Hints and Tips

Just a few hints and tips on how to prepare and brew your coffee and  tea.

How much coffee should I use? We get asked this question all the time.

Naturally there is no precise answer, it entirely depends on how you prefer your coffee to taste. In fact most new coffee machines, be it a filter or espresso machine, should give you a guide on how much coffee to use.

Best advice is to make coffee a little and often, and then drink it as soon as possible, don’t let your coffee stew for hours on the hotplate.  On our fairly simple filter machine that means we fill the water gauge up to the eight cups or four mugs mark. And we use three to four table spoons of coffee and this weighs approx 30-35 gms in total.

With regards to a cafetiere again most of them will come complete with a small plastic measuring spoon, where one spoonful holds around 7-10 gms should be enough to make one cup of coffee. In our 8 cup, 1 litre cafetiere we use 5-6 spoonfuls to make a good strong pot of coffee, if you've got it right there should be a sort of froth on top of the coffee.

However, the key to success is to experiment, experiment, experiment; judge how much water you will need to make your total requirement, and then play around with the quantity of coffee. Eventually you may even find that your favourite recipe is in fact a mix of one or two different types of coffee; you never know what new mix you might come up with.

With regards to brewing tea, as it’s loose leaf tea you will need to use a tea strainer or an infusion tea pot or spoon.  These allow the tea to steep, but retain the loose leaves so you don’t get them coming out of the teapot.  Use boiling hot water and also warm the pot beforehand.  Use a good heaped tea spoon per person and one for the pot.  Allow to brew for between 3-5 minutes and then pour.  Some people will say you should only add lemon, but if you like your tea with milk and three sugars so be it. However you take your tea or coffee, do take the time to savour the experience, and that’s what it should be; a few minutes of pure heaven.

Enjoy.