How to Make COFFEE Wood Stain _ The Ultimate Guide

There , my name is Mike Montgomery .

And today I'd like to show you how to turn coffee into Diy wood stain on modern builds .

So a few months back , you may remember a three tiered metal and wood shelf that I welded up .

It was a great experience and a really fun project .

And whenever I finished it , I gave it to my grandma as a gift .

Well , fast forward a few months and that shelf now looks like this .

Now , I won't lie .

My grandma is a little bit of a coffee addict .

And so one day she got inspired and did a Diy coffee wood stain .

The only problem with that is she stained the top shelf one day and the bottom to another .

And there are two different shades regardless .

I still think she did an amazing job on this shelf .

And it inspired me to learn more about staining wood with coffee .

So my goal with this video is to create the ultimate guide so that you all along with myself can know the exact right way to stain wood with coffee for consistent results .

Let's get started .

Now , I think we can all agree that different types of coffee are gonna give us different results .

And because of that , I called on this video sponsor to help us out Trade Coffee Smooth .

When Trade Coffee reached out and said they were interested in sponsoring another video , I pitched them this idea right away .

I knew that I wanted a blend of light roasts , medium roasts and dark roast so that I could test those individually and find what would have the best results .

Now , I'm going to talk about trade more later on in the video .

But for now , I just want to say thanks for all the coffee respectively .

We've got the Hartman honey roast from Novo coffee roasters out of Denver .

This is going to be our light roast test .

Our medium roast for this test is from Huckleberry roasters also out of Denver Colorado and this is their last Coleus blend .

And finally , for our dark roast , we have atomic coffee roasters , French roast .

They are from Salem Massachusetts .

I typically make pour over coffee .

And so I figured that's how I would make my wood stain as well .

Here , I'm grinding my coffee until it's about the consistency of rough sea salt .

Then I'm measuring out 14 g of coffee for every cup of water for this first batch of normal concentration .

Coffee .

I'm doing two cups of water .

So I did a total of 28 g of coffee per brew .

The whole reason I'm even doing pour over coffee for my bruise is because it's relatively precise .

You typically want to measure out the amount of coffee and water you're using every time you make a batch .

And because of that , it lends itself nicely to this test for the second batch of wood stain .

I'm doing double the ratio that's 28 g of coffee for every cup of water .

In hindsight , I probably should have done this in two pours since the coffee filters got so full .

But this worked out great .

And once all of our double concentration batches were done , I could throw a lid on them and make sure to keep them all labeled for this test .

I cut up a bunch of pieces of wood and I sanded them with 100 and 50 grit sandpaper .

I wanted to make sure that the woods would soak in as much of this stain as possible .

And that's why I didn't use 220 grit from there .

Once I had all of my pieces sanded clean , I could line them all up and hot glue them down to my board .

And really quickly , I'd like to give a big thanks to this video sponsor , the people that are making this entire video possible .

Trade .

Coffee trade is like having all of the world's best coffee roasters at home delivered to you .

They have a diverse selection of seasonal roasts with great taste sourced ethically .

And what I love about trade is they understand everyone has individual taste when it comes to coffee , you can take their unique six question quiz to get matched with the coffee to suit your taste .

Now , personally , I like a dark or espresso roast when it comes to coffee .

And this French roast by Atomic Coffee roasters in Salem , Massachusetts is amazing .

I've got to say the quiz paired me perfectly .

So to buy a great bag of coffee suited to your own taste .

Make sure and follow the link down in the description where trade is giving the 1st 100 people who follow that link , 50% off the bag of coffee that's recommended to them .

So , one more huge thanks to Trade coffee and to you guys for watching .

Now let's get back to staining thing .

I laid out this board with three different species of wood , starting with pine maple and then oak .

Those are the three species of woods that I use most and I think cover the basis of things pretty well .

We've got a soft wood , a light colored hardwood and then oak , which has a particularly high amount of tannins , which I want to see how that interacts with the coffee .

So I think the video really speaks for itself .

This first coat was really dramatic .

Whenever I applied the stain , the color looked really great and it soaked in really nicely .

The aspect of this that I didn't expect was how much that this color would fade as the stain dried .

I set up a two hour time lapse between coats and you can see just how much the color faded .

So then I went ahead and did a second coat the exact same way as the first .

And once again , you can see how quickly it faded .

Although this time , all of our double concentration brews have a little bit deeper color .

This obviously wasn't close to what I was looking for .

So I went ahead and did a 3rd and 4th coat and then that is what finally brought us to a good rich color , which was what I was looking for .

All right .

So what does this test conclude ?

Well , for one , it proves that coffee makes for a really good looking wood stain almost better than most wood stains that I've used .

One thing that I expected going into it was that the roast was going to be a big determining factor .

I thought the light roast would look way different than the medium and the dark roast .

And that really didn't tend to be the case .

The concentration of the brew was the biggest deciding factor .

You can tell by my test that all of the double concentration batches have a much richer color than the normal concentration .

And that's not a particularly bad thing .

That means that the type of coffee you're using is not such a big factor in terms of the three woods .

I think the coffee looked particularly good on oak it made the grain really stand out and it took the color really nicely behind that is pine in second with maple bringing up the rear .

So this is probably where I need to answer the question .

What do I recommend ?

Well , my personal recommendation is , is a double concentration , dark roast if you're going for a medium to dark stain , and I would do about four coats at least if not up to eight .

If I wanted a light to medium stain , then I would use a light roast coffee double concentration again , but just around four coats .

Now , I really hope this video was beneficial to you guys .

Once again , these are the samples without stain and you can see how much more rich the color is in all of these boards .

If any of you guys watching decide to make some coffee wood stain of own on any of your projects , I would love to see it .

Tag me on Instagram at Modern Builds and let me know your results .

I would love to know what type of coffee you used , what the concentration of it was and how you brewed it as well as how many coats and while you're at it , make sure and tag trade coffee on Instagram also .

And speaking of , I want to give one last thanks to trade for making this video possible .

I hope it was helpful for you guys and a great video for trade .

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Thanks again , everybody for watching .

I hope you enjoyed this video and until next time this has been modern builds .

Bye everybody .