Coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world. It's not uncommon to see people with a cup or two on their desk at work or even during meetings. Today I want to talk about how you can make your coffee better. There are many different ways to go about this, but my goal is to share some tips that will help you get started with making good coffee for yourself and others. Hopefully, these tips will be useful! Good Water Is Essential Like all things, the quality of your coffee is determined by the quality of its ingredients. In this case, you need to start with good water. If your water tastes bad or chemically laden, then it will have a negative effect on the taste of your coffee.
Why? For example, if you were to mix a teaspoon of sugar into a cup of tea, it would be very sweet and pleasant tasting because that's what we expect from adding sugar to tea. However, if you were to drink a glass of sugary tea straight without any other flavors it would be very unpleasant because there is too much sweetness for our palettes to handle. This principle applies directly to how we make coffee, so it's important to have good water.
If you want to know if your tap water is good, then the best approach is to check the quality of your drinking water using a tool like Water Wellness, which can be acquired easily online or at many hardware stores like Lowes and Home Depot. Other types of bottled water, such as Aquafina and Dasani, are usually very clean but may still not be up to par for making coffee; I highly recommend testing your local tap water first with a home testing device before spending extra money on bottled H2O.
You may find that your cheap $5 plastic bottle actually has better tasting water than what's available from your faucet! But generally speaking, most tap water is the same. Just make sure it doesn't have any off-flavours, i.e. if your tap water smells like chlorine, then, by all means, use filtered or bottled drinking water instead of drinking it straight from the faucet.
Next is to grind your own If you want really great tasting coffee, then grinding fresh beans yourself just prior to brewing is essential. Pre-ground coffee will not retain its flavor for very long because of how quickly it absorbs moisture from the air or your storage container, which causes it to lose taste. This is why many people prefer to buy whole beans instead of pre-ground coffee especially if you have a grinder at home! There are lots of ways to go about this, but here are some general pointers I've picked up over the years: A simple, high-quality electric blade grinder will do just fine.
Most manual grinders aren't worth buying because they don't have variable settings and can only produce coarse grinds. If possible, try out freshly roasted coffee that has slightly less carbon dioxide inside the bean (compared to beans that have been sitting around for weeks). Pre-grind coffee in small batches so you won't have any wasted beans if they sit around. If you buy whole beans, then put them in an airtight container and keep it sealed until right before you make your brew. Check out My Virtual Coffee House for more information regarding coffee. My Virtual Coffee House reviews the best coffee machine and other blogs related to coffee.