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My default coffee making is to heat milk, add coffee and steep it for a couple of minutes before I sieve it and voila.
This does not seem to work for this coffee. I have tried water, boiling it with the water or milk and it simply will not mix. What am I missing?
Edit: I know about grinding, I have a burr grinder, a French press and I know the various ways to make coffee. None of the methods I know, work.
Burr grinder = bar grinder. I made that mistake.
This is a trip
IKR, this is the first time I've heard of someone running milk directly through freshly ground coffee beans.
Our culture is deeply rooted in milk. We make coffee with milk directly. It's a bit different from the norm, but for me, that rich milky thing is a big ticket item.
Extracting with water should work better. You can heat up the water close to 100 °C to speed up the extraction. If you use milk, you can't heat it up that much without running into all sorts of issues. If you use temperatures that are reasonable to milk (55-60 °C), those temperatures would be super low for extraction. That's why milky drinks use water for making a highly concentrated coffee (espresso) and then mix it with milk.
I make a coffee flavored pudding by heating milk to 180F, stirring in ground coffee, waiting maybe 20-30 seconds, filtering out the grounds, and finally making pudding from that milk.
I have no idea what that milk would taste like, but the pudding is fantastic.
If your typically coffee disolves in hot milk, then you might be used to instant coffee. What you've shown here is a bag of coffee beans and a bag of ground coffee beans. This requires a different method than with instant coffee.
Not instant coffee. Grind beans and then steep them. The picture is of ground coffee. It looks like charcoal. It's not instant, and despite running it through a press, it does not mix.
Ground coffee does not mix with water. That’s only instant coffee. Ground coffee needs to be brewed.
That is just it. Even brewing is not working.
Are you sure this isn’t ground not instant
It says it's ground coffee right in the package. This isn't going to make no matter what the OP tries.
You'll need to do something like a pour over or use a traditional coffee pot for this
Oh I only looked at the left bag.
Lol but boiling literally would work. I don’t get OPs issue. That’s just cowboy coffee 😱
I read through the comments and replies here... have you considered that it's just aged out or a bad batch somehow?If it does not extract, show some reaction to boiling water, or darken the water, there is a problem. If this is pre ground it could be >6m old. Not sure there's another explanation here.
In one comment you mention that it "actually tastes good"... How do you know this if it's not properly "mixing" with boiling water? Diluted coffee tastes not great, so it's a confusing thing to say
I know someone who bought a bad batch of coffee. It was dirt cheap and tasted like water. You just had to compensate by using an obscene amount of grinds to produce a little bit of something that is almost drinkable.
I've also bought some old coffee that was just barely within its shelf life. It tasted awful, but I guess you wouldn't notice if you always use lots of creme and sugar. I drink my coffee black, so the only way to make it barely tolerable was to use 2-3x the normal dose and use an aeropress to make a super fast extraction. The longer the extraction takes, the more bad stuff will end up in the cup.
I would prepare them with low expectation since they were roasted in Belize. Probably a very dark roast and not roasted recently.
Brew in a French Press at a ratio of 10g water to 1g of coffee. Steep for 5 minutes. Pour and then add a lot of milk and sugar or better condensed milk.
Will try your recipe. I raw dog this stuff so, it's no sugar for me.
If the extraction is not working, you have 4 options.
Basically, extractions happen based on surface area, wet time, solvent time and pressure.
You don't have an espresso machine, so pressure is out. There is only so hot you can make milk before the sugars start burning. That leaves grind size and extraction time. Test each one independently before combining.
I'm actually driving a Brazil right now that had almost no flavor until I reduced the grind size by 25%. Once I did, it all the sudden had flavor. Good luck!
Should I start with the basics like grinding and extraction?
I assume, those bags contain whole beans. If so, you need a grinder. You also need something like a V60 or an aeropress to handle the extraction and filtration. Oh, and using a scale is highly recommended, but not strictly necessary.
If these things didn’t sound familiar, you’re in for a wild ride. This rabbit hole goes deep.
I grind coffee, I know how to extract, I have a French press. This is not instant coffee, but it does not mix in the press, cowboy style or boiling it in water.
I just throw a fistful of grounds into a cup of microwaved water and see what happens.
Fun fact, depending on the water and the cup, it is possible to super heat water in a microwave so that it has reached boiling point but it's not actually boiling. Tossing anything into a cup like this will cause the water to violently boil often causing burns.
You can (and should) put a spoon in the mug while its heating to prevent that from happening
Tried this. Nothing. Boiled the water with the coffee in the microwave. Nothing.
Check the dates on the bag. Was it roasted 6 years ago?
Do the grinds smell awful and rotten?
Looks like you've only been using instant coffee before and are now trying to use normal coffee the same way.
No. I grind my beans with a burr grinder. I used to use a French press but I did not like how it tasted. So, I experimented with heating milk, putting in the grinds, and then sieving it. It has always worked out well. This is the only coffee that has not done what I anticipated.
I've never heard of a bar grinder. Do you mean a burr grinder? The two most common styles are conical and flat.
Very fresh coffee will have a bloom due to CO~2~ that's still trapped. When I do a pour over with coffee that's <2 weeks after roasting, it has a very large bloom. While coffee that's been sitting for months tends to have no bloom.
If you're using a press pot, one thing you can do is to only press down to where the filter is just below the surface of the coffee then do a slow pour into your cup or carafe. This will keep most of the fines and sludge in the press pot.
My basic press pot recipe is to use water that's 206° F to 208° F (96.6° C to 97.7° C). 1:16 ratio coffee to water by weight. (You can lower that ratio if you like it stronger) Pour the hot water into the grounds and let it steep for 4 minutes. Stir the grounds to break the crust, spoon off the foam, and let everything settle for another 5 minutes. Finally, put the filter just below the surface of the coffee, do not press any further, then do a slow pour into a carafe. The pour usually takes 1 to 2 minutes. This is a slow method but makes a very good cup.
Edit: I usually grind slightly coarser than I would use for pour over.
I've heard that brewing with super fresh grinds can be problematic due to excessive amounts of CO~2~ bubbles forming a layer between the solid and liquid phases. if that happens, you might mitigate that issue by extending the brewing time and and ensuring sufficient agitation. Probably not going to produce the ideal brew, but should be better than under extracted coffee.
Maybe a moka pot?
Gotta go with espresso. If you want it to be milky, make a latte from the espresso
Reading your replies you mean it doesn’t brew in any method not mix right? Could you make a video for our interest. It sounds like I among others was mistaken, you aren’t confused, this is some indestructible roast
I will try for tomorrow morning. It feels like some indestructible roast. And despite the charcoal aftertaste, it actually tastes very good.
Sounds like it could be a super ultra dark roast. Do the beans look like coal? Normal coffee should have a brown color, but if the beans are more like biochar, you can expect the coffee to taste like elemental carbon and ash. if it’s mostly carbon, all the sweet and juicy flavors have been destroyed during roasting.
I expected this. The coffee tastes like charcoal.
I've made progress in this whole situation, based on insight and feedback on this post, and will update tomorrow.
You keep saying that it doesn't mix, like you're expecting it to dissolve as instant coffee does.
Ground coffee can either be immersed in a French press like it sounds you've been trying, or percolated by using a pour over or drip brewer. Any method will leave all the ground coffee behind as the water does the extraction. It will not mix or dissolve.
No. I mean that even ground coffee in a press blends/mixes in with hot water or whatever medium you are using. This, regardless of how hot the water is, in a French Press, boiled in a saucer cowboy style, or however else simply does not mix or blend. It just floats. I don't know how else to explain it.
Where did you buy this
Gifted straight from Belize.
Huh! That’s bizarre