Making Good Coffee | Fair Trade Coffee Supplier

Information to help you make great coffee

Choosing Your Coffee

The first part is easy. Best Coffee Beans only supply the highest quality coffee, from some of the best coffee producers, growing the highest quality coffee beans. Our coffee is then professionally and skilfully roasted to make great tasting coffee.

If you would like help, please email our customer services which is open 9am to 5pm, 7 days a week.

The Grind

We have a number of our varieties available which are ground suitable for all coffee makers in 227g but the grind is most suitable for cafétiers and filter machines.

This is because different brewing methods require different grinds to be most effective in extracting the flavour from the ground beans.

If you have an espresso machine for example, the grind should be very fine, partly because the brew cycle is only around 20 seconds long. A cafétier requires the coffee to be more coarsely ground because the water and coffee will be in contact for around 4 minutes.

The Proportion of Coffee to Water

This is very important and the most common reason for poor tasting coffee.

Start with two tablespoons of ground coffee for each 180 millilitres of water, a little more hot water if you like your brew milder. If you have a coffee machine refer to the instructions.

Water Quality and Temperature

Since most of your cup of coffee is water, it is important that the water you use tastes fresh, clean and pure. We recommend filtering your water.

The water temperature also makes a difference, too hot and water will spoil ‘or burn’ the coffee and too cold the water cannot adequately extract the coffees full flavour.

The ideal temperature is just off the boil between 90 to 95 degrees. If your coffee maker is not making good tasting coffee you should check that the temperature of the water is hot enough.

Try to use freshly Ground Coffee

All our coffee, beans and ground is freshly packed into valve bags immediately after roasting which ensures that your coffee is kept in peak condition. Once opened treat your coffee as fresh produce. For best results we recommend grinding your coffee just before brewing, as coffee beans keep fresh longer.

Either way, remember that coffee dislikes oxygen, light, heat and moisture. We recommend keeping your coffee in an air tight, opaque container as cool as possible or at room temperature but not subject to large changes of temperature, therefore we would not recommend keeping your coffee in a fridge as frequently suggested.

Coffee Strength

Coffee taste is as personal as wine tasting. We provide a guide to strength and a description of taste which we hope will help you in choosing the right coffee. We simply label our coffee Mild, Medium, Bold and Very Bold which we hope you find easy to use. If you are more familiar with number rating, this is indicated below:

We label our coffees as follows:

Best Coffee Beans Strength Number Rating

Mild: Light to Medium Roast with gentle tastes 1

Medium: Medium providing a deeper taste 2/3

Bold: Dark Roast for a richer experience 4

Very Bold: Very Dark Roast for the adventurous 5