Use distilled water in your coffeemaker, whether you
are making perc, drip, espresso or French press;
your coffee will taste better and your coffeemaker
will last much longer. When you use tap water
you are loading your coffee and your machine with
all the minerals and chemicals present in
your local tap water.
Bottled drinking water is a city's "municipal water
supply" (known as tap water) run through a
charcoal filter and/or a reverse-osmosis process, maybe a
little ionizing too. The result of that is
that most of the odors are neutralized and the
chlorine has been removed; all the stuff that ruins
your coffee machine and your coffee is still in the
water.
Purified water is drinking water that has been
heated; all the junk is still there. Spring
water is water that has NOT undergone charcoal
filtration, osmosis or ionization. It is the
same as well water from the location it originates
in; lots of great stuff to destroy your machine and
your coffee, as anyone with a well will tell you.
Distilled water is the result
of boiling the water in big vats; the steam from the
boiling runs through cooling tubes and is thereby
separated from the sediments present in tap water,
bottled drinking water and bottled spring water.
Distillation leaves the calcium, lime, chlorine and
everything else behind, giving you only the water.
This is why your steam iron and your clothes steamer
both say to use distilled water only.
Brewing Tip #3: NEUTRALIZING ACIDITY.
Okay, you've found your favorite coffee, maybe a
French Roast or Espresso Roast and you've brewed
a nice big pot. It has all the fabulous
aroma and rich heavy body that you could
possibly wish for, but you used too much coffee
so it has a slight bite that you find
unpleasant; what do you do? Simple!
Get out your baking soda (orange box, NOT baking
powder!!) and drop just the
smallest amount (about 1/16 of a teaspoon or
less) into the pot of brewed coffee; no shaking or
stirring required, you will now have a perfectly
fabulous, smooth coffee with no bite!
Brewing Tip #4: STORING
YOUR COFFEE.
Do not refrigerate or freeze your coffee!
It doesn't keep it fresh longer and it doesn't
preserve the flavor; that's an old wives tale.
If you don't believe it, buy three Granny Smith
apples, refrigerate one, freeze one and leave
one covered with a white towel away from a
direct heat source. Tomorrow, take a bite
of each one and YOU tell ME which one has the
best taste.
Flavor loss in coffee is the result of exposure
to light and air, which means that keeping it on
the counter in transparent containers is not a
good choice. Your coffee will arrive in a
light-proof bag that will limit air exposure
even after you break the seal, so long as you
roll the bag down snugly after opening it to
extract whatever amount of coffee you need each
time.
MIXING FLAVORS OR ROASTS.
Mixing your flavors or roasts can open up a whole
new selection of personalized coffees that you can
make for yourself. In the process of bagging
Whole Bean Coffees for my clients, I have noticed
that there are many times two or more fragrances
that blend extremely well together and would make an
incredible cup!
Double Dark Chocolate and Amaretto makes the
loveliest Cordial Cherry taste; mixing the DD
Chocolate with the Hazelnut is beyond amazing!
I am not referring only to half and half mixtures,
but experimental mixes of 60/40, 75/25 or mixes that
involve a whole lot of this with just a dash of
that, so to speak.
The New Guinea mixes extremely well with Ambition
and also with Kona Blend for a remarkable coffee
that lingers pleasantly on the tongue. New
Guinea or Sumatra can add strength and body to a
flavored coffee or to a lighter roast if
you want just a bit more depth and "oomph"
from your coffee.
Customer
suggestions and experiences are always welcome;
please share yours!
GENERAL COFFEE INFORMATION
Coffees from Blue Moon Antiques will be more
flavorful and pleasant than coffees purchased at
your local grocery. They'll also be better
than the commercially packaged ground coffees
you can buy at your local and/or famous coffee
shop.
The reason is that coffee begins to lose its
flavor as soon as the beans are broken up by
grinding. Coffee that is commercially
available already ground up in that pretty,
shiny bag has been treated with a coating that
supposedly preserves the flavor until such time
as brewing takes place. Problem is, we're
not sure what that coating is made out of and
since it certainly isn't made of coffee, do you
really want that brewed in with a beverage that
is all about the pleasure of its flavor?
If you ordered your coffee from Blue Moon in whole bean form,
it will arrive in that form and fresh because I
buy in smaller quantities to ensure that the
coffee is sold long before it would begin to
become stale. If you ordered it ground, it
will be ground just before shipment and the bag
sealed immediately to prevent flavor loss
through air exposure. If you're buying
already-ground coffee from those big name guys,
it's being ground in enormous quantities and
then sectioned out into the bags, then
warehoused for however long it takes for one of
their stores to order it. Once at the store,
it sits for however long it takes for you to
come and buy it.
We suggest you invest in a reasonably-priced
coffee grinder that has options for the
coarseness/fineness of grind and for volume of
the proposed pot of coffee. Mr. Coffee
makes an excellent one for right around $20.00
and is often found on sale close to gift-giving
holidays. With this grinder, you can grind
exactly as much whole bean coffee as you need
for your coffeemaker and have it exactly as
coarse or as fine as you would like it to be.
While grinding immediately before brewing is
always preferable, there are situations where it
is not practicable, such as needing the coffee
made while part or all of the rest of the
household is still sleeping and where the noise
from the grinder would be troublesome. For
these needs, we are certainly able to provide
your favorite coffee ground to your machine's
specifications.
