Quality is Important When Brewing Coffee

Quality is Important When Brewing Coffee. This is a fact that most coffee lovers will not deny. For the best quality Coffee, you should provide the best quality ingredients, then prepare them with quality tools, followed by quality brewing of the coffee.

It may sound difficult, but it is not. Following is the "formula" for awesome coffee:

1. Get quality beans
   
2. Use quality water
3. Grind with a quality grinder
4. Brew the coffee in quality equipment

Quality beans are a somewhat subjective item. You should select a coffee that you like the flavor of. Don't fall for the hype of commercials in the media, or your friends' opinions - choose what you like in a coffee. What is the taste you want from your coffee. Do you prefer dark roast, medium roast or light roast? Does a particular company produce coffees that meet your needs better than others. You have to be the judge here. A good example of this is my Mom. She always loved her Folger's coffee. That is what she liked, even after I tried for years to make her aware of other coffees that are available. That is what she wanted, so that is what she drank - all her life. I also know of some folks who will only drink Starbucks, or Seattle's Best, or Peet's, to name a few. The important thing here is to get quality beans to produce quality coffee.

Tap water can be used to make your coffee if it is of high quality and good taste. Bottled water is the answer in some parts of the country where the water is very hard or has a bad taste to it. Here in Fountain, bottled water is the best solution. One little note here - if the water you are using has too much hardness (minerals in the water), it can scale up and even ruin the boiler on an espresso machine or the heating coils on a drip coffee maker.

There are two important things related to grinding:

1. The fineness of the grind
2. The evenness of the grind

If you have a burr grinder, you can have coffee that is very evenly ground and can be as fine as you need, in most cases. My grinder didn't do well with espresso grinds until I modified it to do so - this voided the warranty, but it now grinds espresso and coarse coffee equally well. You can also do well with a small grinder. In the case of a burr machine, you will pay from 30 dollars and above. In the case of the small grinders, you are looking at twelve to eighteen dollars for a really nice one. Believe it or not, you can grind coffee in a blender, but the coffee grounds are not real consistent in size - and in this case - size does matter. You should have a fine grind for espresso, a medium grind for drip coffee and a coarse grind if you are using a french press.

The last item here is the brewing equipment. Every time I wear out a drip coffee maker, I end up replacing the dead Bunn coffee maker with another one similar to it. The advantage to this machine is that the water is always hot, so you get a coffee pot and hot water machine that dispenses 165° water on demand. (No, I am not affiliated with them, just know they make good stuff that I like - I won't lie to you here.)

In the case with espresso machines you can go with the steam-type or the pump type. The steam type is lower in cost and produces small amounts of espresso in batches. The hassle with these is you usually have to unscrew the boiler lid to refill for each batch. Because of the quantity of coffee lovers out there, individuals can get inexpensive pump espresso makers. Many of the home variety of pump machines seem to produce good coffee. They usually produce more crema than the steam machines, so the coffee they produce can be noticeably better in flavor. I have found that for the price, Hamilton Beach has a couple of nice pump machines for around seventy dollars. They do advise you to grind the coffee slightly coarser than espresso grind for the best results. The biggest problem I have had with the pump machines is that I tend to cause the pumps to fail. I think this is due to my heavy use of any coffee maker I have. Remember, these are not commercial-duty machines.

French press coffee makers are relatively inexpensive and those who use them to brew their favorite cup say there is nothing better to make that perfect cup of coffee.

I hope this information is helpful and that your next cup is as awesome as your last.