The Most Important Factors to a Good Cup of Coffee
Here are the Bass Pig's recommendations for a good cup of coffee:
1. Start with a good grade of coffee. Arabica beans are of better quality than robusto, typically costing a lot more, but aged properly on the vine before picking.
2. Only buy coffee from a supplier that doesn't 'warehouse' the beans for a long time. Store brands like Maxwell House, Yuban, Choc Full o' Nuts, etc., are typically rancid by the time of consumer purchase.
3. Buy beans and grind only what you need to make a cup. Store the beans in a vacuum canister. Take out a smaller quantity for each week and put that in a smaller vacuum canister. Exposure to air is destructive to the beans and causes oxidation, which results in the two oils within the bean to turn rancid.
4. Prepare with pure water. Mountain well water is the best, but water that is charcoal filtered is even better. Make sure the filter is relatively new--water quality degrades slowly with each new pitcher full as the filter becomes sedimented.
5. Use a clean coffee maker and cup, free of soap residue and old coffee residue. If the cup smells of stale coffee, it needs to be washed again, with steel wool and detergent and rinsed until thoroughly free of soap film.
6. Drip coffee maker works the best. Measure the correct amount of coffee. Too much is just as bad as not enough. Typically an extra scoop of ground coffee is necessary to saturate the filter. Then one scoop per cup of coffee made.
7. Use a high quality paper filter, not the cheap 'recycled' paper filters that are brown. Melitta filters taste the most neutral. Stainless micro perf mesh filters can also work, but they MUST be thoroughly cleaned every use!
8. Brew at 195°F. Too hot will burn the beans. Not hot enough won't brew the beans to get the proper flavor.
9. Serve immediately after brewing. Coffee that has stood around for as little as five minutes starts to turn rancid. You can tell by the 'burnt caramel' odor and flavor that it starts to take on.
10. If you take sugar, place the sugar granulated into the cup before pouring hot coffee. The coffee will mix better with the sugar BEFORE milk or cream is added. Then add cream to taste.
Hopefully these tips will help everyone to make the best coffee possible.