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Choosing your next Coffee Beans

#13 · Brewed on January 24, 2025 · By Aravind Balla ·
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Hello coffee lover. Hope you are fine and well caffeinated.

I ran out of coffee supply at home and was choosing next set of coffee beans, and I thought why not write this process down.

Which coffee bag is right for you?

There are a lot options.

Source: https://shop.aramse.coffee/

When you are a beginner, it's very hard to understand the terminology and choose a set of coffee beans. It sure is a investment as you will be spending more than ₹500. What if you don't like them?

I have been there. Over the years, I have developed a set of guiding rules for myself while buying new coffee. These are what I will be penning down today.

There are a few descriptors that we can look on almost all of the coffee bags. I will try to break down what they mean.

Taste notes

This is probably the most important factor.

We have seen in the past issues that taste notes are not really straight forward. Those are the characteristics the cupper identifies while grading the coffee.

Identifying the notes and tasting your coffee is a skill in itself. We have a post addressing that - Developing a Taste for your Coffee.

What we can look for as a beginner is that is there is mention of fruits or berries, like pear, apple, cranberries etc, the coffee is going to be a little bright and sour. If they mention nuts or cocoa, it represents boldness and bitterness. Generally, it will be a mix of everything, and the note which is written first will be the most evident quality.

Grind size

I highly recommend grinding your own coffee. We talked about it earlier. I have a grinder so I always buy whole beans.

If you don't have one yet, you can find the grind size for your brewing tool generally mention on the site while ordering.

Roast Profile

If you ask me, I would go with a light to medium roast. I wouldn't prefer dark as the method I use, which is a pour over, doesn't really bring that much on to the table. It tastes the same every time. Whereas with a light roast, I have so many variables to tweak and play with.

You have to figure out what works for you depending on your equipment and taste.

Understanding the roast profile based on descriptors like light, medium and dark roast is straight forward. You know what you are getting.

But some roasters don't mention this. Or they mention terms like filter roast, espresso roast or omni roast. These are abstracted terms for the brewing method you would use. Filter for all your manual brews, espresso for drinks that start with an espresso, and omni is for both filter and espresso and works across all brewers.

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I feel these guiding factors are enough when you are forming your taste and figuring out what works for you.

Hope this helps in picking your next coffee beans.

From the coffee-verse

That’s all I have. Have a good weekend.

See you.

Keep on brewing!