Brewing for a Crowd: Christmas Edition
Christmas is a time for family, for gifts, for laughter, for memories, for lovingly wrapping presents that will be unwrapped in a matter of seconds and for waking up before the sun has risen just to see the joyous faces of your little ones. Because of all of that, it is also a time for coffee!
Whether there will be two or twenty around your tree on Christmas morning, the coffee should always be sweet and delicious—especially for a morning as magical and memorable as this one! To help you prepare, we have crafted a guide to brew the perfect cup of coffee no matter how many you’re serving.
Often times the idea of a “good” cup of coffee brings to mind brewing coffee a single cup at a time via manual methods like pour overs. The rise in popularity of by-the-cup manual methods has given batch-brewers a bad reputation. While we love our pour overs, there isn’t any reason a batch-brewer can’t make an excellent cup of coffee. In fact, automatic brewers remove the human margin of error that inevitably comes with manual methods. We encourage you not to shy away from your batch-brewing methods this season, especially as you prepare to serve extra people.
How to Brew Great Coffee
Regardless of your brewing method, a great cup of coffee begins with the same most important variables:
Coffee
This shouldn’t be surprising, of course, but to get a great cup of coffee, you need to begin with great coffee beans! When brewing for friends and family there may be a lot of differing opinions so we wanted to give some options!
Ruca House Blend- With notes of milk chocolate, vanilla and apple this is a wonderful and approachable blend that will have everyone going back for refills. It is agreeable with or without cream and sugar so everyone can take their coffee however they prefer!
Tala-La-La-La Holiday Blend- This seasonal selection is perfect for Christmas morning with flavors of dark chocolate, cherry cordial, and jam that make you feel all warm and cozy inside.
Los Ocobos- This single origin coffee is from Colombia and will impress the coffee connoisseur who is looking for big flavors! Tasting notes of cola, tangerine citrus and dates create a perfect balance and provide a comforting and refreshing cup of hot coffee.
Danger Zone- For those who have grown accustomed to darker roasted coffees we offer the Danger Zone! It is the cousin of the Ruca House Blend but is roasted a tad longer to give us roasty flavors of Baker’s chocolate and molasses.
Water Filtration
This piece is so simple, yet incredibly important to increasing the sweetness of your coffee. Anything that is in your water will, after all, also be in your cup of coffee. By using filtered water to brew your coffee you are reducing any unwanted flavors or impurities that come naturally through your tap and are allowing the coffee to bond with the filtered water particles instead. This changes the flavor profile of your pot of coffee quite dramatically. As a side not, it is suggested that you buy filtered water or use a in home water filter instead of purchasing distilled water. The simplest way to explain this is to say just as tap water can have too many particles bonding to the coffee, distilled water may have too few bonding particles and the coffee will be very underwhelming in terms of flavor.
Ratio of Coffee to Water
Ratios directly affect the strength, flavor, and mouthfeel of the cup of coffee you’re about to enjoy. If left to guessing or estimating these proportions, the sweet cup of coffee you enjoyed yesterday may be bitter and gross today because the recipe changed. Different recipes require different ratios for brewing. For an automatic drip brewer we often use a 1:15 coffee to water ratio. If you’re questioning where to start is in terms of ratios you can always head over to our Brew Guides page. A great way to be very specific in following a recipe is to measure by weight (g): 100g coffee to 1500g water. If you don’t have a scale, it’s no biggie, simply measure out 6 Tbsp of coffee to 6 cups water and you’re *almost* ready to start brewing!
Grind Size
Grind size is the last factor we’re going to dive into but it is definitely not the least important. It does indeed affect the sweet and beautiful flavors that we seek in each cup of coffee we brew. A consistent grind size means that the coffee extracts more evenly overall and that will lead to less unwanted flavors. If the coffee is ground too course it will be under extracted in the brewing process and finish tasting weak or sour. If the opposite problem occurs and the coffee is ground too fine the brewing process will create coffee that is bitter due to over extraction. Grinding for a automatic drip is simple, whether you do it at home or have it done in the cafe, your coffee should be ground for auto drip paper filter. Depending on your machine this is usually a medium coarseness and can be identified by its resemblance to sea salt.
Automatic Drip Brewers
There are a lot of automatic coffee makers on the market, but they are not all created equally. Most off-the-shelf brewers miss the mark in one (or both) of the same ways. Firstly, many don’t reach a hot enough brewing temperature, so you may experience an uneven or under-extracted taste. Secondly, most do not allow a pre-infusion, which is a very helpful step in releasing the unwanted Co2 from the coffee before brewing. We recommend the Bonavita and Moccamaster brewers as they address these issues well.
Can i make a decent cup without a fancy brewer?
Absolutely! Although these fancy brewers are an excellent way to easily brew for a crowd, you can also take some simple steps to improve upon your Aunt Jane’s 25-year-old Mr. Coffee Brewer.
give it a good wash
This might sound painfully obvious, but a lot of people forget to wash their coffee brewer. Take out the basket, the pot and any internals that come off (per manufacturers instructions) and give them a good sudsy wash! This is a great way to ensure you’re starting fresh and not picking up old flavors from ages past.
Run a cycle without coffee
This is really just to get a deeper clean. After washing your machine you can give it an empty cycle of just water to really clean things out. This also helps ensure that no soap or other things are left behind in your brewer.
Pre-boil your water
This might be annoying, but it does improve quality! As we mentioned earlier, a frequent fault of batch-brewers is their inability to reach proper brewing temperatures (~205F). One way you can correct for this is by putting pre-boiled water into the coffee maker before turning it on. Just use a tea kettle or even a pot to boil water, and then add it in your reservoir.
PRe-wet your filter
You see this done all the time with pour overs, why not with a batch-brewer? Just use some of that hot water to wet your filter before adding in the coffee grounds. This reduces the papery taste that can sometimes sneak into the coffee with paper filters.
For more tips and detailed instructions on using a run-of-the-mill automatic drip brewer, see our brew guide.
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