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Espresso beans are a bit tough to use when trying them in a standard coffee maker. These beans are roasted much darker, and they're specifically blended for the 9 bars of pressure in an espresso machine. The water gets forced through the tightly packed grounds in just 25 seconds. A drip brewer is different, though, because it relies on gravity to pull the water through the grounds over 5 whole minutes. The grind size is probably the biggest factor to get right. Using that ultra-fine espresso grind in your drip maker will either clog the filter or get you a...

The debate gets pretty heated about taste. Some coffee drinkers insist that unrinsed filters add a papery flavor that ruins expensive beans. Others say they've never picked up on any difference whatsoever. The Specialty Coffee Association has actually run taste tests on this. Even the filters themselves are all over the map in terms of quality and thickness. Chemex papers are very thick and behave differently from thin V60 filters. The brown unbleached filters have much more leftover compounds than the white bleached ones do. A wet filter sticks to the dripper walls differently than a dry one does. Water...

You grab your morning coffee and wait for that familiar energy kick. Half an hour passes, and somehow you feel ready to go right back to sleep. About 30% of coffee drinkers actually experience drowsiness after their caffeine fix, and it means the world's favorite stimulant sometimes works backwards. Caffeine blocks the sleep messages in your body when it first hits your system. The problem is that those messages don't disappear - they pile up behind the scenes. Your genetics might mean that you process caffeine four times slower than the person sitting next to you, your blood sugar could...

Coffee recipes are very particular about water temperature, and they'll tell you the exact brewing ratio down to the gram. With grind size, though, the best that you usually get is something vague like "medium-coarse." That doesn't mean much for your grinder at home. The truth is that even a small adjustment of 50 to 100 microns can change your brew time and the way that your coffee tastes. Without any targets to work with, you're just guessing every time that you adjust your grinder. Professional baristas actually measure their grinds in microns, and they also track consistency percentages for...