I can remember, as a young boy, the coffee they served on the then “Rhodesia Railways”. It was magical. Wherever the train was headed, I was up first thing in the morning waiting for that sharp rap on the door & the call of “coffee!!”. I can’t tell you much else about the train trips - just the coffee.

That’s the great thing about making a good cup of coffee – you’ll never be forgotten!! Hopefully, if you’re pouring mediocre or cheap coffee, your guests may forgive you. But that’s putting a heck of lot of faith into people’s ability to forgive.

Before getting into what needs to be done to make that great cup of coffee, we need to knock off the “don’t list” of coffee-making;

 

• Don’t buy cheap robusta coffee & hope that somehow the equipment you have at home will make it taste OK. At the end of the day, you’re only saving yourself a couple a bucks a month. The difference in price between cheapo coffee & specialty coffee is well worth it.
• Don’t buy coffee beans that don’t give you their born or roasted date on the bag. Time is a major factoring affecting the quality of roasted coffee beans. Freshly roasted beans hold all the aroma & taste inherent in the beans.
• Don’t expect the same of roasted beans that have been sitting in your kitchen for several weeks.
• Don’t buy equipment that discharges the brewed coffee into open carafes that sit atop a heating unit. Air & heat are the major adversaries of brewed coffee quality. Brewed coffee should filter straight into an Airpot.
• Don’t buy large amounts of coffee beans at a time. Buy what you think you’ll use in a week or so.
• Don’t store your beans in the fridge or freezer
• Don’t use grinders in supermarkets where there is either flavoured coffee or the grinder looks like it was cleaned when Attila the Hun was venturing through Europe.
• Don’t try & grind a couple of week’s worth of beans. Once ground, the beans will deteriorate quickly due to the increase in surface area.

 

I’m glad we have most of the negatives out the way. Next week, we’ll look at what makes for a good cup of drip coffee.