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" 1. BUYING OLD BEANS &amp;quot;Make sure you choose a coffee with a roast date, not a &amp;#039;best by&amp;#039; date. Preferably, that date should be no longer than a week ago. Then use it up, share it with friends, or buy smaller bags so you move through it quickly. Sometimes lightly roasted coffee can be good for a couple of weeks after opening, but in general, fresher is better.&amp;quot; 2. GRINDING IN ADVANCE &amp;quot;Buy whole-bean coffee. Ground coffee gets stale really easily. Buying a grinder just isn&amp;#039;t that hard: It&amp;#039;s not that expensive, and doesn&amp;#039;t take that long. If you&amp;#039;re doing the pulse-and-shake method on a cheapo blade grinder, I think you&amp;#039;re still better off than buying pre-ground coffee that&amp;#039;s been sitting in a bag for a week or God knows how long. And there are better options that are getting cheaper \u2014 Hario, Porlex, Zassenhaus and Baratza make some good grinders that are not that expensive.&amp;quot; 3. USING A COFFEE MACHINE &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t buy a coffee pot with a plug. If you&amp;#039;re going to make coffee, make it yourself. There&amp;#039;s the symbolic layer: Do you want to entrust something so important to a machine? And then there&amp;#039;s the brass tacks layer, which is that almost every machine doesn&amp;#039;t make very good coffee. I love the shininess, the slipperiness, the cleanness of a good pour-over made with a paper filter or a cloth filter.&amp;quot; 4. PLAYING IT LOOSE WITH MEASUREMENTS &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t rely on your eye, and don&amp;#039;t rely on volumetric measurements \u2014 they&amp;#039;re just not accurate. Buy a gram scale and weigh your coffee, weigh your water. You&amp;#039;re going to be so much more in control of your brewing ratio.&amp;quot; 5. SHOPPING AT THE SUPERMARKET &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t buy a national brand if you can help it. We&amp;#039;re lucky enough that a lot of people want to have our coffee shipped, but I think more and more, people are opening up little roasteries and doing interesting things. You&amp;#039;ll be less apt to see coffee as a commodity, and more apt to see it as something that&amp;#039;s precious and has been meticulously cared for, from when it&amp;#039;s grown far away to when it arrives in your cup.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.delish.com/kitchen-tools/kitchen-secrets/a1296/coffee-making-mistakes/>