Health Advantage

Did you know that espresso is actually a more recent development of drinking a cup of coffee? That's because a cup of coffee is limited to the use of an espresso machine. An espresso is produced with the use of finely ground coffee packed tightly (tamped) together. Nearly boiling hot water is forced through the fine ground of coffee to produce a thick dark brown extraction of coffee. Drip coffee is much simpler and doesn't need a lot of science to make a nice brewed cup of perfection.

Drip coffee is much more different. Drip coffee is the mother of all espressos. It is on the principle of drip coffee that espresso was formed. However, there is still a big difference. When making drip coffee, it considers fewer factors. It doesn't consider the pressure. It also considers the fineness of the coffee grounds as well as the temperature the water is boiled. Drip coffee doesn't consider any of those factors.

How to prepare drip coffee?

Drip coffee produces a wonderful cup of coffee. There is no science behind a good brew, it's just a simple pour over leading to man's best beverage: coffee.

1. Drip coffee uses boiling hot water. So before you prepare anything else, you might as well start heating up a kettle of water.
2. Prepare about 1 heaped tablespoon or 2 level tablespoons of ground coffee for every 6 ounces of water. If you are grinding your coffee fresh, grind it until it reaches the texture of sea salt. Using a home burr grinder it would be at #4 (for conical filters) or #6 (for flat-bottomed filters). TIP: Freshly roasted coffee beans actually just have a shelf life of up to 2 weeks. Preferably, buy coffee from independent coffee roasters to ensure maximum freshness rather than buying store-bought coffee beans because they're about 6-12 months old.
3. Place a filter on your dripper and wet it with hot water (it's easier to filter this way). Add your freshly ground coffee on the filter and pre-wet your coffee grounds first (this helps release the aroma and the true richness of your coffee.
4. When your water is hot, pour the water over and wait for the 'bloom'. The bloom is when the coffee grounds form a flower-like set of bubbles.
5. Start pouring the water over the ground coffee in s spiral manner starting from the outer rim going inwards to saturate the ground coffee.
6. Voila! After a couple of pours (maybe around 4 pours in total), you are blessed with a wonderfully extracted drip coffee!

If you need to make espresso at home, here is a nice article on the subject.