Chosing the Best Beans

How to choose the best gourmet specialty coffee

Once you enter the world of coffee, you will be starting an enjoyable and captivating journey that will last a lifetime. Images of far away places, with exotic sounding names, and smells to delight will all be yours. But the most rewarding part of your coffee education, for beginners and professionals alike, is chosing the beans that you will carefully store, lovingly grind and then carefully brew into a great cup of coffee that you can't wait to sip.

Of course, we know that everyone's taste is different. Like the old saying goes, its a good thing we all have different tastes or we would all want to marry the same person! The same thing goes with coffee...different people will like different coffees. When you find a coffee that you like, you will want to know more about it. You will also find your coffee journey much more enjoyable when you know more about the best coffees.

We suggest starting with knowing more about the beans that make coffee you like at your local coffee shop. Here are some guidelines that can hep you get the same flavors for the coffees you brew at home.

Look for Arabica coffee beans first

When you buy coffee at Starbucks or another shop selling premium coffee, or buy online from a reputable store like Green Mountain Coffee, [link] you are probably buying Arabica coffee beans.

But if you're buying from a deli, and particularly an Italian deli, the beans are less likely to be 100% Arabica and very likely include Robusta beans. Robusta beans can be good, and in fact Robusta blends are popular among the Italians and French, . They are cheaper beans that are often found in blends of stores that do not specialize in fine coffee.

Robusta Beans versus Arabica Beans

As you explore coffee, you will find that high quality blends consist of 100% Arabica beans. Robusta beans are found in lower quality, cheaper blends. Arabica beans provide superior taste being more flavorful and complex than their Robusta counterparts. Coffee brewed with Robusta beans tends to be more bitter, with a musty flavor and less body. This distinction being made, you probably wonder why anyone would buy Robusta beans or a blend with less than 100% Arabica beans.

So why drink coffee from Robusta beans? Well, Robusta beans are quite common because they cost less, and so people get used to them. Your grandparents probably drank Robusta brewed coffee and some people actually like the slightly bitter taste. And, if you're a real caffeine fiend, you know that Robusta beans have about twice as much caffeine as Arabica beans.

Second, buy whole coffee beans, not ground, properly packaged

There is no getting around it: if you want to brew the best tasting coffee, you need to buy the finest, freshest beans and grind them yourself. Why? Because fresh ground coffee is best. As soon as a bean is ground, the oils in the bean are exposed to the air and start to degrade. It is these oils (that you will notice on some beans, like dark dark roasted coffee beans) that give much of the complex coffee flavor that we like so much.

Also, be sure that the freshly roasted coffee is immediately placed into airtight packaging with a one-way valve. It may be romantic to scoop your own beans out of a bin, especially when you are savoring the just roasted smell as the beans go into an unsealed brown paper bag. But, the best roasters know that when the freshly roasted bean is exposed to air, the quality of the bean immediately declines. So I prefer to buy whole beans and make sure they are sealed in an airtight bag, preferably one that has a one-way valve.

Coffee Daydreams Tip: Think about those coffee beans in self-serve bins at the grocery store, that tempt you as you pass by. Those bins are definitely not airtight. So no matter how perfectly those beans were first roasted and packged on the way to the store, now they have been exposed to air, perhaps for many days or weeks. The subtle flavors of those beans have quietly evaporated, the longer they sat in the bin waiting for some uneducated buyer to scoop them out and bag them. Have more respect for your coffee taste!

Third, for the freshest beans buy from a store that roasts its own beans if possible

Nothing beats the fragrence of a coffee shop that is roasting its own beans. Okay, maybe freshly baked chocolate chip cookies come close, but you know what I mean. If you have close by a coffee shop that does its own roasting, you should visit it regularly and count your blessings. It all has to to with freshness because like we said, coffee beans begin to lose their flavor from the moment they come out of the roaster. Their volatile oils immediately begin to break down and change. So buy those freshly roasted (and properly packaged) beans before they lose their chemistry.

What if you like your coffee strong...or mild?

Describing taste is always difficult, even for something as simple as saying that the coffee is "strong" tasting. You often have to clarify what you mean when you say the coffee is "strong."

At the most basic level, "strong" coffee comes from using more ground coffee in the same amount of hot water. The high proportion of ground coffee you use, the stronger the results.

There are complexities that enter as you learn more about coffee and various coffee beans and blends. You will identify some beans with a “stronger” or perhaps "bolder" taste than others. In addition, the same coffee ground finer can instensify the flavor. So, the size of the ground coffee particles - whether the coffee is fine or course - can affect whether the coffee is trong or mild.

You can enjoy coffee without knowing much about coffee beans you buy. But don't shy away from educating yourself...you will enjoy discovering different tastes and knowing more about the history and culture of coffee around the world brought to your neighborhood roaster.

Your next step?

Learning about coffee beans is fun but be sure to read about choosing the best coffee makers. Using the wrong coffee maker...or using a great coffee maker in the wrong way...can never create the gourmet coffee flavor that you crave.

For help in finding the right site to order coffee online, we've give you some helpful tips at our Online Gourmet Speciality Coffee Store .

And if you want to discover more information about gourmet coffee and explore some of the world's major growing regions, we've given you more for links below to continue your coffee journey.

For more about what is the best coffee

For a great gift idea, consider a Home Gourmet Coffee Club

Robusta countries:

Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Angola, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Sumatra, Java, Bali, Timor, Borneo, Vietnam, and Celebes.

Arabica countries:

Columbia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Hawaii, Yemen, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Papua New Guinea.