Author: liza maksimova

Q Grader. Roast Master. SCAE certified.

Coffee Recipe of the week: V60

by liza maksimova

Today I am trying out the recipe of Chad Wang, the winner of 2017th Brewers Cup

The key concept of his V60 recipe – no circular motion when pouring, and pre-heating with 300 grams of hot water – and then letting it to cool down for 10-15 minutes! The recipe itself is super simple, so the key here is precision, good water and exceptional coffee.

The funny thing about this recipe is that you have to really control the brewing temperature – the water tends to cool down rapidly, so make sure you are not starting to brew at 92, but then dropping to 88 or 86. It matters.

Roasting Coffee: The Importance of Buying Proper Green Beans

by liza maksimova

The deeper you are diving into what’s behind the quality coffee, the more you discover. But with coffee, and specialty coffee, our perception has been going backwards, in other words, not from the product to the cup, but from the bitter drink that we happen to see every day at our tables – to how it is actually being produced. First. And then the next question – where does the quality really happen? Does it come from the coffee preparation? Does it come from coffee roasting? Does it come from the roasting equipment? Does it come from the methods of coffee preparation?

The reality of the specialty coffee farmers, volunteering at a coffee farm and reasons to drink good enough coffees

by liza maksimova

Let me ask you something. You are drinking coffee that you know is picked, carried, processed, dried, with care and dedication, coffee touched by innumerous hands, coffee that has multiple faces – will you really care if it is 80 points, or 83 points, or 85 points, or 87? Will you feel significantly less satisfied?

“Educating” (oh how I hate this word) is about showing how much damn effort goes into each single bean. How much effort it takes to carry those damn canastas. How much effort it takes to pick the cherries. How it is to live as a coffee picker, when you have the job only for the 3-4 months of the year, and then you are forced to move looking for a place to earn extra. With kids. With families.

Specialty Coffee Professionals are reading all the same sources – possible problems

by liza maksimova

We have more and more people, professionals, posting about specialty coffee. There are simply more qualified people than ever before, and the industry is growing, we, as industry, are learning something new every day. There is more information than ever before. Diverse. Multi-lingual. Plenty.

But. Seems like 80% of our information is coming from less than 1% of professionals posting. What I want to say… We read more, yes, but we read all the same sources. I bet that there will be just a few coffee professionals that will mention more than 10 daily sources of their relevant coffee information.

How drinking stale coffee and kombucha possibly makes us worse specialty coffee tasters

by liza maksimova

Is it true that we are educating ourselves to like or to hate different types of food?
Is it possible that by drinking bad coffee we become less, not more, sensitive to its quality?
Can it be that drinking kombucha makes us more prone to not considering overfermentation in coffee being a defect?

Why specialty coffee professionals should be using cupping forms more often

by liza maksimova

In 2020, with the specialty coffee scene booming, all the magazines, coffee specialists, when we are discussing the smallest details of how many holes the paper filter has – so, apparently it is pretty hard to find verified cupping scores when you want to purchase specialty coffee.

Specialty coffee roasting styles – roasting for espresso, roasting for filter, roasting for milk drinks

by liza maksimova

There is an approach when you are dividing your line between espresso and filter roasts. The other one is to roast coffee that is to be drank with or without milk, so called milk line, roasts for milk.

I believe that roasting styles are changing a lot, due to the development that we are witnessing in terms of grinders. And roasters as well. But mostly grinders. And my talking here not only about professional coffee shop grinders, but also about some more or less affordable models for home brewers.

Quality in a specialty coffee shop depends on baristas motivation

by liza maksimova

Henry Ford said “Quality means doing it right when no one is looking”.
Assuming that the coffee is high quality and roasted to perfection, assuming that all of the processes before that moment when a client has a drink in front of him went smoothly and coffee has not lost anything that makes it Specialty – is there any way to guarantee that the cup made transmits all of these?

In other words, everything can be messed up if a person that makes coffee has no knowledge about what he is doing, has no skills of dealing with the product – OR if his knowledge is INCOMPLETE, which is even more dangerous – there will be no quality in the cup.

How freshly roasted you really need your coffee to be?

by liza maksimova

How many weeks after roasting need to pass for the coffee to taste sweet and at its best?
Coffee, well roasted, and properly stored, can be enjoyed and purchased with the 4 weeks after the roast date – and you’ll be getting it at its best, at its peak, far from tasting old.