Gourmet Coffee Snob

How to make your coffee taste the best it can possibly taste.

Start with delicious water. Coffee is almost all water, so the better tasting your water is, the better your coffee will be. Use the freshest, coldest water you can find. Filtered water is great! Distilled water is frequently flat tasting, though.

If you're after the best possible coffee, don't store your beans in the freezer. It sounds reasonable because the aromatic oils won't disperse as readily, but the transitions between cold and warm and back to cold can cause condensation which will only bring the taste of your coffee down. Keep your beans in a cool dark place, out of the sunlight, and grind them freshly every time you want some coffee.

Measure your grounds carefully. A good rule of thumb is one Tablespoon of grounds per five ounce cup– or just under two scoops for each normal sized cup. You can use more or less; adjust the strength of your coffee to taste.

Place your grounds into a french press. It's a long cylinder with a screen on a stick. A french press gets the most flavor out of your grounds, and you wind up with some particulate sludge in the bottom of your mug. This is the sign of a delicious coffee.

Bring your water to just about boiling, not quite boiling. Pour the water over the grounds and get a lot of motion in the water. You're after the opposite of slow careful pouring that floats the water over the grounds. Use the motion of the pouring water to mix the grounds and the water thoroughly.

Set the screen over the top of the water but do not plunge the french press pipe yet. Let the coffee steep for four to five minutes and then slowly press the sticking-up handle of the screen down, squeezing the grounds out of the water. If you don't let it steep long enough, the coffee will be watery, and if it steeps too long, it will be bitter.

Pour your cup and then store the rest of your coffee somewhere warm, like a thermos. Get the majority of the grounds out of the hot water so that it will not continue to steep and get more bitter.

You can read more writings by Russ Gilman-Hunt at Argh WebWorks

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