I just want my Starbucks at home

[Mark1808]

I know Starbucks is not the coffee of choice for true coffee fanatics, but I love it!! I just don't want to go to that stupid place every morning and am trying to create the brew at home and wonder if I could get some guidance.

I recently purchased the Presto Scandiavian Coffee Maker and Maestro Classic burr grinder. I am still not totally happy with my results. I am grinding the beans a couple of notches finer than drip and am using about 1 tablespoon per 4 ounces of brewed coffee. I also use bottled water.

Any suggestions to improve results?

 

[CCafe]

Try using filtered water instead of bottled water. There are minerals in water that actually help improve the taste of your coffee. When you water that has been over purified it can lead to bad tasting coffee.

When I say filtered water I am referring to water that has been ran through a filtration system such as Pur, Brita, and Omni filters. Stay away from soft water, it has tendencies to make coffee taste salty. It also will make your coffee grounds swell and can lead to your funnel overflowing.

Reverse Osmosis is almost like buying bottled water, I would stay away from that as well. Were just looking to remove sediment, chlorine, fluorine, and a few other things that are bad for coffee.

 

[Callista]

They should really deliver...

They could have "coffeemobiles" with all the equipment on board, and come by with your coffee made to order...

 

[bluecoffee]

http://www.coffeegeek.com/reviews/drip/presto

http://www.coffeegeek.com/proreviews/de ... etailedpt1

 

[javahill]

Grinding finer is likely to result in over-extraction, which will make for a more bitter brew (this depends on the brewing method). In general, if you are going to use more coffee, you don't need a fine grind unless you're doing espresso.

The easiest way to make a better cup of coffee at home is to keep a grind about the coarseness of ground pepper and use more coffee. For a standard, consider that the gold cup standard of the SCAA has a minimum of 3.25 oz of coffee for 64 oz of water. How good are you at converting coffee weight to volume measures?

Next update, if you can be more specific about the results you are experiencing, it will be easier to diagnose what is going on the direction to take youg home brewing.

-James