Brewing Guides & Principles

Good coffee is mostly a matter of controlling a few variables and then repeating yourself. This page covers the principles that apply to every brew method, the differences between the methods themselves, and the recipes we use at the roastery as a starting point.

Choosing a brew method

Every method is a different way of putting water through ground coffee, and each one flatters a different part of the cup. None of them is better than the others. They are answers to different questions.

A Hario V60 dripper brewing filter coffee, with coffee dripping through the paper filter

Percolation, or filter

Water passes through the bed of coffee once and drains away. The water keeps moving rather than sitting with the grounds, and the paper holds back fines and oils, so the cup comes out clean, light in body, and unusually clear about origin character. This is where a delicate washed Ethiopian or a bright Kenyan has the most to say.

Filter coffee

Hot water poured from a gooseneck kettle into an AeroPress, steam rising from the brew

Immersion

The coffee sits in the water for the whole brew, so extraction is gentler and more forgiving of an imprecise grind. Expect more body and a rounder, sweeter cup, with a little less definition at the edges. The AeroPress sits here, and adds pressure at the end. Immersion and percolation take the same coffees, so there is no separate immersion range.

All coffee

A barista tamping ground coffee flat into an espresso portafilter

Espresso

Pressure pushes water through a fine, compacted bed in under half a minute. The result is concentrated and textured, and it magnifies everything: a well-roasted coffee tastes remarkable, and a small mistake in grind or dose is immediately obvious.

Espresso coffee

Which should you choose? If you want to taste where a coffee comes from, brew filter. If you want something forgiving that travels well, brew immersion. If you want intensity and texture, and you enjoy the tinkering, pull espresso. We roast most of our single origins twice, once for filter and once for espresso, so the profile matches the method. Each one is listed as a Filter roast or an Espresso roast.

A Fjord Coffee Taster Box Set, three labelled bags of coffee in an open gift box

Not sure which method suits you?

The Taster Box Set is three different single origins, 3 x 250g, roasted for filter or for espresso. You choose the roast profile at checkout. It is the shortest way to taste across origins and processing before you settle on a regular bag. Ships free in Germany.

Shop the Taster Box Set

Six principles for better coffee

A river running through a steep, moss-covered canyon
  1. It starts with water. Water makes up roughly 98.5% of a filter coffee and 90% of an espresso. Depending on where you live, your tap water will carry a certain hardness, and as a rule of thumb, the harder the water the harder it is to brew well. A simple jug filter is enough to taste the difference.
  2. A grinder needs sharp, clean burrs. The burrs cut the beans, and you want the particles to come out roughly the same size so the water extracts each one by the same amount. Keeping the grinder clean is most of what keeps the burrs sharp.
  3. Use scales. There is no way around this one. Measure the dry coffee and the water. Everything else on this page depends on it.
  4. Use boiling water for filter and immersion. Any coffee that is lightly roasted, and roasted well, should be brewed with water straight off the boil. Heat extracts what you want faster, and when the coffee is good it has nothing to hide.
  5. Slightly over-extracted beats under-extracted. This is largely preference, but most people prefer a brew that leans bitter-and-sweet over one that is sour and hollow. That is not to say acidity is a fault. Acidity is what gives coffee its excitement. It simply needs sweetness alongside it to feel balanced.
  6. Clean everything, often. Anything liquid coffee touches picks up coffee oil, and coffee oil goes rancid. Nobody wants that in the next cup.
An espresso portafilter resting on a digital brew scale on a wooden bench

Recipes to start from

Treat these as a baseline rather than a rule. Adjust the grind first, and change one variable at a time.

AeroPress

Preheat the AeroPress and rinse the filter before you start.

  1. Pour in 50g of boiling water.
  2. Stir in 17g of coffee and start a timer.
  3. At 20 seconds, pour in the rest of the water. Final weight should be 240g.
  4. Stir five times. Wait until 1:45, then stir five more times.
  5. Put the basket and filter on, and close it.
  6. Set the AeroPress on your server or cup and press until you hear air escape.
  7. Serve.

Hario V60

Put a filter in the V60 and pre-wet it with hot water. This rinses away the papery taste and warms the brewer.

  1. 18g of coffee in.
  2. Pour about 60g of water over the coffee, stir gently, and wait 30 seconds.
  3. At 0:30, pour up to 150g.
  4. At 0:55, pour up to 200g.
  5. At 1:20, pour up to 250g.
  6. At 1:45, pour up to 300g.
  7. Swirl the V60 gently and let it drain.
  8. The brew should finish between 2:30 and 3:00.

Espresso

  1. Know your basket size and start 0.5g under what it is rated for. For a 20g basket, dose 19.5g.
  2. Distribute evenly and tamp flat. Flat matters more than hard.
  3. Extract at least double your dose. From 19.5g in, aim for about 42g out.
  4. That should take 25 to 30 seconds, assuming your burrs are sharp.

A recipe from someone else's machine is a starting point, not an instruction. Your grinder, water and basket are not theirs.

Then it comes down to the coffee

A Fjord Coffee box held open, showing three bags of freshly roasted coffee

Technique gets you to a clean, repeatable cup. What is in the cup after that is down to the lot: where it grew, how it was processed, and how recently it was roasted. We roast to order and publish the origin, producer and process on every bag.

If you already know what you like, a subscription keeps it arriving freshly roasted, on your schedule. If you are still exploring, the Taster Box Set is the shortest route.

Browse all coffee

If you brew by hand

Filter coffee

If you pull shots

Espresso coffee