#brewu

While good coffee has a ton of health benefits, cheap coffee may actually harm your health.

We have obsessively high standards for any coffee we sell.  There is cheaper stuff out there, but we don't use it.  The big brands that you find at the grocery store use cheap coffee.  That is why they can sell it for so little.  If a crop is destroyed by pests, fungus, mold or drought, it is sold as commodity coffee and ends up in your grocery store.  They roast it dark so you'll never taste the defects, and grind it so you'll never see the damaged beans.

Chlorogenic Acid

This simple element of coffee has gotten a lot of talk over the last couple of months.  Dr. Oz has covered the weight loss benefits of chlorogenic acid.  Drinking coffee definately has a lot of great health benefits, but these studies are usually misrepresented to sell overpriced suppliments.

Chlorogenic acid is a naturally occurring substance found in green coffee beans.  It is slightly more prevalent in Robusta coffees than Arabica (at 10.3% and 7.1% respectively).  The roasting process eliminates between 30-50% of the chlorogenic acid from the bean, and very dark roasts (French, Vienna and Spanish) eliminate nearly all of it.  

Have you ever had a cup of coffee that tasted sour or very bitter?  Incorrect brewing temperatures may be to blame.  

While there are a lot (24) of variables in brewing a great cup of coffee, temperature is one of the most important, and the most frequently wrong variable in the process.

The ideal water temperature for coffee brewing is between 195°F - 205°F (92°C - 96°C).  Coffee's desirable solubles and aromatic materials will be released more rapidly in this range.