Tips for Brewing Great Coffee

Read our blog post about Cleaning Your Coffee Maker

Use Enough Coffee

The standard ratio is 2 tablespoons of coffee per 6 ounces of water, but it depends on the individual. It is better to start with too much ground coffee, then dilute your cup with water. If you skimp on the grounds and your coffee starts out too weak, you can't do anything about it.

Use Good Water

In some areas, the tap water tastes like it came from a pool. Do you really want to make coffee with that? Make your next pot of coffee with clean, filtered water or bottled water, but not distilled water. Avoid using hot water in your coffee maker.

Tap water has some dissolved minerals in it. A small amount of minerals actually helps coffee taste better, too much dissolved minerals will leave white deposits on the side of your coffee pot. Distilled water will not leave white deposits in your coffee pot, but it will affect the taste of your coffee.

Drink it Before it Goes Stale

Drink your coffee within 20-30 minutes of brewing. Letting a pot of coffee sit on a warmer for extended periods of time will scorch/burn it.

The taste and aroma of coffee depends on a number of substances in the coffee. As these substances evaporate, your coffee will lose it's flavor and taste. This is why re-heated coffee never tastes as good as fresh coffee.

Cleaning Your Coffee Maker

• Make a mixture of 1 part white vinegar to 2 parts water. Make enough to fill your coffee pot. If your coffee pot is particularly dirty, you can make a stronger mixture of equal parts vinegar and water.


• Before proceeding, please be aware that this process will FILL your home/office with the sweet smell of vinegar. This aroma will be unpleasant to most of your family members and most of your customers/co-workers.


• Insert a filter as usual. Pour the vinegar/water mixture into your coffee maker where you would normally add water. Turn the coffee maker on and let the cycle complete as normal.


• Discard the used filter and the vinegar/water mixture.


• Let the coffee pot cool for about 10-15 minutes.


• Wash the pot with soap and water. Rinse the pot thouroughly.


• Run 2 more cycles through your coffee maker with PLAIN, COLD WATER to rinse the vinegar out of the machine.


• If there is no vinegar smell after the 1st rinse cycle, you can skip the 2nd rinse.

White distilled vinegar is effective for killing most mold, bacteria, and germs due to its acidity. We hope you don't need to kill any mold in your coffee pot, but the acidity is also good for removing mineral deposits in your coffee pot (the white residue that doesn't scrub off).

Some people will tell you never to use soap to wash your coffee pot because glass pots will absorb the soap and ruin all of the coffee that you make in the future. Glass is inert, that's why scientists use glass test tubes and beakers in laboratories. BUT, if you don't rinse your coffee pot well, soap residue may remain and WILL probably affect every pot of coffee until it is washed out sufficiently.

There's a cleaning tip out on the Internet that mentions putting table salt and ice cubes in your coffee pot, then swirling the mixture around to remove coffee stains. Salt is definitely an abrasive, but this one doesn't sound very effective. If anybody has experience with this method...let us know.