Manual Brewing: Coffee Glossary

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It seems that quite often, when I open up my Twitter account, I am greeted by some obscure hashtag featuring a #somethingday. There is donut day, a national (and international) coffee day and even a blame someone else day.

Today is dictionary day which celebrates the life work of Noah Webster, father of the modern dictionary. In the spirit of learning new words, I thought I would try my hand at lexicography and make a short glossary of manual brewing terms for reference.

Manual Brewing Dictionary- Coffee Glossary

Blend- Refers to a roasted coffee that is comprised of coffee from several different origins, crop years or other variables. Because they are made up of different coffees, blended coffee can have characteristics and flavors that a single origin coffee can not achieve.

Bloom- Part of the manual brewing process. The bloom or blooming typically involves wetting your ground coffee with 10-20% of you total water volume and letting it sit for 30-60 seconds to de-gas. The water should be at brewing temperatures (195-205 degrees F). Blooming a coffee is said to make a coffee a little more well-rounded and can possibly take a little of the edge off of a freshly roasted coffee. The fresher a coffee is, the more important it is to bloom.

Cascara- Spanish for “husk,” cascara refers to a coffee tea that is made from the dried coffee fruit that is removed from the green coffee seed.

Chicory- A coffee additive that was made popular in times when coffee was scarce. It is made by roasting the roots of a blue flowered plant native to Europe. It has a bitter, smokey flavor and is a popular additive in New Orleans style coffee. (Chicory: History, Blending and New Orleans Style Coffee)

Cupping- A process of evaluating coffee analogous to wine tasting. Hot water is added to ground coffee and the slurry is allowed to steep for a few minutes. The person doing the cupping will then slurp the resulting coffee from a cupping spoon (kind of like a soup spoon) and make notes to evaluate the coffee. This is the standard in which most green coffees are evaluated for purchase. Additionally, a coffee roaster will use cupping to evaluate how they will roast a particular coffee.

Dosage– Used to describe the amount of coffee used to make a particular cup of coffee. Typically expressed as a ratio of coffee to water, you can expect anything from 1:12 to 1:18 as reasonable. A strong cup of coffee with have more coffee per units of water. (Coffee Brewing Dosage- How Much Coffee Should I Use?)

Extraction- Used when discussing a brewed cup of coffee. The flavor chemicals in coffee extract in order from sour (acid) to sweet to bitterness. A “sour” cup of coffee may be considered under-extracted and an overly bitter cup may be over-extracted. For something more tangible, extraction can also be measured in TDS (total dissolved solids)  with a refractometer.

Green coffee- Raw, unroasted coffee. Before coffee is roasted, it is a hard green seed that comes from a cherry-like fruit. (Green Coffee Explained)

Gourmet coffee- This is a marketing term used for coffee. Their is no set standard for gourmet coffee and a roaster can use it at their discretion. In general, gourmet coffee is not in the upper tiers of coffee quality. (Gourmet, Specialty and Third Wave Coffee Defined)

Immersion Brewing- A type of manual coffee brewing that involves completely submerging ground coffee in water and letting it “steep” for a given amount of time. Some types of immersion brewing are French Press, Siphon brewing and Cowboy coffee.

Manual Brewing- A process that takes the automation out of brewing coffee. I will sometimes refer to a manually brewed cup of coffee as handmade. (Start Here)

Natural Process- Also called dry processed or unwashed, refers to a method of processing coffee in it’s fruit form to recover the green coffee. Natural processed coffees are set out in the sun to dry with the fruit still attached. The dried fruit is removed later. This can give coffee complexity and sometimes an extremely pleasant fruity flavor when done correctly. (Green Coffee Explained)

Origin- Refers to the country or region that a green coffee is from. (Coffee Origins)

Peaberry- In a typical coffee cherry, the “pit” is comprised of two seeds (green coffee beans). In about 1 of every 20 coffee cherries, there is only one round seed instead of two, this is called a peaberry. It is sometimes thought to pack the same amount of flavor as it’s other two seeded counterparts combined.

Pour-over Brewing (One-cupper)- A type of manual coffee brewing that involves pouring hot water over ground coffee. This method utilizes a filter cone and a filtering medium (most popular is paper) to brew. Some popular pour-over brewers are the Hario v60, Chemex, Kalita Wave and the Bee House.

Single origin- Refers to a coffee that is all from the same farm (as opposed to a blend).

Slow Bar- Refers to the section of the menu at a coffee shop where you can request a manually brewed cup of coffee. This will typically allow you to choose from a variety of coffee offerings and brew methods. The coffee will be brewed fresh right as you wait instead of filling your tankard from the community urn.

Specialty coffee- Defined as coffee that is rated 80 points or higher on the 100 point coffee grading scale. This term was coined as an effort to distinguish higher grade coffee from the misleading gourmet coffee term. There is a specialty coffee association (SCAA in the US) that educates it’s members and the coffee community.

Third Wave- This term refers to a smaller segment of the specialty coffee world. Third Wave coffee is comprised of a group of roasters, coffee shops and consumers that view coffee as a artisanal food over a commodity product. You can expect an emphasis on the origin characteristics of the coffee as well as it being freshly roasted. (Gourmet, Specialty and Third Wave Coffee Defined)

Washed coffee- Also called wet processed coffee, refers to a method of processing coffee in it’s fruit form to recover the green coffee. Washed coffees have the fruit removed with depulping machines and are then fermented in a tank of water for a period of time. Washed coffees are often a cleaner more predictable cup of coffee. (Green Coffee Explained)

If you have a term you would like added, defined and explained, send me a message via the Contact page or leave a comment below. As always I welcome construction corrections and discussion so chime on in.