Guides

Reference for your beans, roast, grinder and technique. The highlighted rows follow your coffee setup.

Bean flavour guide

Read the tasting notes on your bag and pick the closest family in your coffee setup. Every recipe is tagged with the families it brings out best, with the reason. The tags are my judgement from each recipe's temperature, ratio and agitation, and the beans its author used.

Fruity49 recipes

Bag saysberries, grape, plum, tropical, jammy, winey

Typical beansNaturals, anaerobic and co-ferments — like your Yelnoorkhan

SuitsBypass and cooler-water recipes keep fruit juicy instead of sour; great iced.

Citrus28 recipes

Bag sayslemon, orange, lime, grapefruit, bright

Typical beansWashed Kenyan, Ethiopian, Colombian

SuitsHigh ratio, clean filters, 80–90 °C. Pairs with tonic and orange.

Floral23 recipes

Bag saysjasmine, bergamot, black tea, honeysuckle

Typical beansWashed Ethiopian, Geisha, very light Nordic roasts

SuitsLean, gentle, clean recipes — Hoffmann, Wendelboe, V60-style.

Caramel & sweet59 recipes

Bag saysbrown sugar, honey, toffee, jaggery, dates

Typical beansHoney-process and balanced mediums

SuitsEveryday cups and concentrates with bypass; brown sugar and condensed milk.

Nutty40 recipes

Bag saysalmond, hazelnut, peanut, walnut, malt

Typical beansBrazils and Indian washed mediums

SuitsEveryday cups and milk drinks; coconut and condensed milk.

Chocolaty54 recipes

Bag sayscocoa, dark chocolate, fudge, cacao nibs

Typical beansMedium-dark and espresso roasts — like your Truffle Twilight

SuitsMilk, moka, concentrates, Coke Zero and Vietnamese-style.

Bold & smoky21 recipes

Bag sayssmoky, roasty, woody, bittersweet

Typical beansDark roasts, robusta, Vietnamese blends

SuitsCooler water, a coarser grind, and something sweet or milky.

Roast dictates temperature

Darker roasts are more soluble and give up bitterness faster, so they want cooler water. Your own methods follow this automatically; library recipes keep the brewer's original temperature and show a nudge when your roast is far from theirs.

Roast	Water	Off the boil	Grind shift
Light	99 °C	15 s	1 click finer
Medium-light	95 °C	40 s	1 click finer
Medium Yours	92 °C	60 s	—
Medium-dark	88 °C	80 s	1 click coarser
Dark	85 °C	2 min	2 clicks coarser

Timings assume a kettle in a normal room, lid off. Calibrate once if you ever get a thermometer.

Timemore C3S reference

Settings in clicks counted out from zero, the finest point where the burrs just touch.

Find your zero before trusting any number. Turn the dial until the burrs just touch, then count clicks out from there. Every grinder sits slightly differently. Don't grind finer than about 6 clicks with the burrs turning — it dulls them.

Starting settings for every brew method on your grinder. The two rows you'll use most are highlighted.

Method	Start	Range
Espresso	9	8–11
Moka pot	12	11–13
AeroPress, short steep	13	13–14
V60 / cone	15	14–16
Flat-bottom pour over	16	15–18
Drip machine	17	16–19
Chemex	19	18–21
French press	22	21–24
Cold brew	25	24–26

Your methods' grind settings are converted between grinders by matching brew methods on brewmark.io's shared grind scale. Treat every number as a starting point and expect to move a step or two.

On the mug or inverted?

Every recipe says which one it uses, at the top of the recipe and on its search result. This is what each means.

Directly on the mug

Also called standard. Filter cap on, brewer sitting on your mug from the start, press at the end. Simplest, and nothing to spill.

A little coffee drips through during the steep. Some recipes stop that by pushing the plunger in a centimetre right after pouring.

Used by Hoffmann, Wendelboe, Alan Adler, and most roasters' house recipes.

Inverted

The brewer stands upside-down on its plunger, so nothing drips out and every drop steeps the full time. You flip it onto the mug just before pressing.

The timer warns you 10 seconds before the flip, and shows the flip time on the recipe.

Used by most championship winners, Blue Bottle, and Lance Hedrick's concentrates.

Inverted means hot water sitting on a rubber seal. Use a flat, stable surface, leave a finger's width at the top, and flip away from yourself.

Milk & foam without a machine

Heat milk to 60–65 °C: steaming and too hot to sip, never boiling. Hotter than that and it loses its sweetness and won't foam.

Silky milk — latte, café au lait. Froth briefly (10–15 French press pumps) for a thin layer of foam.

Velvety microfoam — flat white, cortado. Just 8–10 pumps, then swirl the jug until the milk looks glossy like wet paint.

Thick foam — cappuccino, macchiato. 20–30 pumps until the milk roughly doubles, rest 30 s, tap to pop big bubbles.

Cold foam — freddo cappuccino, sweet cream. Froth cold milk straight from the fridge; low-fat milk foams best cold.

Tools — a French press (pump the plunger), a handheld frother, or a jar: shake cold milk hard for 30 s, then microwave it with the lid off for 30 s.

If the cup is off

Change one thing, brew again, taste. Two changes at once and you learn nothing.

It tastes	That means	Do this
Sour, thin, empty finish	Under-extracted	1 step finer, or +2 °C, or +15 s steep
Bitter, drying, harsh	Over-extracted	1 step coarser, or −2 °C, press slower
Weak but not sour	Ratio, not extraction	+1 g coffee, keep the rest
Harsh only at the end	Pressed past the hiss	Stop at the hiss next time
Muted, closed, slightly gassy	Too fresh	Wait — check the roast date
Flat and papery	Stale	Nothing fixes this; new bag