By: Nicholas H. Usborne
Some of us prefer a strong cup of coffee. Or maybe we like the taste of a strong coffee first thing in the morning, followed by a milder brew later in the day.
How do you make your coffee taste “strong”?
In the world of coffee experts, this can get you into some deep discussions on what exactly “strong” means when applied to coffee.
But for the rest of us, assuming you are buying whole coffee beans or ground coffee, and not instant, here are three tips.
First, increase the proportion of ground coffee to water
In other words, for the same amount of water, make your brew with a little more ground coffee than usual.
This will definitely make your coffee taste stronger, but there is only so far you can push this before you end up with a brew that sacrifices its taste for the sake of strength.
Buy dark roasted beans, and not medium
You see various coffee beans being described as medium roasted, or dark roasted.
The dark roasted beans will generally give you a stronger taste.
However, you may want to try a few different dark roasts, from different companies. Dark roasting is a tricky business, and some roasters do a better job than others.
When done badly, a dark roast will give you a stronger taste, but you can end up losing a lot of the subtleties of the bean’s flavor.
Try some beans from East Africa
Coffee beans from Kenya in particular have a very fine and strong flavor. By way of contrast, beans from South and Central America...like Costa Rican, Mexican and Brazilian beans...tend to be a little milder.
And our personal preference is...
Here at Coffee Detective we like to start the day with a brew of Kenya AA. It’s a wonderful tasting coffee, but strong too.
Later in the day, when we still want some heft to our coffee, but not as strong as in the morning, we’ll switch to Sumatra Mendheling, another wonderful coffee.
As with all coffee choices, making a good, strong brew is a matter of learning a little about coffee beans, and a little about coffee brewing.
