“The secret hack of making great coffee at home is not necessarily spending a ton of money and only using Fiji water to brew your coffee-- because who wants to be that person--but considering the water quality, knowing that you should always start with cold fresh water, [and] making sure that your water doesn’t impart any taste or odor,” she said. “Anybody who’s making coffee at home, anything that’s Brita level filtration should be just fine.”

The right kind of dairy plays an important role in making espresso drinks Photo: Shelby Pope — The right kind of dairy plays an important role in making espresso drinks. Photo: Shelby Pope

Dairy

Fans of Philz Coffee are convinced the company has a secret. On a 2012 Quora thread, a debate sprang up: does the Bay Area chain, which encourages customers to take milk in their coffee, use olive oil to make their cream taste richer? Or is the secret extremely high fat manufacturer’s cream? It’s an urban legend about that Jaber is happy to debunk—“We do not put olive oil in our milks or cream”—but the obsession with Philz’s cream highlights the important role dairy plays in coffee.

If you’re simply adding coffee to your morning cup, it doesn’t matter what kind you use. Like soy, skim or even manufacturer’s cream? Keep using that. But if you’re steaming milk at home for espresso drinks, things get more complicated, as different types of milk can heat into froth that ranges from smooth and silky to dry and Styrofoam-like.

At Four Barrel, barista trainer Umeko Motoyoshi recommends that her wholesale accounts use Straus Barista Milk, which she prefers not only for its “pleasantly floral, very sweet” taste but its distinctive foaming properties. A few years ago, at the request of several coffee companies, Straus developed a lightly homogenized version of their milk—it’s easier to get reliable microfoam with lightly homogenized milk.

While the resulting Barista Milk is only available for wholesale accounts, Motoyoshi says you can get good foam from virtually any milk (except raw milk, which separates when heated). Higher fat milk has a smoother mouth feel and highlights the taste of coffee better, but don’t overdo it: half and half may be delicious, but it’s harder to steam.

A digital scale is an easy way to ensure consistency in your coffee Photo: Shelby Pope — A digital scale is an easy way to ensure consistency in your coffee. Photo: Shelby Pope

Testing and Consistency

Yes, you know how to make a cup of coffee. But do you measure out your coffee and water—in grams, for more accuracy—the way Blue Bottle employees do?

“You can have the best coffee and the best espresso equipment around but if your technique is not accurate and consistent, all that will mean very little,” said Philips, who emphasized “making sure that you’re using the same amount of coffee, the same amount of water, so that you can control and recreate your formula. In a lot of our coffee bars you’ll see that we have little digital scales tucked away and those digital scales are a really easy trick for the home user to be able to take that consistency that we have in our shops into their personal lives.”

Every coffee shop has its own formula borne from a serious of exhaustive tests on everything from grind size to ratios—and once they’ve nailed down a formula, they don’t deviate. Start measuring your coffee and water, and it’ll be easy to isolate the characteristics you prefer to discover the formula for your personal perfect cup.

And if you’ve been making coffee the same way for years, try brewing a new way. Four Barrel’s Motoyoshi recommends a 1:15 coffee to water ratio, and Blue Bottle has instructions on their website for brewing in anything from a drip machine to a moka pot to pour-over system.

Ultimately, the best way to improve your coffee making is to experiment with your coffee, discover what you like, and to keep trying new methods, said Philips.

“That’s the thing that’s great about coffee. Your personal opinion can very easily define the product that you get,” he said. “If you’re a home aficionado and you feel like you've got some basic tools, your next step is to start looking at different ways you can work with those same coffees to bring out different aspects of them and create different styles of beverages,” said Phillips.

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Barista Secrets: 3 Tips For A Better At-Home Cup