- Favorite Beans
Here in Edmonton, I’ve found that Rogue Wave Coffee offers the freshest roasted coffee – you just need to let them know in advance when you want to pick up your beans. The result is coffee that has been roasted in the past 2-3 days. Coffee this fresh should be allowed to rest a little longer to ‘de-gas’ – otherwise you may find your coffee to have a somewhat metallic taste. The package their beans in paper coffee bags to facilitate the degassing.
The next freshest beans I’ve found are also roasted locally, by Transcend. I go to their main shop is on the southside, a block south of Argyll Road, just east of 99 Street. They also have a location next to the Garneau Theatre on 109 Street – parking can be tricky there sometimes.
I prefer medium roasted beans – they’ll be the color of milk chocolate, and won’t be shiny (or oily)
At 3 Banana’s in Churchill Square, you can get Intelligentsia Black Cat Espresso – bought a bag the other day for $22 for a 454g bag. These may not be quite as fresh roasted as the other two unless you catch them on the right day. - Favourite Brewing Methods
When brewing coffee, I either use my espresso machine, an Aeropress, or more recently, a Hario manual pour-over. Using the espresso machine is pretty awesome – I can have an Americano in less than a minute. A latte I can make in about 90 seconds :)Lately I’ve been really enjoying the manual pour-over. It takes a little more time – about 5 minutes tops for a mug. When I’m camping, I pack Aeropress to make coffee. These are sold at Transcend (and other places around the city I’m sure). These make very good coffee! I just have to grind my coffee a little coarser than what I use in my espresso machine. - Grind beans yourself
Don’t buy pre-ground coffee. Buy beans and grind them yourself. Use a quality burr grinder, manual or electric. Check out the coffeegeek and home-barista forums for recommendations, and buy the best you can afford.
Here is my current coffee set-up – yes, it might be bit excessive, but it’s been an investment that has been serving me well – even after almost 8 years!
