General brewing guidance

New to brewing? Here are some important things to consider

1. If you want good coffee, support your local roasteries and buy fresh beans. There's a night and day difference between freshly roasted beans and stuff sitting on a supermarket shelf with unknown roasting dates.

2. When you do get fresh beans, we'd recommend brewing once the beans are at least 3-4 days past the roasting date. Otherwise they will likely degas a lot and interfere with quality brewing.

3. Get a good burr grinder. It can be hand-held or electric, it does not need to be expensive. Just don't murder your beans with blade grinders that look more like blenders. If you want good coffee you need good and CONSISTENT extraction, and that only comes from having uniform, consistently sized coffee grind size. Burr grinders provide this, blade grinders do not.

4. The price of coffee beans does not determine how much you will like your coffee. Explore and find what you like, taste is subjective. However, that 100 THB packet of 300 g of catering blend X generic brand at the supermarket, which is 3x cheaper that most cheap roastery coffee beans, is probably not a good pick.

5. DO get a timer and measure your brew times, create a recipe and stick to it.

6. DO try to control temperature. You can either boil your kettle and use the water a specific amount of time afterward (e.g. 30 seconds), get a steel pouring mug and a milk temperature stick, or an expensive temperature controlled kettle. Your goal should be to start your brew recipe with a consistent temperature water to keep your brewing process consistent, as it does matter.

7. Experiment experiment experiment! And make sure to record notes somewhere.