Looking to take your coffee game to the next level without breaking the bank?
In 2024, there are plenty of free online tools and applications that can help you brew better, track your coffee habits, and explore new flavours, all from the comfort of your own home.
Whether you're a casual coffee drinker or an aspiring home barista, these digital tools and resources will refine your brewing techniques and enhance your coffee experience without having to shell out on any expensive equipment.
Let’s dive into the best free coffee tools you need to know about this year!
1. The Grind Size Analyser By Unspecialty - https://education.unspecialty.com/tools
The advancement in grinder technology and the increased scientific understanding of the mechanics and physics of coffee brewing has left a gap in the market for the coffee obsessed to produce their own tools to accompany it.
In comes Unspecialty and their Grind Size Analyser, a free tool for the truly obsessed to measure the average particle size from their own smartphones. Simply take a photo and the software will analyse the particle size distribution for you.
This is probably most useful when analysing new/expensive coffees and attempting to produce the ideal grind size without wasting lots of coffee.
Across a large sample size, different coffees will produce a huge variation in the way they grind, even when using the same grinder at the same grind setting, depending on a number of factors (like roast level, density, ambient temperature, burr-set choice, grinder RPM, size of bean etc.).
Some coffees will produce a low percentage of ultra fine particles, and others will produce more. Taking a particle distribution analysis can give you a good idea of how you may expect your coffee without needing to waste any coffee brewing.
It's well worth noting that Jonathan Gagne also has a tool on his website Coffee Ad Astra which offers a little more control to the individual.
It's worth heavily noting that Gagne's tool incorporates an additional althorithm that he wrote. (An) "Algorithm that is dedicated to being able to calculate the surface of highly non spherical particles, and at the same time separate two particles that are touching to mimick a large one. The last part is done by selecting a reference pixel (darkest one) and see if all paths from that reference toward a given region of the particle always has to pass through some bright (i.e. edge) pixels. If that’s the case then the region in question is dropped."
It's unclear whether Unspecialty's tool employs a similar algorithm or whether it assumes that the particle size analysed is assuming that the particle itself is spherical.
It's up to the reader to try these out to decide which tool is more useful, although to give you my personal opinion, I have found Unspecialty's tool to be the easier to use. The two apps give similar, but slightly different results.
Surprisingly, I found this tool really useful for espresso dialling and understanding a little bit more about when a taste defect came from the way the coffee was grinding, versus other common espresso problems, including more insight into the causes of channelling. Our good mates at The Institute of Coffee and Jokes Aside Coffee have a great (FREE!) guide on solving that also.
2. The Interactive Flavour Wheel by Not Bad Coffee - https://notbadcoffee.com/flavor-wheel-en/
Based on the Flavour Wheel by the SCA - which is a classic tool every specialty enthusiast has come across at some point, this interactive wheel also offers an integration with the World Coffee Research Sensory Lexicon for added depth of assessment.
I think it's easy to offer criticism for the wheel itself, many claim it is outdated, under-detailed or that it can promote negative stereotypes about certain growing regions that may lend themselves to different flavours. There are certainly other free flavour wheels like those by Jonathan Gagne which some may argue are more up to date, or set expectations most relevant to a specific variety.
But I chose this particular flavour wheel for this blogpost as it integrates a way of thinking about flavour that I think is helpful and has helped me in the past.
When you click on the flavour wheel, you're taken to a popup window that first asks the taster to think broadly about which flavour category seems most appropriate.
Once choosing a broader category, the taster is asked again to choose a subcategory that seems most appropriate until you whittle down to a particular flavour description that seems most seemingly appropriate. This was the most effective way that I have found personally for training myself to taste, and as a result , nowadays I have little problem with tasting coffees and finding the relevant lexicon to describe it.
3. The Barista Hustle Water Calculator - https://www.baristahustle.com/the-water-calculator/
Arguably every coffee's most important ingredient, water makes up around 98.5% of your average filter brew and 90% of your average espresso. It's the single largest ingredient that you'll use when brewing coffee and many don't even think about it or consider it as a variable.
It's no secret that we're obsessed with water here at Harmony, and have experimented for many years with water. Every single time, we go back to using this very tool from Barista Hustle.
It's worth noting that this is not a beginner tool. If you have a limited understanding of water chemistry, the terminology associated with water chemistry and how it integrates into the realm of coffee, I would suggest reading "Water for Coffee" by Maxwell Colonna Dashwood and/or the courses and blog posts on Barista Hustle which explain water chemistry in more depth.
If you are looking for a quick recipe to get something very tasty and optimised for coffee quickly, check out some of the recipes by Barista Hustle here and use the calculator to quickly work out how to replicate them.
4. The Universal Extraction Calculator - https://awasteof.coffee/tools/universal-extraction-calculator/
If you own a refractometer (Such as those by VST, Atago or another manufacturer..) this is probably the most accurate tool available for working out your extraction yield. The tool itself is based on the equation developed by Jonathan Gagne, and turned into a calculator form by A Waste of Coffee.
While it's my opinion that Refractometers tell us very little about how a coffee is going to taste and whether that taste is going to be good or bad, they can be considered useful tools when it comes to measuring your extraction yield and understanding your consistency.
It's debatable whether Refractometers have any domestic viability or whether their use cases are purely commercial/research led, but they are fun tools to use.
The apps that they are often paired with have a very simplistic calculators, and while they tend to give simple repeatable results that are very easy to use, they lack the accuracy and sophistication of calculators like this one.
5. The World Coffee Research Coffee Varieties Catalogue - https://varieties.worldcoffeeresearch.org/
Of all of the free online tools and resources out there, this is probably the one that I use the most often. The pic below demonstrates an except from the World Coffee Research catalogue to show how each of the coffee varieties are related to each other and how the multiplicity of coffee varieties have emerged.
The website also has a secondary tool, a coffee variety search engine that enables the user to filter coffee varieties by a number of different variables, such as cup quality, yield potential, ideal growing altitude, bean size etc.
While I use this tool most as a writing reference tool to make sure my facts about each of the coffees I sell about are correct, for users wanting to learn more about a given variety or discover more varieties that they can look out for that may align with their preferences, it can be an extremely useful tool indeed.