Romancing the Bean - Coffee Tips

Romancing the Bean - How to look after your coffee (beans) and ways to make the experience better.

If you are good to your bean, it will be good to you and you will have a beautiful coffee experience.

The Golden Rules:

Fresh water! Freshly roasted! Freshly ground!

Don’t compromise on quality.

Spend the required time - you don’t need to do too much to make and drink good coffee and you will be rewarded with a lovely taste of coffee that glosses your mouth and entices your senses.

Other rules:

Always use fresh cold water (ideally filtered) in your espresso or coffee machine.

Always ground your coffee to the required grind just before you brew it - the taste begins to go after 2 minutes of grinding.

Always store fresh coffee beans tightly sealed in a dark cupboard for no longer than 2 weeks.

Always store pre-ground coffee in the fridge for no longer than 1 week.

Try to buy small quantities of coffee at a time (250g).

Try to clean your espresso machine regularly (see manufacturer’s instruction).
Try to warm up your coffee cup before pouring hot coffee into it to preserve the heat. This is very important for espresso as you are pouring such a small liquid into a cup, which should ideally be warm to preserve the heat of the coffee.

Rules for compliments to coffee:

If you want to flavour your coffee, use a syrup like Monin and don’t buy flavoured beans, as the flavour will stay in your coffee machine forever.

Try to use as fresh as possible milk when frothing and steaming your milk for your cappuccino, latte or au lait.

Try using evaporated milk in your filter coffee or espresso lungo for a real rich taste - its lovely!

If you are not confident in frothing milk, use a manual froth jug - you’ll still get micro-foam - it won’t be as thick and silky as the real stuff but it is still good enough.