When stripped to its barest essentials, brewing a good cup of coffee is pretty simple. There are really only three variables -- the beans, how they're ground and how the liquid coffee is extracted from them. But as with all simple things, every step must be done correctly. Any misstep is immediately obvious.
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Begin with the beans
MY first stop was my local coffee roaster, where they have a pretty good selection of beans roasted on the premises.
The beans are at once the most complex part of the equation and the easiest to solve. At first glance, the choice seems bewildering. Walk into any moderately stocked coffee bean purveyor these days and you'll find more than a dozen choices spanning two or three continents and a range of roasts.
Coffee beans, like wine grapes, reflect the climate and farming culture of the places they are grown. And because coffee is grown in almost every tropical area -- Africa, Indonesia, South and Central America, the Caribbean and even Hawaii -- there is a seemingly endless list of place names.
Indeed, much of the romance of coffee is in the parade of exotic locales and comes with exploring their diverse products. Sumatran coffee is complex and medium-bodied; Ethiopian Harrar is wild and fruity; Brazil's Bourbon Santos is light and bright.
Unlike wine, though, where a handful of place names have become hallowed ground, recognized as producing the very best of the best, there really is no such sure distinction in coffee. Indeed, the quality and freshness of the roast will almost always trump provenance. A well-handled Colombian may be short on mystique, but it will probably make a better cup than the most hallowed estate-grown Jamaica Blue Mountain that was sloppily roasted or has been sitting around for several weeks.
And then there are the blends. Many names you'll find on coffee beans won't reflect a place at all -- or at least not one that grows coffee (my Caffe d'Abruzzo beans are a prime example). These are combinations put together using beans from various areas that when ground together emphasize the strong points of each and minimize the weaknesses. To extend the wine analogy, these are like Bordeaux blended from a combination of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc, rather than a California Cabernet Sauvignon made from the pure essence of one grape variety.
