How to Brew the Best Cup of Coffee Every Morning

August 05, 2021 Daryl Gioffre

Do you wish you could brew coffee like a barista in a local coffeehouse?

Imagine waking up every morning and enjoying the best coffee of your life without leaving your own home.

You’ve heard me say that coffee is acidic. But for many of you, you just can’t start the day until you have your morning cup… or two… or five.

I get it. And that’s why when patients, including Kelly Ripa, tell me that they just can’t quit coffee, I say, “Okay, let’s do everything we can to diminish the damage all of that acid is causing your body.”

It’s also why I created Acid-Kicking Coffee Alkalizer to literally turn acidic coffee slightly alkaline. That one change will not only improve the health effects of the coffee you enjoy each day, it will also improve the taste.

Great tasting coffee takes just a few things:

Great ingredients
The right tools
A little know how

So today, we’re going to talk about each of those factors for getting great coffee so you can optimize your morning cup. Whether you want convenience, the best taste, or the strongest brew, once you know how to get the exact flavor and aroma you want, you can have it each and every day.

Even if you think you know a lot about coffee, some of this information may surprise you. Let’s get started by talking about perhaps the most important component to coffee, and that’s the beans.

The Beans

First thing’s first: always buy organic! Coffee is among the MOST heavily sprayed crops for pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides in the entire world. So buying organic means none of those nasty chemicals in your coffee.

When it comes to the type of organic beans you buy, I recommend Arabica. A lot of the big companies use Robusta beans, which are cheaper but they are also are more acidic, they have more caffeine, and they have a harsher taste.

Arabica beans, on the other hand, are lower in acid, smoother and sweeter in taste, and lower in caffeine. That doesn’t mean that you’ll necessarily have to pay more for less acidic coffee – just look for beans marked as Arabica at your preferred price point.

Some beans advertise a blend rather than a type of bean or region they’re grown in. When you see French roast, espresso blends, or “breakfast blend,” this is the case. The roasting process burns off acidity, so the darker the roast, the less acidic the coffee. French roasts, Italian roasts, and espresso blends are typically darker roasts.

Countries of origin give you a clue into their taste and acidity levels too. Brazilian, Colombian, and Indonesian beans are grown up in the mountains and tend to be sweeter and less acidic than beans grown in Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Guatemala.

So ideally, you’ll find an organic, Arabica blend of beans from Brazil, Colombia, or Indonesia that’s given a darker roast.

Once you bring your beans home, how you store them is just as important as the type you pick out. You want to keep them in a sealed container that is as air-tight as possible. They shouldn't be stored right by the oven, or in the fridge or freezer, which can affect flavor.

The Water

The vast majority of your coffee is not beans, it’s water. So the water you use is very, very important.

Most people just put tap water in their brew system. But that’s a big no-no. Just ask any knowledgeable barista. They use advanced filtration systems and you should too. Remember, the average glass of tap water has more than 316 contaminants in it.

The temperature the water brews at is also important to getting the best quality cup of joe. Most coffee makers heat the water to about 175 degrees Fahrenheit, which falls below the ideal temperature of 195 to 205 degrees to extract the most benefits from the beans. Remember, coffee beans are acidic but they also are high in antioxidants.

This is one of the reason many coffee snobs prefer other brew methods where you manually heat the water. Boiling temperature is 212 degrees, so bring your water to a boil and then let it sit for about 30 seconds before you brew.

The Grind

Most coffee drinkers buy their beans ground. That’s fine, but there’s a reason coffee aficionados grind their beans themselves.

In fact, if there’s one change you’re going to make to improve your coffee, grinding at home before you brew should be it. Whole beans retain their flavor longer, and you can set the grind to the fine or coarse texture that works best with your brew system.

If you don’t already own a coffee grinder, look for a simple burr grinder in your price range. A burr grinder has a cone shape that rotates the beans for an evenly ground texture, as opposed to a blade grinder, which can allow coarse bits into the ground coffee.

The Brew Method

The good news about brew systems is that there are so many different options, you’re sure to find what’s optimal for you. Let’s break down the most popular methods for comparison.

Drip Coffee Makers (& Pods): Standard coffee machines, and their little sisters, the pod single-brew cups, are the most popular and easiest to use. They don’t produce the nuanced flavor of the methods below, but they do provide consistency and convenience. Heated drip brewing produces a more acidic coffee than the methods below. If you use a drip coffee maker, choose a stainless steel fine mesh filter so you aren’t ingesting beached paper pulp.

French Press: This heated brewing technique requires a relatively inexpensive French press machine and a mechanism to boil water. You combine the water and grounds in the press and then push the grounds to the bottom, leaving coffee at the top. Unlike drip machines, you won’t injest any paper pulp and the end result is less acidic. French presses are a bit messier though.

Pour Over, Aeropress, or Chemex: Like French presses, this manual coffee method produces a nuanced, less-acidic flavor but requires a little more effort, know how, and clean up. Unlike French presses, Chemexes and similar brew methods mean literally pouring hot water over ground beans. Choose a stainless steel filter made specifically for pour over methods rather than paper filters to avoid drinking paper with your coffee.

Read your brew system’s directions for recommendations for how fine or coarse to grind your beans.

Cold Brew: Cold brew reduces acid compared to other brewing methods the most. Have you ever tasted cold brew and thought it was so much better than typical coffee? That’s LESS ACID you’re tasting and enjoying. Have you tried cold brewing at home yet? It’s actually really easy and you don’t have to buy special equipment to try it. Use a Mason jar or lidded pitcher and combine water with coarsely-ground beans to your preferred strength level. Let it sit in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours, and then strain the coffee through a fine sieve. It’s that simple!

The Add-Ins

Finally, how you drink your coffee makes a difference not only on taste, but also on its effects on your health too.

Even if you simply add milk, cream, sugar, artificial sweeteners, or even butter to your coffee, it’s the same as dumping sugar on a donut – acid on top of acid – and then putting it into your body.

And don’t even get me started on artificial creamer products made with corn syrup solids and hydrogenated oils, which are inflammatory trans fats.

Even almond milk creamers are heavily processed!

It may not seem like adding a teaspoon of sugar or cream to your coffee every morning is doing much harm. But consuming a sugary, acidic beverage every morning causes blood sugar surges that throw off your insulin levels in your body, potentially creating insulin resistance and metabolic issues.

Even if you don’t add a thing to your coffee, the acid in your standard cup, which is 1,000 times more acidic than tap water, is damaging to nearly every body part it comes into contact with from your teeth, which it strips of your natural enamel, to your digestive tract, which leads to heartburn and IBS symptoms, to your brain, causing migraines.

If you suffer from acid reflux or heartburn, you already know what most people don’t about how coffee affects digestion. It exacerbates reflux symptoms, and yet, for so many reflux sufferers, they just can’t stop drinking their morning joe!

If you drink coffee, you want the energy it gives you – without the eventual crash, headaches, jitters, or acid reflux.

That’s why we created Acid-Kicking Coffee Alkalizer, a powder supplement that delivers plant-based, clean keto fats, acid-fighting minerals, pure Himalayan pink mineral salts, and enzymes to optimize brain-boosting energy, suppress hunger, and burn body fat throughout your day.