Why Doesn’t My Coffee Taste Like Cafe Coffee?

freshly brewed coffee

You love the coffee at your local café, but you feel obligated to be at least 50% coherent and not wearing pajamas to go there. And some mornings, showers and sentences are just not happening before your first cup. To be prepared, you buy beans from the café for at-home-in-your-nighty brewing.

Problem solved. You thought.

But when you make the same coffee at home, it isn’t as good.

Listed below are what I’ve found to be “The Culprits” – the reasons why the same beans might not taste as good when brewed at home. The good news is that those cute pajamas you wear have nothing to do with it. They can stay.

The other good news: The Culprits are just variables at play in the coffee brewing process, and you can control them to brew great coffee at home any time.

The Culprits

  1. Coffee-to-Water Ratio

    Many underestimate the extent to which varying coffee-to-water ratios can change the flavor and body – not just the “strength” – of a cup.

There’s no “right” ratio. The ideal ratio can also vary with your brew method but in general, 1 gram of coffee to 16 grams of water is a good starting point. Find the ratio you like, and be intentional in achieving it each time.

To be precise, I use a scale to measure both my coffee and water. You can measure in other ways (e.g. 2 tablespoons of coffee for each 6 fluid ounces of water) as long as your method has sufficient precision to achieve your sweet spot ratio every time.

  1. Freshness of Beans

When you buy beans from a specialty coffee shop, they should be freshly roasted (you can ask for the roast date if it’s not on the packaging). It’s best to brew within a few weeks of the roast date. If you’re not using your beans by the three-week mark, try buying in smaller amounts so your coffee is fresh.

  1. The Grind

This variable may hurt at-home cups the most.

You GOT to grind just before brewing. You GOT to have a good grinder. And you GOT to have that grinder on the right setting.

So this is actually 3 variables related to grinding:

Minimize time between grinding and brewing

Grind your beans at home, just before brewing. So yes, you should really have a grinder at home. (They make great birthday presents. To yourself. Six months early…)

Use a good grinder

 

Coffee GrinderBefore you go birthday shopping, make sure you’re buying a good grinder. Good grinders produce grounds that are consistent in size. Bad grinders produce grounds of different sizes. When grounds are different sizes, different amounts of surface area are exposed to the water, which leads to inconsistent extraction (and less than ideal taste). To maintain even extraction across particles, we need consistency in ground size.

Burr grinders (as opposed to blade grinders) are your best bet. At La Vita Dolce, we use Mahlkonig grinders. They’re beautiful, highly professional machines. They would also be overkill at home. At home, I use a smaller Baratza grinder. There are other good options out there – but by “good option” I do not mean a standard drip brewer that comes with a little built in grinding compartment thing. Don’t do it.

Set to the appropriate grind setting

The best grind setting depends on your brew method. Different brew methods have different dwell times (the period during which water is in contact with the grounds). The longer the dwell time, the coarser the grind needed.

Espresso calls for a fine grind, drip brewing calls for a coarser grind, French Press calls for an even coarser grind. You can Google your brand of grinder and brew method to find a suggested grind setting and go from there.

  1. Operation of Your Brew Gadgets

Pour Over Brew MethodNo matter how you brew your coffee, it’s important to use your brew gadgets properly. At home, I typically use the pour over method, which is a type of drip brewing. My equipment: scale, Baratza grinder, Chemex coffeemaker, filter, kettle. Simple, but I still need to operate my gadgets correctly (e.g. saturate grounds evenly when pouring water, don’t pour too much water at once). Ask Siri for tips on how to use your preferred equipment.

  1. Water

Again, here we actually have two factors that I combined into one to make this list look shorter and get you to read this far.

Bad water = bad coffee

Ever made coffee using tap water at the beach? Not so pleasant. At La Vita Dolce, we have multiple filtration systems that are regularly changed. At home, you can use bottled water or filtered tap water (assuming you remember the last time you changed that water filter…).

Temperature affects extraction

You want your water to be just below boiling at 195-205 degrees F when brewing. Unless you’re cold brewing to make Dolce Nitro

And there we have it: how you can make coffee that tastes like it was brewed in your favorite café, all while avoiding human interaction and normal clothes. Dreams do come true.

Keep in mind that if you’re using a different brew method than used at the café, your coffee is probably going to taste different. But the ins and outs of various brew methods we will save for another time…

Year One at the New La Vita Dolce: Changes & Developments

La Vita Dolce Cafe

In April 2015, La Vita Dolce became a new business. While the name didn’t change, the owner of the business retired and sold the café’s assets to me and my partner (his name is Alexander and he is a “silent partner” — he’s also my significant other).

My intention was never to continue running an existing cafe. From the beginning, I intended to use this opportunity to create the best café possible.

As our first year of ownership ends, it’s important to review how we’ve moved toward that vision, and to share our progress with the community.

While the new La Vita Dolce is still an espresso and gelato café, there are many new developments here, with the following being some of the most significant:

  • New Coffee & Espresso
  • Barista Development
  • Dolce Nitro
  • Community Involvement
  • Gelato Flavors
  • New Menu Offerings
  • Wine & Beer
  • New Vibes: Environment & Culture

New Coffee & Espresso

Bottomless Espresso PortafilterFinding the perfect house coffees was one of our first priorities at La Vita Dolce. By last April, I had already spent months, with the help of a group of tasters, trying coffees from around the globe roasted by leading specialty roasters across the country.

We tasted several absolutely amazing coffees. But I was never confident that any of them could fill the role of La Vita Dolce House Coffee.

Streamline EspressoAnd then I tasted Empire Blend. After one cup, I knew we had a winner, and we introduced our new house coffees just a couple weeks after taking over.

Today, our house coffee (Empire Blend), organic decaf coffee (Deco Decaf), and the coffee we use to brew espresso (Streamline) are roasted by Victrola Coffee Roasters in Seattle, and shipped to us fresh each week. La Vita Dolce is the only café in NC where these coffees are available and you can learn more about why we love them here.

Barista Development

Latte ArtGreat beans can be a waste if baristas aren’t trained in how to bring out their best when brewing. So we spent weeks providing baristas with training and practice in espresso brewing and milk steaming. Now everyone at the cafe pulls beautiful espresso shots and is versed in the subtleties of milk steaming for drinks ranging from macchiatos to lattes and everything in between.

Dolce Nitro

 
Nitro Coffee on TapWe’ve introduced several new products during the past year, but Dolce Nitro deserves it’s own recognition.

The first nitrogen-infused, beautifully frothy, cold brew coffee offered in this area, Dolce Nitro took us months to perfect. But once it was ready it hit the tap running.

It has since developed its own brand and following and you can read more about it here, or in Chapel Hill Magazine’s article.

Community Involvement

Dolce Nitro in CommunityWe love being part of the Southern Village and Chapel Hill communities, which have warmly welcomed the new La Vita Dolce. We’ve tried to find ways that we are uniquely qualified to support people and organizations that make this such a wonderful place to work and live.

We’ve hosted family-friendly holiday events (e.g. pumpkin painting and gingerbread decorating), offered gelato samples at the Southern Village Farmer’s Market, brought kegs of Dolce Nitro to Super Cooper’s Little Red Wagon fundraisers, handed out cider to Holly Jolly Jog runners, kept local teachers caffeinated, and contributed to almost a dozen local nonprofits in our first year. We’re proud of our involvement so far and look forward to new opportunities to support and connect with the community in coming years.

Gelato Flavors

Salted Caramel and Chocolate GelatoErin Farmer, who was making the gelato at La Vita Dolce when I bought the café, was doing a fantastic job. So I left her alone. Actually, I made her Manager.

As Manager and overseer of all things gelato at La Vita Dolce, Erin has continued to produce outstanding gelato and go beyond the status quo to create new and adventurous flavors (Sweet Corn, Avocado Sage, Sangria Sorbet, and Wildberry Lavender to name a few customer favorites). She has passed this enthusiasm for meticulous flavor creation along in her training of new gelato makers, who continue to invent gelatos and sorbettos unlike anything I have ever tasted.

New Menu Offerings

Carrot CakeWe’ve added new options to the menu at La Vita Dolce — and that’s not to say that every addition has been a keeper. For example, we tried Cookie Cake for about a week and while it was great cookie cake, customers voted with their ordering selections (which rarely included cookie cake) and it got nixed.

Among the most popular new options are the Raspberry Oat Bar, Chicken Salad Wrap, an assortment of non-cookie cakes, new espresso drinks, and 4 different Breakfast Tacos.  We will also be introducing a new “Small Plates & Snacks” menu section in the next couple of weeks.

Wine & Beer

Hard Root Beer FloatLa Vita Dolce always offers six or more wines and numerous craft beers, which change seasonally. Once each month (on Parents’ Night Out at The Tumble Gym) we offer 50% off all wine and beer.

We’ve also created a few delicious drinks that pair our wines and beers with our made-in-house gelato and sorbetto (e.g. the Hard Root Beer Float and popular Frozen Lemon Vinho) and the upcoming Small Plates & Snacks section on our menu was largely designed to complement our adult drink selection.

Creating Vibes: Environment & Culture

Inside La Vita DolceMy goal is to make our café a community gathering spot where people meet up, catch up, and have spur of the moment run-ins with friends and neighbors. I want it to be a welcoming place where customers talk to the barista about more than just their coffee orders, and where they enjoy hanging around to chat, do work, or have lunch.

To this end, we have created a new physical environment (e.g. new paint, décor, furniture, music), and we’ve focused on building a positive culture. Our baristas are encouraged to take initiative, find ways to apply their particular strengths at the café, offer ideas for improvement, and make this a fun place to both frequent and work. And they’ve been amazing.

New DecorI’ve never witnessed café staff who were more dedicated to making their café the best that it can be, or who cared more about each other and their customers and community. As a result, we’ve developed a wonderful culture that I believe can be felt by staff and customers alike.

There are several other areas that we’ve worked on during the past year – becoming more environmentally sustainable, upgrading equipment, earning a darn good sanitation grade, etc. – but here we end the list for this blog post.

As we kick off our second year, we continue to work toward creating the best café possible. Feedback from the community is extremely important to us — it’s what spurred some of our greatest changes in Year One — so please feel free to contact me at ann.habersham@gmail.com with comments, questions or suggestions.

Note: We’re celebrating our 1 year anniversary with 50% off some of our best drinks & treats for an entire week (4/23-4/29)! Learn more