Table of Contents
How To Get Started?
How to make good coffee ?
Fresh Coffee is Best Coffee!
Try for all three of: Fresh-roasted, fresh-ground, and fresh-brewed. Beans carry a lot of flavour bound up in their oils, and those oils can spoil – as well as other portions of the flavour oxidizing and similarly spoiling. If you’re not hitting all three points of that freshness, how expensive or how fancy your beans are is somewhat irrelevant: they’ve been too mistreated to do the flavour justice.
Fresh Roasted:
Check that beans have a “roasted on” date on them. If you plan on heading home for a cuppa, pick beans that were roasted between three to five days prior.Beans last about a month past roasting date. “Fresh” is good, but there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing. Beans will last between a month and two months after roasting – this varies from bean to bean, so there’s no hard rules. Coffee is best after having a few days (between three and seven is typical, depending on bean and roast) to off-gas after roasting. It’s not significantly harmed if brewed before that, but it’s also not optimum.
Fresh Ground:
If possible, grind immediately before use. How fast ground coffee deteriorates is a matter of heated debate amongst experts and amateurs alike. Do not trust absolute answers, test for yourself if need be. Depending on the coarseness of your grind, grounds will last at optimum flavour for between thirty seconds and an hour (Turkish or espresso grind, all the way up to French press, respectively). Any longer than that, and flavour starts to deteriorate – by how much or how fast, though, is undecided. No matter what you’re promised, both coffee and oils spoil eventually, and that’s based on surface area – whole beans also have a bit of a protective coating in the form of natural oils, but grinding not only breaks that barrier but dramatically increases surface area and rate of spoilage. Test it out, you’ll find a more striking difference than you expect. “Grind at store” is a sure-fire way to allow your coffee plenty of time to oxidize and spoil – it’ll still be nicer than Folgers, but not nearly as nice as if you’d just ground it mere minutes before brewing.
Fresh Brewed:
Coffee will taste different at different temperatures, and the beverage, like the beans, will oxidize if left sitting. For most beans and most brews, you’ll get the best flavour at hot-but-drinkable temperatures. Coffee doesn’t reheat well – better to just drink it tepid or cold than do it the injustice of reheating it. Heater plates are even worse, please do not use a coffeemaker with a heater plate, your brew will just taste scorched and unpleasant; if you’re worried about your coffee going cold on you, use an insulated of vacuum pot brewer.
