Coffee with a heart most people put a fixed number of scoops of coffee in a filter bag and then pour ‘water to the line’ in the coffee maker, close the valve, switch on ‘on’, (is the light on?) And the coffee is made. Or even easier: a cup in your Nespresso machine or pad in a pad device , check the water level, cup underneath, press the button and the coffee is made. It is often one of the first things we do in the morning and that are why routine is so pleasant. At Coffeelifious you can find more tips and recipes of making coffee.

Yet I think that you do yourself a great favour if you add a few small steps to the coffee making routine, it costs nothing extra and that makes it extra enjoyable. The difference between good coffee and good tasty coffee is like the difference between bread and fresh bread: it is really different.

Tips: How to make better coffee

Coffee is best when it is fresh, hot and full of flavour; these tips are aimed at getting those three things as optimally as possible. I describe below my routine of making coffee with a filter in a (drip) coffee maker.

First, I rinse the coffee pot into which the coffee will soon drip – leaving the taste of old coffee behind as little as possible. The water from the tap is now also ‘fresh’ because I used the remainder that was still in the tap to flush. Now I fill the jug with the amount of water that I need (approximately) and pour it into the coffee maker, up to the desired level. I now pour the excess water from the coffee pot and place it in the coffee maker.

Now I grab the coffee cup from which I will soon drink and fill it with hot water to the edge of the cup, I now put it ready on the counter.

Now I put a filter bag in the holder of the coffee maker and put fresh coffee beans in the coffee bean grinder and turn on the coffee bean grinder on the timer, enough for the amount of coffee I want to make. When the coffee bean grinder is ready, I put the freshly ground coffee in the filter bag and switch on the coffee maker.

When the coffee starts to drip and the end is approaching, I will tip the hot water from the coffee cup and dry it. Now I can immediately pour the hot coffee into the hot coffee cup without immediately cooling it down a number of degrees (after all: the coffee does not have to heat the cup now and keeps its temperature longer).

My coffee is now hot (and stays longer) because the cup is preheated, the taste of freshly ground coffee is a lot richer than (months ago) ground coffee and coffee beans are no more expensive than pre-ground coffee. The smell that is released when grinding coffee beans is a feast in itself, you will notice that the coffee tastes better because the aromas of the beans did not disappear a few weeks ago but are only released after grinding and your coffee is therefore really fresh is.

If the coffee pot is empty I rinse it out to prevent the old coffee taste in the jug. I also rinse the filter bag holder after I have thrown away the filter, for the same reason.

Of course it is necessary to occasionally clean your coffee maker. Read here how you can easily do that yourself.

Fresh coffee beans, why should I?

Unlike wine, coffee doesn’t get better if you leave it for longer. On the contrary: coffee loses taste and odour and becomes sour. This sounds logical, but this is not the case for everyone. Just ask in the supermarket about the roasting date of the coffee that is there, and you will not find a roasting date on the coffee bean packaging either. And even in special coffee shops (I don’t mention names but it looks very much like the name of a supermarket chain with a ‘K’ in front of it) there is no roasting date on the coffee bean bags (to the displeasure of the employees themselves).

Apparently it is not necessary to state this roasting date and you can safely buy six month old coffee, because you do not know when it is roasted and then it is hoped that those 500 grams of beans are a little tasty.

There is a way to know when the coffee beans are roasted: buy them from a coffee roaster that burns fresh daily and that also states the roasting date on the packaging.