Origin, region, farm or producer, variety, process, roast date, roast profile, tasting notes, weight, and price.
04 — LEARN
Coffee education that helps you
buy, brew, and dial in better.
Bean On Bar should not only identify a bean. It should teach you what the label means, why a coffee might taste the way it does, and what to change whether you are brewing filter or pulling espresso.
LEARNING PATH
Read the bag → choose the bean → brew filter or espresso → adjust with intent.
Each guide is written for drinkers, travelers, cafe regulars, and curious beginners—not just coffee professionals.
QUICK MAP
Nine skills that make coffee
less mysterious.
Use these as standalone lessons or as explanations behind the app’s scoring, brewing, and travel recommendations.
01
Read a coffee bag
Know which label details actually help you predict the cup.
02Roast date
Freshness is useful, but “freshest” is not always best.
03Processing
Washed, natural, honey, and anaerobic in plain language.
04SCA scores
Use scores as evidence, not as a personality replacement.
05Price per gram
Compare value across bag sizes, countries, and currencies.
06Choose a brewer
Match V60, Switch, Orea, or Origami to the bean and your taste.
07Grind microns
Understand microns without pretending grinders are identical.
08Espresso basics
Understand dose, yield, ratio, time, flow, and taste-led dial-in.
09Fix the cup
Sour, bitter, thin, hollow, muted, boozy, fast, or slow: what to change next.
01 — HOW TO READ A COFFEE BAG
Look for signals,
not poetry.
A good label reduces uncertainty. It tells you where the coffee came from, how it was processed, how fresh it is, and what the roaster thinks you might taste. Marketing language is fine, but transparent information is more useful.
Elevation, lot name, harvest season, recommended brew recipe, green buyer notes, or traceable producer story.
Vague words like “premium,” “smooth,” or “artisan” without supporting details. Nice branding does not guarantee a good cup.
The app extracts these fields first, then scores the bean based on transparent label signals and evidence you provide.
02 — ROAST DATE
Fresh matters, but resting
matters too.
Roasted coffee releases carbon dioxide. If you brew too early, especially for filter, the cup can taste sharp, gassy, or uneven. If you wait too long, aromatics fade and the cup can become flat.
Can be lively but unstable. Better for cupping experiments than judging the final character.
Many light-to-medium filter roasts open up here. This is a good starting window, not a law.
Espresso often benefits from more rest because gas makes extraction and crema less predictable.
Not automatically bad. Expect less aroma; grind finer or use immersion to recover body.
03 — PROCESSING
Processing shapes the cup
before roasting begins.
Processing is how fruit is removed from the seed. It can influence clarity, sweetness, body, fruitiness, fermentation, and perceived acidity.
Washed
Clean, bright, transparent. Good when you want origin clarity and crisp acidity.
Natural
Fruit-forward, heavier body, sometimes berry-like. Can be exciting or a little wild.
Honey
Between washed and natural: rounded sweetness, texture, and gentle fruit.
Anaerobic
Controlled fermentation. Can bring tropical, winey, boozy, or candy-like notes.
04 — SCA SCORES
Scores are evidence,
not destiny.
SCA-style scores are usually based on cupping quality. They can indicate technical quality, but they do not know your taste preferences, brew method, water, grinder, or mood.
Can be very enjoyable, especially if fresh, well roasted, and aligned with your preferences.
Often more expressive, cleaner, or sweeter. A good range for daily exciting coffees.
Potentially exceptional, but still check process, roast date, price, and whether you like the flavor direction.
05 — PRICE PER GRAM
Compare value with
one honest number.
Different bag sizes make coffee pricing hard to compare. Price per gram gives you a clean baseline before considering rarity, shipping, cafe markup, and personal enjoyment.
Price per gram = bag price ÷ bag weight
Example: a $28 bag at 200g is $0.14/g. A $32 bag at 250g is $0.128/g, so it may be better value even though the sticker price is higher.
- Use the same currency when comparing.
- Separate shipping from bean price when possible.
- Rare varieties and competition lots may cost more for valid reasons.
- A cheaper stale bag is not better value if you will not enjoy it.
06 — CHOOSE A BREWER
Pick the tool that fits
the bean and the day.
Brewers are not personality tests. They are different ways of controlling flow, contact time, heat, bypass, and texture.
Great for clarity and aromatics. More sensitive to pouring and grind consistency.
Forgiving hybrid immersion/percolation. Useful for sweet, even cups and travel routines.
Fast, even extraction and good sweetness. Useful for modern light roasts.
Flexible and expressive. Paper choice changes flow, body, and clarity.
High-pressure, ratio-led extraction. More sensitive to grind, puck prep, dose, yield, and roast rest.
07 — GRIND MICRONS
Microns describe particles,
not your grinder’s soul.
A micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter. It helps describe grind size, but grinder burrs, alignment, fines, bean density, roast level, and calibration all change how a setting behaves.
Usually faster flow, less extraction, lighter body, and less bitterness. Too coarse can taste sour or hollow.
Usually slower flow, more extraction, more body, and more bitterness. Too fine can taste dry or harsh.
A recipe saying “700 microns” means “start near this zone,” not “every grinder should taste identical here.”
Espresso grind changes can swing flow dramatically. Adjust in small steps and taste before chasing a perfect number.
Save grinder setting, drawdown or shot time, yield, and taste. Your history becomes more useful than generic charts.
08 — ESPRESSO BASICS
Espresso is small,
but not simple.
Espresso uses pressure to push water through a compact bed of coffee. Because the brew is concentrated and fast, tiny changes in grind, dose, puck prep, yield, temperature, and roast rest can taste much bigger than they do in filter coffee.
Most modern baskets sit around 18–20g, but basket size matters more than habit. Keep dose stable while learning.
A 1:2 ratio means 18g in and 36g out. Light roasts often like longer yields; darker roasts often like shorter, cooler shots.
25–32 seconds is a useful starting range, but taste matters more. A tasty 22-second or 36-second shot is still a win.
Fast, pale, spurting shots often under-extract. Slow, choking, dry shots often over-extract or suffer from puck problems.
Finer usually slows flow and increases extraction. Coarser usually speeds flow and lowers extraction.
Distribution and tamping affect channeling. If prep is inconsistent, recipe changes become noisy and confusing.
09 — FIX THE CUP
Bad cups are feedback,
not failure.
Change one variable at a time. If you change grind, temperature, ratio, agitation, brewer, and espresso yield all at once, you will not know what helped.
Sour / sharp
Filter: extract more with finer grind, hotter water, longer contact, or more agitation. Espresso: grind finer, pull a little longer, or raise temperature.
Bitter / dry
Filter: extract less with coarser grind, lower temperature, less agitation, or shorter drawdown. Espresso: grind coarser, shorten yield, or lower temperature.
Thin
Increase dose, grind slightly finer, or use a brewer/recipe with more body.
Hollow
Check water, grind distribution, and ratio. Hollow cups often need better balance, not just more extraction.
Muted
Use fresher coffee, cleaner water, a sharper grind, or a recipe with more clarity.
Boozy
For heavy ferment coffees, lower extraction slightly or choose immersion to soften edges.
Espresso too fast
Grind finer first. If it still rushes, check dose, basket fit, distribution, and tamp before rewriting the whole recipe.
Espresso too slow
Grind coarser first. If the shot tastes sweet and balanced despite the time, keep it—taste beats the stopwatch.