A perfect cup of coffee

Is there such a thing? It's a bit like requesting the perfect meal. Do you have one? Just one? For me it varies each day. Yesterday it was chicken liver terrine with a glass of Cotes du Rhone at midnight. Today it's poached eggs on crusty toast with a cup of tea. I haven't got round to making that yet though. I'm out of eggs.

So maybe there's no such thing as the perfect cup of coffee but there's certainly a big difference between a good coffee and a bad one. If you're unlucky enough to pay for a bad one you'll know about it instantly. Sometimes before you even taste it. Thin, burnt, too hot, sour, too watery, too milky...

But if it's a good one, a well made one, it will slip down like bitter-sweet velvet and you'll realise that that's how they should all taste.

So what goes into making a good coffee?

A decent blend of beans that have been roasted well. Then there's the grind. It's not just a case of the finer the grind, the better the coffee. The grind is determined by the humidity in the air. Well, it should be, according to mother-and-daughter team Anthea and Selina who run Sierra café in Auckland. It's all about how coffee particles behave when it's humid or cool. Not only that but the metal parts of the coffee grinder can expand when it's hot and make the coffee clump together. So this has to be taken into consideration when the grind size is set on the grinder.

And if the beans aren't freshly ground - we're talking minutes - already the coffee is slipping down the scale of being potentially very good to so-so. You see, once ground, the essential oils are exposed to the air and they're slowly turning rancid.

What other variables? The pressure of the water coming through the coffee machine and how densely the ground coffee is packed into the basket. Too tightly, and the espresso will be gloopy and burnt-tasting. And as for the milk - how it's steamed and frothed can make or break the finished coffee. Heat and texture of both the espresso and the milk are key.

So there's a lot of pressure on the hands behind the machine - the barista - to get it right. It's not just a case of pressing a button and putting a lid on a cup.
There's more in a cup of coffee than you might realise.

In a good one anyway.


If in doubt, have a smoothie.