreams @kaijarudkiewicz or comment below!