Making a coffee shop quality drink at home is a lot easier than you think. There are tips you must follow to achieve this.
I’m here to help with your daily brewing needs. Let us try these tips on how to make your morning coffee taste good.
11 Tips on How to Make Coffee Taste Good
1. Use Fresh Coffee Beans
A great way to brew your morning coffee is with fresh coffee grounds and not with the pre-packaged ones. If there are local coffee products available, then much better.
Remember that whole coffee grounds are only at their peak quality for about 2 to 4 weeks when properly stored. [1]
If you have a bag of beans that is around for a long time, then they’ve probably lost a lot of their flavor. Old coffee will just ruin your taste buds.
For the freshest cup of coffee, it’s still best to buy just enough bag of coffee for the week ahead or two weeks the most.
2. Store Beans Correctly
Another way to make coffee taste better is to store your beans in airtight containers. It might be tempting to just leave your new bag of coffee in the brown bag they came in, but that’s just going to ruin the taste.
Many baristas know that exposure to air is the biggest enemy of coffee grounds. Even a small hole in the bag can let it significantly reduce the flavor, so you must keep the air out.
If you’re paying top dollar for a good roast, you should get the most bang for your buck.
- Storage Tips: To have a long shelf life of the beans, you can place them in glass canning jars or get containers with rubber-gasket seals. It’s like food that needs to be stored properly.
- Do not refrigerate: Another essential tip to know is never to refrigerate your beans. Roasted beans are very porous and would easily absorb moisture and odors from the food in the fridge. This means that it can impact their taste. You always want your coffee bean new and free from these odors.
- Recommended Storage: The recommended way to keep beans is at room temperature in a cool, dark place like a pantry or kitchen cabinet.
3. Grind Only the Beans You Need
If you don’t already own a coffee grinder, think back on the times you wished you have one. Maybe now is the right time to invest in one.
Grinding your beans is still the ideal way to make coffee taste good. For maximum flavor, you’ll want to grind your beans just before you need them and only the amount necessary for each cup.
The truth is that once coffee beans are grounded, they’re going to lose about 60% of their aroma in just 15 minutes. So don’t grind the whole new bag at once.
Of course, this is a little bit more work for each brew, but if you want an amazing cup of coffee to start your day, then it’s well worth the effort.
4. Use the Right Amount of Coffee
If you’re like me, you’ve probably been using too much water and too little coffee without even knowing it.
To ensure your coffee is brewed at the proper strength, a 6-ounce cup requires 2 tablespoons of ground coffee.
Most Americans tend to enjoy an 8-ounce cup with each serving. So you’ll want to utilize 2 3/4 tablespoons of coffee to get the perfect taste.
The art of brewing can’t be mastered overnight. It needs time, dedication, and a whole lot of effort to find the taste the perfectly suits your taste buds.
5. Avoid Cheap Filters
You might be in the habit of buying the cheapest filters off the shelf, but doing so is likely yielding inferior coffee.
There are two types of process to bleach coffee filters: chlorine and oxygen.
- Chlorine: It is the same stuff utilized to clean pools. This should give you a good indication of how they can affect the flavor of your coffee.
- Oxygen: The other bleaching method uses oxygen, which leaves no trace of chemical flavoring on the filter.
- What to choose: All major filter brands indicate which bleaching process they utilized on their packaging. If you grab a pack of white filters, always look for ones that are oxygen bleached.
- Pro tip: Choose brown colored filters. Paper is naturally brown, and this color indicates that the filters did not go through any bleaching process at all.
6. Use Good Water at the Right Temperature
Coffee is 98% water, that’s why the type of water used makes a great impact on the final output.
Here are some points that you need to remember when it comes to using the good water and the right temperature:
- Recommended Water: If you’re serious about making an amazing cup of coffee to start your day, then you’ll want bottled spring water or add a high-quality water filter to your tap. Nothing can spoil a cup of coffee faster than water from the faucet that’s full of chlorine and other impurities.
- Avoid distilled water: It seems like a good idea; however, it makes terrible coffee. The many minerals found in water will hinder to bring out the distinct flavors in a coffee.
- Water Temperature: As for water temperature, the great brews happen when the heat is 200°F. If you’re boiling water to pour over a strainer, that’s less than 45 seconds off of a full boil.
- Coffeemaker: If you’re using a coffeemaker, it will automatically regulate this temperature for you.
- Avoid: Never reheat a cup of coffee or boil the same water twice.
Now you know that the water can greatly affect the outcome of your coffee. Remember these tips to avoid to turning even the great tasting coffee into a bitter mess.
7. Warm up the Milk Before Pouring
Here’s a barista trick that you must know. This trick will subtly impact the flavor of your hot coffee.
- Milk hack: The best way to make brewed coffee using milk is to warm it up before adding the liquid to your cup. It makes it taste so much better. Often, we leave milk in the fridge and add a teaspoon straight from the container when we need it. That’s not a good combination and will produce bad coffee.
- Milk temperature: Make sure to heat the milk at the perfect temperature at 140°F. You can try and heat it on the stove and measure the temperature using a thermometer. Another option is to take the milk off the burner right before it reaches a boil and then pours it into your coffee. It tastes great every time.
- Optional Add-ons: You can also try to add vanilla or cinnamon extract in addition to your milk. The vanilla extract will add an aromatic flavor to your drink, while cinnamon will make a great sugar substitute.
If you’re not into milk, vanilla, or cinnamon, the classic cream is also a good option. Though cream is a less healthy option than milk, it does the trick.
8. Use Brown Sugar Instead of White Sugar
This tip is one of a personal favorite. Just a suggestion if you’ve never tried brown sugar in your coffee, now is the time to do it.
Brown sugar adds a subtle hint of sweet caramel and enhances the coffee flavor. White sugar doesn’t do that, it is sweet, but it doesn’t give off that extra flavor.
That is why you’ll notice that most local coffee shops provide free brown sugar because they know it will help your coffee taste better. It tastes very different from white sugar.
If you like sweet coffee with that caramel hint, you can start to try brown sugar to see if it fits your preference.
9. Consider Buying an Espresso Machine
I used to think that the only way of brewing coffee was with a coffee pot or french press. I never imaged that you could buy an espresso machine that wouldn’t take up too much space.
I’ll outline some benefits of owning an espresso machine at home:
- What I love most about espresso, and you probably do too, is that you can do it straight as a shot or blend it with milk.
- You can make your favorite cappuccinos, lattes, chocolate macchiato, and other delicious drinks at any time of the day.
- After doing a little research, I now know that you could buy a high-quality, inexpensive espresso machine that doesn’t take up a lot of space in your kitchen top.
If you want to know the secret to make a tasty coffee or hot chocolate at home, it’s using one of these products. To see what’s available, take a look at my cheapest espresso machine page we got you covered in looking for the key features.
They’re a lot more affordable than you think and open up a world of opportunities for your home brews.
10. Add-ons
There are a lot of add-ons that can enhance your coffee flavors. As mentioned earlier, you can add cinnamon and vanilla extracts.
Aside from these options, you can also add:
- Nutmeg
- Ice cream
- Chocolate
- Butter
- Salt
- Honey
- Cardamom
- Lemon or Lime
Some of the options above may sound odd, but trust me, it can bring an eye-opening coffee experience.
For example, butter added to your coffee sounds like a recipe for disaster. It’s surprisingly creamy and bitter, perfect for those who like their coffee creamy but a little strong.
11. Clean Your Equipment
The final step in how to make better coffee at home is to clean your equipment regularly. This includes your storage containers, bean grinder, and brewer.
Over time, the oils from the coffee bean will build up inside your containers and stick to your grinder. This can add a bitter taste to your final brew. So, try to clean these items every two weeks.
- Descale: As for your coffee pot or espresso machine, you should descale it once per month. This will get rid of any mineral deposits that are leftover from the water.
- Cleaning solution: To do it, run a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water (or specialty coffee-equipment cleaner) through the machine several times. Then cycle just pure water through it a few times to get rid of any vinegar residue.
Neglecting to clean your brewer can dramatically impact the flavor of your coffee and lead to the machine not performing well.
Conclusion:
These 11 tips are all you need to make fantastic coffee at home. Once you put these steps in place, you’ll be amazed at how much better your home-brewed coffee tastes. You’ll also save money by not having to go to a local coffee shop to get a delicious drink.
If this is your first time visiting my site, you might be interested in finding out that I have a whole section of reviews on cool gadgets.
You can check it out before leaving this page. There’s a good chance that there’s something on that list you can get.
Reference:
- https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120529006452/en/Don-Francisco%E2%80%99s-Coffee-Unveils-New-Stud0y-Answers
