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Jump-starting your morning with a freshly brewed cup of coffee gives you the energy you need for a productive day. And, when you brew your own coffee, you enjoy higher-quality coffee that tastes better and costs less.

If often takes time to perfect your brewing method. Trial and error may lead you to many watered down or extra strong cups of coffee. While a good cup of coffee sets your day off on the right foot, a bad cup may bring your mood down. However, with a few helpful tips, you can enjoy the perfect cup any time of day.

Brew better quality coffee using the following methods:

• Buy Higher Quality Coffee: This step may seem obvious, but coffee quality levels vary drastically with the brand and form of coffee. Choose high quality Keurig pods, beans or grounds to get a better tasting cup of coffee.
• Use Filtered Water: Tap water can ruin your pot of coffee. Use filtered water to make sure your coffee tastes the best it can. Filtered water tastes fresher and has less chemicals than tap water, keeping your cup of coffee at peak flavor.
• Measure the Coffee And Water: Perfect the right ratio of coffee to water by using a kitchen scale to measure out the ingredients. Measuring the coffee and water will stop your coffee from being too watered down or too strong.
• Clean Your Equipment: Clean your coffee pot or keurig before you brew your coffee to get rid of excess grounds or dirt making your coffee’s flavor strange. Keep your coffee tasting excellent by having clean equipment.
• Explore Other Brew Techniques: Try different methods of brewing to explore which method you prefer for your coffee. Alternate between french pressing, drip brewing and grinding your own beans to discover the brewing method you like best.

For more information on easy ways to brew better coffee from the experts at Hanson Beverage Service, please contact us here or call us directly at 800.439.6901.

An office coffee machine can make all the difference for morale and productivity once midday arrives, but getting the full benefit depends on ensuring your brewing machine meets the needs of a busy and dynamic office space. Moving beyond the traditional problems of the standard drip machine, single-cup coffee makers offer an affordable, efficient and delicious solution to all your coffee needs.

1.      Guaranteed Fresh Coffee

When you rely on a cup of joe to keep you perked up for the day, pouring from a pot of hours-old coffee will not inspire confidence. With single-cup brewers, you load a fresh cup of grounds each time you need your fix, and within a few moments you have a fresh cup of hot coffee. When you know the coffee at work won’t be cold or stale upon arrival, that means less time spent making coffee at home or less money spent at the café.

2.      Less Coffee Waste

Because you typically brew coffee in larger batches with drip machines, they almost always guarantee that you’ll pour the surplus down the drain later. Using a single-cup brewer not only ensures fresh coffee, but also that each person will make exactly enough for themselves on every occasion — this means no more brewing a separate pot of untouched decaf every day.

3.      More Opportunity for Variety

Because single-cup brewers make exactly enough for one person, feel free to try all the flavors you want without worrying about tossing out an unsuccessful experiment. This also allows you to stock a huge range of flavors for employees to choose from. Single-cup options for black, green, and herbal teas also offer a choice for non-coffee-drinkers — so you don’t have to worry about getting a separate machine for your beverage of choice.

4.      Easy to Clean

Single-cup coffee machines take very little effort to clean, with no disassembly required. Simply pour in a mixture of one part white vinegar to one part water and run the brew cycle a few times. This prevents any mold or lime build-up in your machine, and once you no longer see any water or vinegar in the tank, the machine has finished cleaning.

Offering consistently fresh coffee with less work and more versatility than a drip machine, a single-cup coffee machine lets you get the most out of your office pick-me-up.

To learn more about office coffee delivery from Hanson Beverage Service, contact us or call our office directly at 800.439.6901.

You probably do not need anyone reminding you to drink more water, but with the hustle and bustle of work and life, one can easily forget the importance of getting enough.

In the quest for the flawless cup of coffee, aficionados have looked at everything from roasting technique, to method of grinding, to the perfect ratio of water to coffee (said to be 17.42 units of water to 1 unit of coffee).

But less often considered is the water itself. While we tend to view tap water as a pure ingredient, it’s actually loaded with minerals that can influence coffee’s flavor. And now chemists have pinned down how the chemicals in different types of water interact with coffee beans to shape the taste of the brew that results.

Science to the Rescue

Coffee is loaded with a tremendous amount of natural chemicals and over 1,000 aroma compounds. Water, on the other hand, can be rich in minerals like calcium and magnesium if it’s “hard,” or if it’s “soft,” rich in sodium — used by water softeners to remove impurities.

For this study, Christopher Hendon, a chemist from the University of Bath, focused on the way different kinds of water affect the extraction of six chemicals that contribute to the flavor of coffee.

For this study, Christopher Hendon, a chemist from the University of Bath, focused on the way different kinds of water affect the extraction of six chemicals that contribute to the flavor of coffee. These flavors included citric acid, lactic acid and eugenol — responsible for coffee’s “woodsy” taste. He found that magnesium in hard water, for example, sticks to eugenol, giving the resulting brew an even woodsier taste, Business Insider reports. And bicarbonates in hard water will make the coffee bitterer. The findings were published last month in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

“Hard water is generally considered to be bad for coffee, but we found it was the type of hardness that mattered – while high bicarbonate levels are bad, high magnesium ion levels increase the extraction of coffee into water and improve the taste,” Hendon told Phys.org.

Selecting the Right Coffee

Soft water, unfortunately, lacks the sticky minerals of hard water, so it’s poorer at extracting flavorful compounds. But if you live in a soft-water haven, don’t dismay: a tactical selection of beans may help counter the problem.

Just like one would pair wine with a certain type of food, the same is true for your type of water and the coffee you brew. You can get a rough idea about the hardness of your water by checking out the U.S. Geologic Survey water map. Then, purchase beans that are best brewed with hard or soft water, which a knowledgeable roaster should know.