Making A Perfect Cup Of Coffee

By Author: Sally Hayes
Total Articles: 3
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Making coffee is a pretty simple endeavor. Most of us do it every day, even before we open our eyes fully in the morning. However, making a great or even a perfect cup of coffee requires a little knowledge and a little experimentation.

There are two basic ingredients in coffee, water and coffee beans; there are different grinds of those beans, and types of brewing. The quality of the bean and the purity of the water is your choice, the higher the quality of each, the better the coffee. Coffee is made by the water being heated and passing over the ground beans, and the size of the grind should determine how long that water takes to pass over those grinds.

The smaller the grind from the coffee bean the less the soaking time is required to extract the flavors desired from that bean. Conversely the larger the grind the longer the soaking time. Each coffee maker requires different grinds, and it's important to know which grind makes the best coffee in your maker. Expresso coffee is very finely ground and requires only 20-40 seconds of soaking time and produces an extremely strong coffee. The French ...
... press coffee maker, on the other hand, is a slow brewer, and takes the water about 4 minutes to soak the beans for the best cup of coffee. If you mix your grinds you will not appreciate the resulting cup of coffee. Expresso grounds in a French press will not only result in grinds in your cup, but you may not sleep for a week. Talking about weak, if you put your French press grind into your expresso maker I doubt you would even call it coffee, super hot water, maybe.

Many machines require coffee filters for brewing. They too can play an important role in the final product. They serve a dual purpose, to keep the coffee grinds out of your cup and control the length of the soaking time for your grind. Paper is cheap and commonly used, but there are gold coated and metal filters available. If you must use paper filters purchase the best quality, since the cost difference between the most expensive and the cheapest is negligible. Paper soaks up water, and with it, flavors and extracts from the coffee itself. Some, with more sensitive taste buds even claim to actually taste the paper. The metal filters are the better choice, as they do not soak up any residue and in the long run could be cheaper than filters, because like filters, they can fit into a variety of makers and could pass through several coffee makers.
Now that you know what the construction of a cup of great coffee looks like, you can experiment until, to you, your brew is perfection in a pot. It's not hard, it just takes a little time, a lot of quality, and in no time at all you can make a perfect cup of coffee with your eyes half shut. My intention was to open your eyes, however, but - just long enough!
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