Last Thursday morning I packed up my home brewing setup and took it down to the Fox 8 Kitchen. Morning anchor Rob Krieger gave me a few minutes to walk through how to make coffee-shop-quality coffee in your own kitchen, and the whole playbook fits in four rules.
Rule one: fresh roasted coffee. This is the top of the list and it's not close. Every bag we sell at CR is fresh roasted (we roast it on the antique Royal roasters), so the easiest version of this rule is to grab a bag from us. But even if you're not brewing our coffee, you must be using fresh roasted coffee, so be sure you are. At the grocery store, look for the local bags with a roast date printed on them and grab the one roasted most recently. It's the difference between a packaged cookie and a fresh-baked cookie. What do you want?
Rule two: spend your money on the grinder. Everybody wants the cool coffee pot, but the grinder is the key to the whole operation. Skip the pre-ground: coffee is like a cake, and once you cut it up it dries out quicker. Keep it in bean form until you're ready to brew. And skip those little whirly-blade grinders too. Those are better for spices. They pulverize coffee instead of grinding it. A burr grinder takes the bean in and grinds it down to a uniform size, and a good one doses the exact amount you need at the press of a button, before you've even had your coffee.
Rule three: get your water hot. This is the big one most home setups miss, because a lot of home coffee pots simply don't get the water hot enough. That's why I brought the Clever Coffee Dripper. Throw in your grounds, add hot water, let it sit four minutes, then set it on your cup and the valve releases everything. It's dead simple and it will beat the coffee you're getting almost anywhere else.
Rule four: for the full-pot people. If you're like me and one cup isn't the plan (my wife married me for coffee, so we do a full pot in the morning), the same rules apply. Fresh beans, fresh uniform grind, and a machine that actually gets the water hot.
Every piece of gear from the segment is the same stuff on our Gear page, with links to all of it. And you can watch the full Fox 8 segment here. Or skip the homework entirely and let us brew it for you at Magazine Street, Old Metairie, or St. Roch Market.