Some people say that a steaming mug of fresh coffee is the best thing to wake up to. But as far as I’m concerned, a steaming mug of fresh coffee is the only thing to wake up to.
And I know that I’m not alone with that one. Those that start their day with a cup of coffee significantly outnumber those who avoid the stuff.
While a normal, easy cup of instant coffee is just fine, there’s a lot of different ways you can experiment with the drink too.
There’s probably a few tricks you’re unfamiliar with that will make the coffee experience even better.
Here’s five things that you can try which will change the way you drink coffee.
#1. Warm Up Your Mug in Advance
I can’t even begin to describe to you how much adding this extra step into my morning routine changed things up.
I was always someone who used to scramble to drink my coffee quickly so that it would barely cool down while I was drinking it.
Because I take mine black, I usually pulled this off, but rushing anything is no fun. And gulping my coffee down instead of taking the time to savour it wasn’t ideal.
The only reason why this happens though, is because the mug that you’re drinking from is too cold. The coffee itself will get colder faster if this is the case.
So as you can imagine, this is a very easy thing to fix. You just have to get that mug nice and warmed up before you fill it.
After you have the kettle boiled, what you should do is fill the mug about a third of the way up with the hot water. Let it sit for a moment so that the inside walls can heat up.
You should be good to go after that. I would suggest that you consider taking the pour over coffee approach when you’re doing this.
It’s a bit more efficient than throwing out the water you’re using to heat the mug and starting over. This way you can have the beans ready in the cone as the mug is heating.
#2. Grind the Beans at the Right Time
As you probably know, coffee will begin to lose its flavour not long after it’s ground. It doesn’t become completely tasteless or anything, but the freshness will probably drop within a half hour.
A lot of people have pretty much just resigned themselves to this. It’s understandable, coffee still tastes good even if it’s lacking a little in flavour and it’s difficult to avoid this too.
The only real solution to the problem, is to get brewing as soon as the beans are ground. It probably seems inconvenient to have to be grinding every single time, but the taste is worth it.
The inconvenience I mentioned only really applies to those of us that grind the coffee by hand and not people who have an automatic grinder.
But to be honest, those are extremely expensive and the best way to get the right blend is by doing it manually anyway.
You can gauge the consistency of the grind yourself and that’s just actually just as important as when you grind. You need the beans to be neither too fine nor too coarse, but medium instead.
So if you haven’t been using this method before now, you probably haven’t realized that you haven’t been getting the full extent of the flavour.
This shouldn’t add that much extra time to the process, especially if you’ve got a handle on how to grind. Give it a shot, you’ll never go back once you’ve tasted the results.
#3. Use the Right Water
You’re probably thinking that water is just water. It’s surprising to think that this is actually a factor in the taste of your coffee but it definitely is.
I’m sure you’ve noticed before that the kettle or coffee maker that you use has a tendency to fill up with lime deposits.
I think we can all agree that this is infuriating. Finding a smattering of slime that’s collected at the bottom of your mug can leave a bad taste in your mouth. In more ways than one.
This happens when you use hard water to make your coffee. This is water that comes straight from the tap and hasn’t been filtered.
On the other side of that coin, water that is too heavily filtered could be potentially damaging for the machine you’re using.
Hard water is chock-full of minerals and when those minerals are absent the water will draw from other metals.
This will mean the metal in your machine and that will cause it to wear down even faster. Look for a balance between the two.
Use either distilled water or stuff that’s been lightly filtered. You’ll have to descale the machine every once in awhile because this won’t eradicate lime completely, but that’s not too difficult.
This will also cost you less in the long run too because you won’t need as powerful a filter. Water is definitely more important than you think in coffee, but using the right stuff is doable.
#4. Be Generous with the Beans
This sort of ties into what we were saying earlier about grounding as soon as possible to avoid any loss of flavour.
The freshness of your beans doesn’t exactly go quickly, but if you leave them for too long the rich coffee taste will become impossible to achieve.
Once it’s a few weeks to a month after the time it was roasted, it starts to taste a little bit like cardboard.
For a lot of foods, it’s a good idea to try and be frugal with your supply so that it lasts longer, but that doesn’t work for coffee.
It will never expire and become dangerous, but you should still use it up quickly to maintain the taste. I’d encourage you to keep your coffee supply relatively small.
Don’t buy huge amounts of it at a time, just get enough to last you for about a week and then use that supply within the week.
You should also familiarize yourself with the different types of coffee and the different ways that you can use the beans.
If you have more knowledge you can try other things and get through the beans even quicker. The ultimate goal here, is to limit the time between the roasting of the beans and their use.
Which brings us to:
#5. Roast Your Own Beans
You could remove the last problem completely by doing this. It probably sounds like a completely insane idea but it’s actually not even that hard.
First you’ve got to get your hands on the unroasted coffee beans which will not lose their freshness anywhere near as quickly.
You can roast them at your leisure and not have to worry about burning (pardon the pun) through your supply before it gets stale.
There’s a couple of different ways that you can try this. You could stick the beans in a metal bowl and use a heat gun to roast them.
You could use a popcorn popper, or you could just stick them in the oven on a baking tray and then pull them out when you can hear them crackling.
It’s interesting to make your own coffee entirely from scratch and it’s also pretty cool to be able to tell visitors that’s what you’ll be serving. For me it is anyway!
Final Thoughts
In case you couldn’t tell. I adore coffee, and I love finding out more about it and different ways to enjoy it.
These are just a few of the ways that you can enhance the experience of the stuff and they’re well-worth trying out for any coffee-lover.
Happy Brewing!
