There is coffee, and then there’s coffee. In the former category, you have the swill that inhabits gas stations and anything you’re scooping out of a tin can. In the latter, you have the stuff that conquered empires and inspired poets. Basically, if you’re just looking for a quick fix, the former will do - and so will any street drug. But if you want a reason to live, the choice is clear.

Entire books could be written on how to brew the perfect cup - and no doubt books have. So here’s the very short rundown: Buy whole beans. Store them in an airtight container at room temperature. (Do not freeze! Please!) Grind only the beans you need on a given day. Brew the coffee in a French press for the best flavor. Add cream and sugar at your own risk. Presto!

But when it comes to buying the best coffee, that gets a little trickier. The lowdown is that the fresher your beans are, the better the taste, so you want to buy beans that have been recently roasted. Unless, of course, you want to start roasting beans at home, which is fine - as long as you have a servant. Boca Java is a good bet, as is Coffee Fool. Both pride themselves on roasting your coffee beans mere days before you order it. For some inexplicable reason, Starbucks online store doesn’t specify how recently the beans were roasted. On the one hand, it’s Starbucks, so you know they know their coffee. On the other hand, that oversight is pretty glaring, and you may get fresher stuff picking it up at your local Starbucks instead.

Finally, there’s Coffee For Less, which is decent, but unfortunately, with coffee, you get what you pay for. No listed roasting date means they were probably roasted during the last Ice Age for all we know. Still, their coffee is a step above instant - and if you’re even considering buying instant, start at the beginning of this post and reread.

***Picture Thanks to Plan 59***

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 8:15 pm and is filed under You Expect Me To Boil Water?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.