Why Is Restaurant Coffee so Good? (Question Answered)

One of the things that people often order at a restaurant before ordering the main course is coffee. Of course, in most cases, restaurant coffee tastes so good that it might be difficult for you to recreate such a blend back at home. And when you did try to recreate the same coffee, it really did not come close to the restaurant coffee. So, why is restaurant coffee so good?

Restaurant coffee is so good because they have tools that allow them to extract coffee from the grounds to maximize the blend’s flavor. Commercial grinders are great at grinding the coffee beans for getting the highest quality of grinds. Also, they get their beans from the best sources.

When you consider that restaurants have the best equipment that will allow them to make the most out of their coffee beans, it becomes understandable why your affordable coffee-making tools at home cannot stand up to the ones in restaurants. That aside, let’s explore more of the reasons why restaurants have coffee that is so good.

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Why does coffee taste better at a restaurant?

It isn’t uncommon for you to find yourself in a restaurant or a coffee shop and then you order a cup of coffee before ordering a meal. This usually happens when you are waiting for a friend to arrive as the cup of coffee is a great way of keeping yourself preoccupied. And when you sipped that cup of coffee regardless of what your preference may be as to the amount of cream and sugar you put, you might have certainly noticed how good that restaurant’s or café’s coffee is.

So, that said, you might have your own espresso machine, coffee beans, and grinder at home but the one thing you immediately noticed was that the coffee you make at home just doesn’t match up to the ones you can get in restaurants and cafés. This makes you wonder why restaurant coffee is so good compared to the one you can make at home.

Basically, the reason why restaurant coffee is so good can be due to a lot of different factors. Such factors include the training of the barista, the equipment used to make the coffee, and the quality of the coffee beans. All of those combined allow a trained barista to make coffee that is certainly going to be better than the coffee you can make at home.

First off, let’s look at the training of the barista. Making coffee isn’t all just about pressing a few buttons on an espresso machine because you have to know a lot about the different brewing times and the temperatures needed to produce the best kind of coffee depending on what kind of roast you are after. These baristas are specially trained to know how to handle the equipment they use. Of course, they also have the experience that backs their training up.

Second, restaurants and cafés come with expensive tools and equipment that allow them to produce the best cups of coffee. While you have an espresso machine at home, restaurant machines and equipment are much better at brewing coffee because they were engineered to be precise. Your espresso machine might be good in its own right, but there’s no way that it can stand up to a large machine that has all of the different features and functions that allow it to brew high-quality cups of coffee with so much precision and consistency. This does not include espresso machines but also coffee grinders.

Finally, the coffee beans also make a huge difference in how coffee shops are able to produce great cups of coffee because restaurants and cafés only get their coffee beans from the best sources available. This is probably the only area where you can match restaurant coffee because of how you can also get the same beans from the same sources as long as you know where the restaurants get their beans from.

So, when you add all of those together, it becomes understandable why restaurants have such good coffee and why their coffee is also quite expensive. You are basically paying not only for the quality of the coffee but for the training of the baristas and the price of the equipment and ingredients used to make that amazing cup of morning Joe.

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How do restaurants make such good coffee?

So, if you are looking to find out how restaurants make such good coffee using the tools and ingredients that they have, we’ll show you a quick guide. And it all boils down to consistency because baristas are trained to be consistent with every brew they make.

Setting the grind

If you have the same kind of grinder that restaurants and cafés have, you can probably do this. Now, this is something that depends on your own personal preference because the size of the grind is something that will affect the taste of coffee. So, what you should do is adjust the size of the grind depending on how you want your coffee to taste. 

The coarser the grind, the more sour the coffee will be. Meanwhile, the finer the grind, the more bitter the coffee will taste.

Brew time

The brew time is probably one of the most important factors in determining the quality of a cup of coffee. Of course, depending on the equipment you are using, the brew time will vary. Espresso machines will most likely require at least 2 minutes to get the perfect brew. Meanwhile, something as simple as French press will take 4 minutes for you to get the best kind of brew. 

However, restaurant equipment is more likely automated in terms of brew time as baristas may only need to set the time depending on how light or dark they want their brew to be.

Temperature

Water temperature is almost just as important as brew time because the right water temperature will give you the perfect brew. And the difficult part here is that it can be difficult to tell what’s hot or not. In most cases, espresso machines require water temperatures of somewhere between 190 to 196 degrees Fahrenheit.

Practice your consistency

Now that you know how most restaurants make their coffee, the next thing you need to do is practice more and more so that you will be able to become more consistent in terms of the type of brew you are going after. You can try to compare your brew to the one you taste in most restaurants so that you can tell what the difference is. From there, make adjustments depending on the grind’s size and how long you want to roast your beans in the machine.

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