Spiced French Coffee
1 teaspoon fresh, grated orange peel
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
5 whole cloves
Regular amount of your usual coffee or try Swiss Chocolate Orange flavored coffee

Add the above ingredients together and brew as normal. Place a slice of orange at the bottom or your cup. Pour in coffee and add sugar and cream to taste. Top with whipping cream and sprinkle with a dash of nutmeg and cinnamon if so desired.
Mint Chocolate Coffee

1 ounce of chocolate mint liqueur
Dash of shaved chocolate
Whipping cream (optional)
Regular coffee or try Dutch Chocolate Decaf

flavoured coffee
Brew your regular coffee, add the 1 ounce of liqueur into your cup. Add some whipping cream if desired and sprinkle with shaved chocolate.
Coffee Flavoured Milkshakes

1 pint of coffee ice cream
2 teaspoons finely ground coffee
1/2 cup light rum (optional)
4 to 6 scoops vanilla ice cream
Instant coffee powder

Spoon coffee ice cream into blender. Add rum and finely ground coffee. Blend on high until creamy smooth. Pour into tall glasses, adding a scoop of the vanilla ice cream to each glass. Sprinkle lightly with instant coffee powder.
Frosty Mocha Coffees

1 cup of freshly brewed coffee
1 pint of vanilla ice cream, softenend
6 tablespoons of chocolate syrup
1 cup prepared cold coffee

Blend hot coffee and chocolate syrup in blender. Blend until smooth. Cool the mixture to room temperature. Pour the mixture into a medium bowl. Add the softened ice cream and cold coffee. With a rotary beater, beat until smooth. Spoon into tall glasses and serve immediately.
Egg Nogg Coffee

1 cup of coffee or try Pumpkin Spice flavoured coffee

1 egg yoke
1/2 cup of cream
Dash of nutmeg
Beat the suger and egg yoke together. Place cream in a saucepan and heat over low setting, do not burn. Wisk the egg mixture into the warmed cream, heat until hot. Add coffee to mugs and top with the cream mixture. Garnish the coffee with nutmeg.

Generally speaking, the ’soaking’ time relates directly to how coarse the coffee is ground. This means that smaller coffee grinds need less contact with the water, and coarser grinds need longer contact. Espresso coffee is only exposed to water for 20-40 seconds and as a result is made using extremely fine grind coffee. A French press coffee maker can take as much as 4 minutes and uses an extremely coarse grind. If coffee is left contacting water for too long for its grind size, unwanted extracts emerge and make the coffee taste bitter. Of course if the grind is too large and the water passes very quickly (like using frech press grind in an espresso maker), very little of the caffeine and flavours extracted and will have poor flavour.

Of course filters play an important role in managing the balance between over and under brewing your coffee. Not only do they keep the grind out of your cup, but they also control how fast the water passes over the grinds. Paper filters are the most common, but many people are also using metal varieties. Paper filters are quite good. However they can absorb some of the coffee flavour, and some people claim they can taste the paper in the final coffee. Metal filters are normally made from stainless steel or gold plated mesh. They have very fine weave and filter out the coffee grinds very well. They also do not alter the taste of the coffee at all. Metal filters are also more environmentally friendly than the paper alternative.

Whichever you choose, be sure to buy decent quality. Cheap filters often clog or not allow the coffee to brew properly. A decent quality metal filter will last years and save money in the end.

Brewing a cup of coffee is not that hard. Brewing a great cup takes a little more understanding, but isn’t any harder. Start with fresh beans and good clean water and then match your brewing style to the proper grind and then mess around with the exact proportions and pretty soon your be brewing killer coffee every time.

Different types of coffee calls for different types of grinds. So you’ll need to learn to use your coffee grinder properly if you want to make the freshest best tasting coffee possible.

If you plan on brewing your coffee with a percolator or a French Press coffee maker then you’ll need a coarser grind. Place the coffee beans in your coffee grinder and tap the grind button a few times as you would use the pulse feature on your food processor. The goal is to break the beans up so that they look like tiny pieces of coffee bean. If they look like a powder, then you need to slowly back away from the coffee grinder and start again. Remember to tap the button and not hold it down.

Automatic drip coffee makers work best with medium grinds. Picture the grinds that you’d find in a can of supermarket coffee. Those are medium grinds. They can be described as looking like brown sand. So remember the last time you went to the beach but instead of seeing the sand in between your toes, imagine seeing sand in your coffee maker. Once again, while holding the coffee grinder button, don’t get carried away and over grind your coffee beans. You do not want a fine powder if you’re going to use an automatic coffee maker.

Finally if your using an espresso maker, you want those fine powdery grinds that you’ve been trying to avoid when making coarse and medium grinds. So grind away until your heart is content.

Grinding your own coffee beans right before you brew your coffee is a great way to make sure that you’re getting the freshest cup of coffee possible. But a fresh cup of coffee can still be bitter or weak. Learning how to grind your coffee beans is an important part of making great coffee.