Gourmet Coffee: The Essential Facts
The discovery of coffee is credited to an Arab goatherd by the name of Kaldi. He noticed his goats behaved rather strangely after they ate the bright red fruit of the coffee plant. He tried it—and the rest is history. Now days, coffee lovers around the world can enjoy a wide variety of roasted coffee flavors over the raw coffee bean.

Here are some essential details about everyone's favorite morning beverage.

Roasting: Perhaps the most critical aspect of gourmet coffee is the roasting process. To begin with, the optimal temperature to roast coffee beans is between 400F and 480F. If you roast below 400F the bean becomes sour. Conversely if you roast above 480F the bean can burn. The temperature also determines the eventual flavor. Temperatures close to 400F result in mellower morning coffees. Those temperatures toward the upper ranges yield espressos.

The Finer Points: after the beans are roasted their shelf life goes from months to weeks, and once ground is cut down from weeks to days. This is relatively short compared to the two year shelf life of green coffee beans. One common method of extending the shelf life of gourmet coffee is quality packaging. The aroma and taste are optimally extended by storing the coffee in a cool, dry place in an airtight container.

Grinding: The last step of producing gourmet coffee is the grinding process. Ideally the beans will be ground just prior the brewing. The equipment used should be clean, and the water both cold and untreated. A mistake many people make is using an incorrect ratio of water to ground coffee. Be sure to use a ratio of one tablespoon of ground coffee for every six ounces of water.