Making a good cup of coffee at home is not a complicated thing. In fact, you only need to remember a small number of fundamental rules to make good coffee. How many of those rules you follow is up to you. The more you follow, the better the cup of coffee you brew. Follow them all, and you can make the best cup of coffee you've ever had, at home.

It's key to your whole process of making great coffee at home to plan in advance so that you cover the bases.

The Problem Today

Coffee farmers around the globe live in poverty. This crisis doesn’t gather much attention, but as an incredibly labor intensive crop, the coffee farmers themselves carry out the most work, and receive the least.

Four giants Proctor & Gamble, Kraft Foods, Sara Lee and Nestle together control about 50 percent of the world's coffee, to give an indication of their bargaining power…

You don't need to be a coffee connoisseur to make good coffee at home. You'll know what you like and dislike about any coffee you try, without a sense of taste sophisticated enough to know that one has a more "winy" aroma or "clean" taste than another. However, it helps to know the taste terms used by connoisseurs so that you understand what to look for.

As you make better and better coffee, you will have a more sophisticated taste for it.

There are many factors affecting the flavor of your coffee. Naturally, the origin of the bean and the care with which it has been treated will affect the coffee in your cup, and so will the color of the bean. Roasting has a big impact on the flavor of coffee…

When it comes to making good coffee, how you brew it is second only to buying coffee in terms of importance. We will cover six different ways that you can brew coffee, and suggestions on how to make sure you are brewing coffee for the best results…

Here you will find more detailed instructions on how to get the best results, and some more great cold brew ideas as you perfect your craft at home.

There are a lot of misconceptions about how to keep your coffee. Ground coffee expires and loses its freshness at a faster rate than whole beans. But, whether you keep your coffee in whole beans or already ground, airtight and room temperature is the proper way to store your coffee. Consider air to be the enemy of fresh coffee…

Like any food or drink, good coffee depends on general cleanliness and maintenance of the process. Coffee leaves behind a unique oily residue that itself goes stale and affects what it contacts. Your cup of coffee will consist of everything that's been in contact with the process, so stale residue is in your drink unless the process is maintained and kept clean…

The most convenient coffee to buy is already ground. After all, it's available everywhere and easy to load into the coffee maker. However, ground coffee expires at a faster rate than whole bean coffee, and the fresher your coffee, the more flavor in your cup when it's brewed. Grinding coffee right before its brewed is important to ensuring a fresher cup of coffee every time…

Coffee purists don't think much of making it any sweeter or creamier. Over time however, coffee has become the world's most popular beverage exactly because it can be flavored to personal taste using sugar or cinnamon to sweeten, and milk or cream to whiten…

At the simplest level, a Cafe Mocha means either adding chocolate to your coffee, or adding a shot of espresso coffee to your hot chocolate. In the latter case, the best Cafe Mocha is not made with drip-brewed coffee but rather Italian-brewed espresso…

Make Good Coffee started as a blog in 2006, see where we started here!