A Few General Directions for Making Coffee

Instructions

1. Buy the finest quality you can obtain. There is no real economy in coffee that is nominally cheaper: a larger quantity will be required to give the same strength, and the flavour will be very inferior.
2. It should always be freshly roasted.
3. If it has been stored for any length of time, freshen it by heating it gently through, either in the oven or in a stewpan held high above the fire. Turn it often while it is warming, and grind it as soon as it is cold again.
4. Never purchase it ready ground unless you are compelled to.
5. Grind it to a moderately fine powder. If it is too coarse the essence will be only partially extracted by filtering; if it is extremely fine the water will not percolate through it and the coffee will not be clear. Where no proper mill is fitted in the house, a small portable one will answer tolerably well.
6. Acton makes no use of chicory: her directions are for pure coffee. She notes that chicory imparts a slight bitter flavour and deepens the colour so much as to make the infusion appear much stronger than it really is - and that true connoisseurs attach no importance to a dark hue, the very choicest coffee being sometimes of quite a pale tint.
7. Always serve hot milk or cream, or hot milk and cold cream if preferred, with breakfast coffee. In the evening, when milk is served with it at all, it should likewise be boiling.
8. Do not in any way use the residue of one day's coffee in preparing the next: it injures the purity of the flavour and effects next to nothing in the matter of economy. (Acton's footnote adds a test: where coffee has been properly filtered, water poured afterwards on the grounds will have scarcely any taste or colour - which is not the case when it has been boiled.)