If you’ve read this blog with any regularity, you know that Arabica beans are the gold standard of the coffee industry. But there are myriad other factors that affect the quality of the beans you put in your coffee maker, and many of them pertain to geography. The ideal is a tropical climate with rich soil at a high altitude, and even slight changes in precipitation, altitude or soil nutrients can vastly affect the final product.
Over the next few days, we will be highlighting some of the premier coffee growing locales around the globe. We’ll overview the different flavors associated with various regions and tell you what are the preferred blends. Tomorrow we’ll start off close to home with beans from North America and the Caribbean Islands.
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Morning Coffee
The fact that you’ve spent hundreds of dollars on a coffee machine won’t mean anything if you don’t keep your unit in peak condition. Not only will your machine look grimy, the coffee’s taste will suffer and the flow of coffee through the system will be impeded. There are dozens of recommendations out there for how to clean your machine, but the best method in my opinion is to use a decalcifier like Durgol.
Durgol works to eliminate calcium, lime and other mineral deposits that can build up in your machine, especially if your have hard water. Unlike other cleaning methods, Durgol doesn’t leave any aftertaste or residue in the machine, ensuring a clean, natural tasting cup of coffee. And Durgol also works to prevent future buildup, meaning you have to clean your machine less often.
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Morning Coffee
Spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on an espresso machine may seem extravagant to some, but coffee connoisseurs can taste the difference. The quality of the coffee and other products you use can’t be overlooked, which is why they came first in the series. But the brewing process itself is the key to coffee, and premium coffee machines get the job done better, pure and simple.
Options from top tier manufacturers, such as a Saeco espresso machine, obviously come with a surfeit of peripheral features, but it’s the high quality brewing that makes these machines worth the price. Particularly during the highly pressurized espresso brewing process, it’s important that none of the ground be forced through the system and there is a proper concentration of coffee, which a premium machine accomplishes. The automatic settings on these machines allow you to customize every aspect of your experience, eliminating the guessing game.
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Morning Coffee
Many coffees on the market today come with added flavors, which is not the way to go if your want the best tasting cup of coffee. For some reason, beans that are infused with flavors never seem to taste right and are always a bit artificial. The flavoring often serves as a means of masking the subpar quality of the beans.
If you want some extra flavor in your coffee, go the extra mile and use premium ingredients. Personally, I love the taste of fresh vanilla or real chocolate in my concoctions I brew up in my cappuccino makers. Adding real, fresh ingredients not only tastes better, it’s healthier for you too.
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Morning Coffee
Yesterday we highlighted the best beans to buy, but how you purchase them is also important. Always purchase whole beans—always. As soon as the beans are ground, they begin to lose there flavor. And who knows how long those grounds have been sitting on the store shelf?
Grinding your own coffee may seem like a hassle, but it’s really not that difficult and the results are palpable. When you grind your own coffee, you also have the opportunity to combine different varieties and roasts of beans to create a blend catered to your palate. Either you can grind all of your coffee on one day — it’s Sunday in my house— or you can keep a mini-grinder on the counter and prepare the beans right before brewing each cup in your espresso machine.
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Morning Coffee
Brewing coffee can often seem like a convoluted process, but it really is not that complicated, especially with the high-tech automatic espresso machines on the market today. Making delicious coffee is really just a matter of concentrating on a few choice variables and maximizing their quality. And, of course, it all starts with the beans.
If you care about the quality of your coffee—and you presumably do if you’re reading this blog—you’ll always want to go with , as opposed to Robustas. Robusta beans have a strong acidic flavor and are commonly used in pre-ground coffees as a filler. Arabicas boast a rich, smooth flavor and vary in taste depending on where they were harvested.
With three children between the ages of 3 and 8, it seems like I only have about 3-4 hours of free time each week. On Thursday afternoons the kids go to visit their grandparents across town, and every week I consider it a personal challenge to see how much I can get done in that time. This is usually my only opportunity to relax and unwind so instead of doing chores or running errands, I dedicate the afternoon to pampering myself.
As I mentioned, time is always of the essence. I begin my flipping on my automatic espresso machine and then drawing myself a nice bath and lighting some aromatherapy candles. Then I run back to the kitchen, fix myself a cup of coffee, locate my book and crossword puzzle and head back to the tub. After a good soak, I usually head into town to have lunch with some of my girlfriends. And, if I’m lucky, I may be able to squeeze in a quick nap before my in-laws sic my children on me again.
When I was going up, I always loved ordering Caesar salad at restaurants. I certainly wasn’t a vegetarian or health nut—far from it. Sure, I liked the taste of the salad and everything, but what really attracted me to it was the fancy cheese and pepper. Now I know it’s just grated parmesan and cracked pepper, but at the time, it seemed like a special production.
I used to think that this whole dog and pony show was just to make the affair seem more upscale, but there’s actually a reason—and it’s not just to subject the wait staff to manual labor. Freshly grated parmesan is obviously superior to the cheap, pre-grated stuff, but freshly cracked pepper from a pepper mill has its benefit too. The flavor is more pronounced and the grains are larger, which is good for dishes with big flavor like Caesar salad.
From June through August I have a personal rule: No hot coffee. A couple of summers ago I tried to drink hot coffee during the summer, and it was a disaster. Since I drink about five cups a day, I was constantly sweating from the intense heat of the coffee. I probably should have realized the iced coffee solution immediately, but it took me the entire summer. Here’s one of my favorite iced coffee recipes for beating the heat:
~Brew some espresso in your espresso coffee maker and cool one shot.
~Mix the shot of espresso with 2-3 tsp. cocoa, ½ tbs. vanilla extract (the good stuff) and 1-cup of milk.
~Pour in a tall glass with ice. You can create a delicious coffee smoothie by simply putting the drink in a blender for a few seconds.
I’m always a little suspicious of products that work in miraculous ways. Take Durgol for instance. I spent weeks trying to scrub the calcium deposits from my espresso machine with vinegar and nothing happened. Then I put Durgol in the machine and it’s like new in five minutes. If it can bust through calcium and lime that fast, there must be some pretty harsh chemicals in it—at least that was my thinking.
In fact, Durgol doesn’t contain any additives, unlike most other decalcifying products. This means that after you use Durgol in your machine, there isn’t any chemical residue and the machine is odorless—not even the vinegar method can say that. When the Durgol mixes with the minerals, it creates salts, which don’t harm the environment. Durgol actually works to remove lime in the water, which can be left over from detergents.