In the drink

Daily grind

How do you make a good cup of coffee? There are probably as many answers as there are stars in the sky; everyone knows exactly how they like it. But it might be more instructive to talk about how not to make a bad cup. There are clear precautions you can take to avoid this.

Freshness is paramount. Once it is roasted, coffee slowly begins to go stale; once it is ground, exposing a bigger surface area to the air, this will happen in a matter of hours. If using vacuum-packed grounds, you can minimise the damage by storing the remainder in an airtight container. A true coffee aficionado would be depressed by that last sentence. The best way to ensure fresh coffee - and the smooth eruption of flavour that it releases - is to grind your beans seconds before you need them. This is not nearly so much hassle as it sounds. Most of us have a blender sitting idle on the work surface. It takes very little time to whizz a few beans, then whisk a piece of kitchen roll round the inside to clean the machine.

You must also take care not to scald the coffee by keeping it over the heat for too long. Use hot, rather than boiling water. And the beans must be ground to the right size of particle for the method you are using. Too small and they will stick together

Those are the basics. Now, the method. Broadly speaking there are four to choose from. You can use instant. (In my view, tolerable only in cafe frappé. I know some who buy it for the builders, but in my experience builders have too refined a taste not to object.) Filter is the second option. I hesitate to prescribe this - for me, this is good only if your mechanism does not involve a hotplate. Hotplates kill coffee virtually on impact. Third, you can infuse the coffee in water, much as you do tea leaves. This is slightly different from filtration methods because, rather than being squeezed slowly through a bed of coffee, one drip at a time, the water is exposed to the coffee for a longer period. This is the method I have returned to using at home because I like the jagged flavour.

Last is the espresso method, which forces water through coffee under pressure. The Italian stove-top contraptions called mokka pots are a poor man's version. For years, I made coffee using them, then realised my enthusiasm was largely nostalgic, from my days in Italy, and that the brew tasted slightly burnt, a little metallic and generally unsatisfactory. Which leaves the option of using an espresso machine. Not everyone has either the space or commitment to coffee for such a contraption, but I think once your tastebuds are accustomed to this method, nothing else will do.