Coffee is invariably the world’s most favored beverage today. Like how they treat any other thing familiar to them, most people do not pay much attention to their favorite drink.

Sometimes, some nasty rumors take hold because most people do not know much from what is rumored and the real facts. It pays to know some basic things about coffee and coffee-making. After all, you love to drink it everyday.

Coffee quality

How your coffee tastes depends on a lot of factors, fresh high-quality beans being the highest consideration. But this top factor becomes useless if other factors are not considered.

Other factors include clean, good-tasting water, clean equipment, proper brewing temperatures observed as well as following the proper amount of brewing time. The goal is balancing the strength and final result.

To put it crudely, if you mix hot water and coarsely ground coffee in a one to one ratio and allow it to extract for thirty seconds, you will have a cup with a very strong greasy taste.

The same is true if you add a tablespoon of finely ground coffee to a quart of hot water and let it steep for ten minutes. The result is a weak and bitter coffee brew.

Measurements in quantity, timing, and temperatures need to be followed.

Water quality

Besides the quality of the beans used, the quality of water is another top consideration to be followed strictly. Brewing must use fresh cold water that is good-tasting enough to drink.

The best cups of coffee are made with filtered tap water or bottled water. Distilled water is missing minerals that contribute to the water’s taste and aid in extraction.

Measurements and ratios

The standard ratio for coffee and water used is six ounces to two tablespoons of ground coffee.

For those who find that the two-tablespoon-to-6 ounce-ratio makes up a strong brew, simply reduce the quantity of coffee used until you get the strength you want. Grinding more finely and using less coffee is not correct, and will produce a weak but bitter cup of coffee.

One question: What if my coffee is too strong or too weak?

First, be sure the problem is really your coffee being too strong or too weak. People sometimes confuse bitterness and being strong.

If the coffee is unpleasantly bitter, several things make it so. One is that the grind is too fine for the length of brewing time. A lower-quality grinder may have produced a lot of dust which makes the coffee bitter.

If the coffee grind is too coarse, your coffee will be under-extracted. It is not weak or the taste is diluted. It is because many of the desirable flavor elements are still in the grounds, not extracted, and did not make it to your brew.

As a matter of course, good quality coffee will commonly have some bitter elements. But this bitterness should be in balance with the other aspects of the coffee’s flavor. This quality of bitterness should not stand out among the coffee’s other flavors.

Unfortunately, most people are accustomed to being served poorly prepared coffee. These brews may have sat too long on a warming element (hot pads). What comes out is a bitter brew which for many seems like the standard.

In the end, if your coffee beans are top-notch, the grind is appropriate for your brewing equipment, you use the right measurements and follow the right time techniques, then you are on the right track to making a fine brew.

Of course, coffee making, like all other enterprises takes some hits and misses. Learning from them and making the right adjustments is the best solution to making that perfect brew.

Now that you have the basic ABC’s down, browse around and read our other coffee related articles.

• Coffee and Health
• Coffee Articles
• Coffee History
• Coffee Preparation