Can You Get Coffee-Shop Coffee at Home?

Lots of us love to go to the big name coffee shops and order ourselves a fancy coffee with a complicated name and lots of fancy ingredients.  As we sit there savouring the flavour, we often think it would be nice to have this kind of drink at home.  But is it possible to get coffee-shop style coffee at home?

Simple methods

Coffee has been around since the 9^th century and there are now hundreds of different variations to the drink and lots of different ways to prepare it.  One of the simplest and for many households, the most common method is to use an automatic drip coffeemaker.  These machines operate by dropping water through a filter that has been filled with ground beans and into a carafe.  Another common system is called the French press.  This uses a small glass jug fitted with a mesh filter on the lid and are seen as a ‘better’ option by coffee connoisseurs than the drip style.

One such expert, Tim Eggers from CoffeeGeek.com said he favours the French press because not only it is simple, but it allows good control over the brewing process.  It takes a few minutes longer but it worth the wait.  Then you can pop it in your favourite mug that the kids got you for your birthday and sit back to enjoy it.

All in the beans

Making the coffee is an important part of the process but the other essential part is the beans used.  No matter what system you use, you won’t get coffee-shop style coffee if you use poor quality beans.  Eggers is a big fan of using fresh-roasted high quality coffee beans that are then ground properly so investing in a grinder is an important step in the process.

Finding those perfect beans might sound difficult but today there are plenty of options.  For a starters, big name coffee shops such as Starbucks often sell the beans they use so that people can get the same taste at home.  Even supermarkets offer high quality beans as well as ‘normal’ style coffee products.

Creating those perfect beans takes a bit of work and the process used has a big effect on the beans produced.  The different blends come from how long the beans are roasted after they start to split during the boiling process. 

Light roasts, for example, stop being roasted just after this point, known as the ‘first crack’.  These tend to have a muted flavour.  Medium roasts are stopped a little later and have a balanced flavour between the two extremes while darker roasts have a pungent and sharp flavour.

Experimenting with flavours

The best way to find out what coffee method and type of beans work best for you is to experiment.  Once you learn the basics of making these coffees, you can start to experiment with the other types of fancier coffee available.  Espresso is one of the basics and is made in a similar way to drip coffee but has a strong flavour.  It is used in favourites such as latte, cappuccino and mochas with different milk amounts added to them.  Before long you will be making a three shot, extra drizzle caramel latte in the house for your mid-morning coffee.