Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Coffee beans and coffee cup
‘You’ll fairly rapidly discover you have a taste for certain types of coffee.’ Photograph: PA
‘You’ll fairly rapidly discover you have a taste for certain types of coffee.’ Photograph: PA

Drink: wake up and smell the coffee

This article is more than 6 years old

I thought I knew a bit about coffee. Then I went on a home barista course and saw the light…

Until about a month ago, I thought I knew a fair bit about coffee. I patronised good coffee bars and knew my espresso from my macchiato; I drank decent coffee at home, too, albeit (I blush) from a Nespresso machine. But my appreciation of the stuff was all about the intensity and caffeine hit, and I now look back (with more blushes) at being offered filter coffee in a bar and thinking, “Why on Earth would I want to drink that?”

That’s because I’ve seen the light, and it’s as if I’d spent my wine career drinking Napa cabernet sauvignon and never tried a good red burgundy. What I discovered on a fascinating home barista workshop at Extract Coffee in Bristol (£80, and a great Christmas present for coffee-lovers) is that power isn’t everything. To appreciate coffee from different origins, you need temporarily to abandon your espresso habit. The simple piece of kit you need is a V60 drip coffee maker (easier and less messy than a cafetière). Ideally, you also need a grinder, because ground coffee starts to deteriorate the moment you open the packet (within hours, let alone weeks), so it pays to grind your own (a hand grinder is better than a cheap electric one, too).

That said, there are some interesting ground coffees out there, provided you can get through them quickly enough. Waitrose has a particularly good range: try its Sumatra Mandheling, a rich, dark, almost chocolatey coffee that is both organic and Fairtrade (£3.50 for 227g). The downside is that supermarkets tend to claim that their ground coffees are suitable for all appliances, whereas, for the best results, you need a different grind depending on which type you use. (That’s one reason to get your coffee ground to order at a specialist shop.)

You’ll fairly rapidly discover you have a taste for certain types of coffee – it turns out I like the fresh acidity and fruitiness of East African coffee from Ethiopia and Rwanda. Even Kenyan coffee, which I’d never been grabbed by, can be a revelation: Extract’s dazzling Rukera AB (£10.25 for 250g) is part of an experimental project run by the Coffee Research Institute of Kenya, and it’s fascinatingly different from Union Hand-Roasted’s, darker, more deeply flavoured Ethiopian Yayu Wild Forest coffee (Waitrose, £4.50 for 200g). (See how rapidly I’ve become a coffee geek?)

The best idea is to sign up to some kind of subscription plan – most online roasters offer one (Union Roasted and Has Bean both have good ones) – so you can explore different countries and regions. You may never need an espresso again.

matchingfoodandwine.com

Fiona Beckett’s latest book, Wine Lover’s Kitchen: Delicious Recipes For Cooking With Wine, is published on 10 October by Ryland Peters & Small at £16.99. To pre-order a copy for £14.44, go to guardianbookshop.com.

Explore more on these topics

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed