MacGourmet News

I've ordered and will be receiving a coffee roaster soon, so I'm sure I'll be delving into the ins and outs of roasting your own coffee here soon enough, but while looking for information on the subject, I came across this great 3 piece article on what makes a great cup of coffee. I thought others here might find it interesting as well, and it's well worth the read if you like great coffee like I do...

Searching For The Perfect Cup Of Coffee - Part One - COSTA RICA

Some nuggests of wisdom from the first piece include:

• "What does it take to make a good cup of coffee, I asked. First, Norman responded, you've got to use good fresh coffee and lots of it! He continued to explain that most people do not use enough ground coffee when they make a pot."


• "Despite the type of coffee, degree of roast or blend that you use, you must first start with enough fresh ground coffee, brewed correctly, to enable the true depth of flavor of the bean to express itself.
  
  Chemically about 30% of the mass of ground coffee is extractable. However, it is only about 18 to 22% of that mass that contains the real flavor. The remaining 8% is mostly made up of bitter and undesirable flavor compounds. If you use too little coffee your cup will be bitter because you will have over-extracted the coffee."


• "In it's green state coffee beans will maintain their optimum quality for up to a year, however, once roasted, the quality will quickly deteriorate when exposed to oxygen. Furthermore, once the roasted bean has been ground it begins to deteriorate immediately.
  
  Norman's next advice about making a good cup of coffee was, Buy it fresh, use it now!"

Searching For The Perfect Cup Of Coffee - Part Two - COSTA RICA

The second piece describes proper "cupping" techniques (Think wine tasting for coffee).

Searching For The Perfect Cup Of Coffee - Part Three - COSTA RICA

And the third piece describes actually going to a coffee plantation and seeing how coffee is grown and harvested.

Interesting stuff.