Four Ways to Make Great Coffee
A year ago, I interviewed Bill Barrett of Planet Bean Coffee in Guelph, Ontario. We spent a lot of time discussing all of the care that Planet Bean puts into sourcing and roasting its coffee to perfection. But naturally, they can't follow you home into your kitchen and make sure that you are taking full advantage by properly preparing the coffee for yourself.Read: Profile Planet Bean CoffeeSo I asked Bill, after a customer buys properly roasted coffee and brings it home, what next? What should a person keep in mind in order to make the best coffee they can? Bill gave me four pieces of advice.[ad#Google Adsense - use me]
1) Enjoy it soon. Don't overbuy. Make buying coffee a part of your weekly ritual. Coffee begins to expire slowly but surely from the point that it's roasted. If you're drinking coffee that was roasted many weeks earlier, it's not fresh. Since coffee is often sold by the pound, if it takes you two weeks to go through that much, then buy it every two weeks. But, don't buy more than you will go through in two weeks.2) Keep coffee out of your fridge and freezer. Since coffee is perishable, many people make the mistake of assuming that it should be refridgerated or frozen when it's not used. Bad idea. Coffee absorbs the odors of everything around it, and your fridge and freezer are full of all kinds of things. Besides, the dramatic temperature change of going from room temperature to freezing and back to room temperature will sap freshness -and flavor- from the coffee.
3) There is no law on the ratio of coffee to water. Experiment. Play around with it. Find your own preference of how much coffee to use. But if anything, take note. Once you find your perfect ratio of coffee to water, you'll want to remember it for future servings.4) No milk or sugar. Good coffee doesn't need it. As somebody who only ever drank coffee with two creams and two sugars, it was a challenge for me to ever give it up. Now, I can't drink coffee any way but black.