Alton Brown's Favorite Tricks For A Better Cup Of Coffee

Alton Brown has a lot of good advice to give when it comes to science-backed cooking techniques, and that advice extends to tricks for making your coffee better. Even if you've been making coffee for years, it's possible to up your coffee game by understanding the coffee flavor extraction process and what separates a good cup of coffee from bad.

Brown's tricks often seem small, but just a little tweak here and there can add up to a much better cup of joe. His advice starts with the ingredients you use but also includes information about adjustments you can make to improve your coffee. Just a small ingredient addition, change in grind level, or process adjustment can make a world of difference in coffee flavor. So, we've collected many of Alton Brown's favorite coffee tricks here for you to follow so that you know what to do to make your next cup of coffee taste even better.

If you use the best beans on the market and all of Alton Brown's coffee tricks but start with subpar water, you might as well have not bothered. With coffee being a liquid, using good quality water for its base is essential.

If the water that comes out of your tap tastes like pool water like Alton Brown's does, using a filter is best. The type he uses to remove the chlorinated taste is a simple plastic filter pitcher like a Brita Metro Water Filter Pitcher that you can keep in the fridge. Of course, if you have tasty water already, filtering may not be necessary. You could also use bottled water if it's a nice-tasting one that's not too alkaline/hard.

For the best flavor, you will want to consider whether your water for brewing coffee is hard or soft. Water that's too soft can make your coffee taste bitter because of its acidity, while hard water can make your coffee too muddy, chalky, or even flat. According to the Statistics & Standards Committee of the Specialty Coffee Association, the acceptable range for water hardness for use in making coffee is 50 to 175 parts per million (ppm) of calcium carbonate. The alkalinity is best at 40 ppm of calcium carbonate but can range up to 70 ppm. And while the pH is best right in the middle at 7.0, a slightly acidic 6.0 or slightly alkaline 8.0 is okay, too.

After you get your water type right, you have to get your beans right. So, knowing how to store beans and grind them is essential.

Alton Brown never buys pre-ground coffee. Instead, he starts out with whole beans. In fact, he likes to keep only enough in his cabinet to last for a week so that he always has the freshest-tasting cup of coffee. Keeping it sealed in an airtight container helps keep it fresh, too. Brown keeps his coffee beans in his spice cabinet to keep them away from heat, air, light, and moisture so that they don't change their flavor.

For the freshest flavor, grind right before you brew to take advantage of all the flavor in the oils. If you're serious about the flavor, you'll want to invest in a burr grinder like a Cuisinart Electric Burr Coffee Grinder. Simple blade grinders aren't as precise and don't make uniform sizes of coffee ground pieces. If you're planning to make drip coffee, use a medium grind. Other grind levels will be more appropriate for other types of coffee makers, depending on how quickly the water needs to move through the grounds.

If you're serious enough about your coffee to have a grinder, you should learn how to use it. You'll want to experiment with the exact grind level to get the perfect cup of coffee because over- or under-grinding your beans can drastically change the taste of the cup of coffee.

A quality grinder key to making the perfect cup of coffee, and Alton Brown emphasizes how important the grind level is. If you find that your coffee is too sour, too bitter, or isn't as strong as you want, then the grind level may be to blame. Adjusting your coffee grinder to deliver a finer grind can help if it's under-extracted. Thus, this can be helpful if your coffee tastes too weak or turns your mouth inside out with sourness. Meanwhile, if you've noticed that your coffee is coming out more bitter than you'd like, it may be over-extracted. Thus, you might be able to solve the problem with a coarser grind. Of course, there are other factors that might be making your coffee weak, bitter, or sour, but the grind is an easy place to start experimenting.

Even if you consider yourself a coffee pro, you may not have heard about Alton Brown's trick for adding salt to your coffee. However, it's knowledge that can level up your coffee-making skills.

The reason Brown adds salt is to make the coffee taste less bitter. So, even if you don't think to add salt all the time to make your brew taste smoother, you may be able to fix overly bitter coffee with a bit of salt. This can work even after you've brewed your coffee and found it to be overly bitter because you can just add just a sprinkle to your finished cup (without overdoing it) to try to get that perfect balance. The reason adding salt either before or after you brew your coffee works is that when coffee hits both the salt and bitter taste receptors in your mouth at the same time, the salt flavor wins out and suppresses the bitterness while enhancing any sweet flavor in the coffee (whether you add sugar or not).

For six cups of coffee in a drip coffee maker, Brown sprinkles ¼ teaspoon of kosher salt on top of the grounds before running the machine. For smaller amounts of coffee, like when he's making four cups of French press coffee, he just adds a pinch of kosher salt to the grounds. You can always experiment with the amount that tastes best for you.

There are at least 13 different kinds of coffee filters, and according to Alton Brown, the best brew is one you make with a paper coffee filter. Even if you weren't in it for the flavor, paper filters are easier to use anyway because there's far less cleanup than with a reusable one. Reusable filters may reduce waste, but they don't necessarily create the best cup of coffee.

When Brown makes coffee in a drip coffee maker, he opts for unbleached paper coffee filters like Melitta Basket Coffee Filters. He likes the results he gets with them better and generally removes any reusable filters that might come with the pot. Reusable metal filters have the disadvantage of allowing more coffee grounds to end up in your pot or cup of coffee, which can make the coffee cloudy. While those extra grounds might make your coffee taste a little richer, too many can be unappetizing. The oils in the coffee grounds can more easily pass through a mesh metal filter, tending to oxidize and change the flavor of your coffee to the point that each sip may not taste the same. If those grounds and oils can easily escape into your coffee as they do through a paper filter, you'll end up with coffee that isn't so cloudy and has a brighter, sweeter, and fruitier flavor.

Alton Brown is a stickler for measuring coffee grounds, often opting to weigh his grounds and water with a food scale to get exactly the right proportions. So, you shouldn't be just dumping a random amount of coffee into the filter "Gilmore Girls"-style if you really care how your coffee tastes.

Many of Brown's coffee recipes include both U.S. standard and metric measures. For metric measures, he likes to put the empty container he's going to use onto the scale, zero out the weight of the container, and then add his coffee grounds or water and measure them with the scale that way. The ratio he likes to use to brew coffee is one part coffee to 14 parts water by weight, which works out to him measuring out 28.5 grams of coffee grounds and 400 grams of water for his morning coffee.

Granted, Brown doesn't always measure his coffee with a food scale. So, the U.S. standard equivalent comes out to about 2 tablespoons of grounds for each cup of drip coffee he plans to make.

When you're in a hurry to get that first cup of coffee in you and get on with your day, it's tempting to interrupt your coffee pot mid-brew to grab a cup. There are even coffeepots now that have a feature that allows you to actually stop the drip so that you don't make as much of a mess interrupting your brew to grab that first cup. However, Alton Brown insists that you be patient and let the whole pot brew before grabbing a cup.

You're going to end up getting a much better flavor if you allow it to go through the whole brewing cycle before you grab a cup. That way, the coffee concentration is right. So, if you have been in the habit of grabbing that first cup without letting it go through the whole cycle first, try waiting next time around and see if it makes a difference.

Anybody who has been drinking drip coffee for a while has experienced the vast difference between that first cup of coffee from the pot and a cup of coffee that's been sitting on the burner for a few hours. It seems to get darker, thicker, and even burned as the hours tick by. However, Alton Brown suggests a way to keep your coffee warm without compromising the flavor: keeping it in a thermal container.

If you don't plan to quaff all your coffee immediately, Brown suggests pouring the remaining coffee into a thermos to keep it warm and keep the flavor from changing from delicious to burned, as it does when it sits for hours on the burner. Thermoses like the Thermos Stainless King Vacuum-Insulated Beverage Bottle promise to keep your coffee warm for up to 24 hours.

A thermal carafe is another possibility for keeping your coffee warm and preserving the taste. One like the Cresimo Thermal Coffee Carafe will keep your coffee warm for up to 12 hours. If you're going the carafe route, Brown suggests getting the type that you can put over low heat to warm back up if it cools down before you drink it all.

Alton Brown is a fan of a type of cold brew coffee called Kyoto-style coffee. Yes, it still takes hours to make Kyoto-style cold brew coffee, just as it does regular cold brew coffee. However, this style of coffee, which originated in Kyoto, Japan, is Brown's favorite way to make cold brew. Because there's very little oxidation happening, the flavor of the coffee should be brighter and showcase fruity flavors and other complexities more.

The process of making Kyoto-style cold brew is to allow melting ice to slowly drip through coffee grounds and ultimately into your container below. Your coffee is supposed to sit in direct sunlight to help the ice melt. While you can buy Kyoto-style coffee makers like the Yama Cold Brew Maker I Ice Coffee Machine With Slow Drip Technology, they're pricey. So, Brown rigs his own Kyoto-style coffee brewer using two 3-liter soda bottles with their bottoms lopped off and holes in the lids. Inverted, they sit one on top of the other with ice in the top bottle dripping through the coffee grounds and filter in the bottle below and ultimately into a container below. The whole melting and dripping process with Brown's recipe takes 10 to 12 hours, but some of the real Kyoto towers can take a day or more to make cold brew coffee.

If you love cold brew coffee but don't want to wait 10 to 24 hours and beyond for it, Alton Brown has a trick for starting it with hot coffee. Hot start cold brew coffee only takes 10 minutes.

To make hot start cold brew, you'll need a pour-over coffee maker, like a Bodum Pour Over Coffee Maker. The process is much like making regular pour-over coffee, except you'll be pouring more slowly than usual, and there should be ice in the carafe below. For one cup of cold brew coffee, you'll start by pouring 1¼ cups of boiling hot water over ⅓ cup of coffee grounds sitting in the filter at the top of the coffee maker. This first pour should only be 3.5 ounces of water and be so slow that it takes a full minute. After the grounds have had 30 to 40 seconds to bloom, you should take an additional two to three minutes to pour the rest of the boiling water through the grounds. Then, the iced coffee below will be ready to drink. However, you may need to add more ice if it melts or remove some if you don't want your brew watered down. 

If you're looking for a twist on a favorite, Alton Brown suggests trying chicory cold brew. Chicory coffee is unique because it is made from the root of the chicory plant rather than a roasted bean. While it doesn't taste exactly like coffee and has no caffeine on its own, it tastes similar when roasted, with bitter and nutty notes.

Brown likes to mix roasted chicory together with ground coffee, with twice as much coffee by weight. So, you'll just make your cold brew coffee as usual, with one part roasted chicory root to two parts coffee grounds instead of all coffee grounds. After steeping this in water overnight, Brown strains it, adds it to a glass of ice, and tops it with milk. He also likes to sweeten it with a mixture of honey, agave syrup, and blackstrap molasses.

While you can buy plain chicory root like Worldwide Botanicals French Chicory Root to drink, many brands mix it with coffee. Many popular brands like Café Du Monde Coffee and Chicory contain a mixture of both chicory and coffee. So, know what you're getting before you start mixing.

There's a step many of us skip when making French press coffee that we shouldn't be, and that's stirring the grounds. Alton Brown considers stirring the grounds an essential part of making French press coffee.

After you add your coffee grounds to the bottom of the French press, you'll want to add just enough boiling water to cover the grounds. Then, stir them. The reason for stirring is twofold. First of all, stirring ensures that all the grounds are wet and you don't have any dry pieces when the steeping process starts. Second, stirring blooms the coffee grounds. Essentially, each ground has a chance to plump up with water a bit, which helps to draw more flavor out of the grounds. Then pour the rest of the water into the French press before pressing down the plunger and waiting for your coffee to be done.

Timing is also important for French press coffee. Alton Brown sets a timer immediately after placing the boiling water in the French press to make sure he doesn't over- or under-extract the coffee.

Brown's time suggestion for the perfect cup of French press coffee is four minutes. If you don't let it brew for at least four minutes, you'll be left with under-extracted coffee that hasn't had enough time to extract flavor from the coffee grounds to become rich and flavorful. Without time to pull out all the sweet notes, it could also end up sour. Meanwhile, if you let it steep too long, you'll end up with over-extracted coffee. Over-extracted French press coffee tastes more bitter than it should and may have a dry mouthfeel. If you're looking for richer French press coffee, you'll want to add more grounds rather than more time.

Another of Alton Brown's favorite tricks for French press coffee is using a slow plunge at the end of the brewing time. While it may seem like a small thing, it will improve the flavor of your coffee.

When your timer alerts you that you've reached the four-minute mark, it's time to plunge. However, if you've been plunging quickly, you've been doing it wrong. It should actually take you about half a minute to plunge downward and finally press the coffee grounds. One reason for plunging is to strain the grounds out of the coffee and move them to the bottom so that you can pour (hopefully) groundless coffee. However, the other reason for the plunge is what makes doing it slowly important. Because the coffee liquid is moving through the fine metal mesh of the plunger as you plunge, it's also emulsifying the coffee. Essentially, plunging is helping mix the coffee bean oils in with the water during this phase, and doing it slowly gives it a better flavor.