20g of grounds per 315ml of 200°F water, brewed for 5 minutes, black.

Orally.

I like mine with creamer, probably a bit too much but oh well

Thank you for reminding me I have a cold cup of coffee in the fridge though! Just saved my Friday afternoon!

Oooo that's interesting!! I'm gonna try this next time, thanks!

If Lemmy is to believed, it would probably be with topless girls in the kitchen gazing out at the morning sunlight

What communities are you following that give you that idea?

How you like it!

It's the only real answer.

Me? I'm actually fond of whole bean, fresh ground, then single cup drip. The maker I have is thirty-ish years old, but as long as I don't fuck up the grind (and I'm looking for budget electric burr grinder currently to minimize that), it makes a damn nice cup, if not quite as hot as I prefer.

Now, once the coffee is done dripping, how I prep after that depends on the purpose of the cup.

If it's purely for the joy of coffee, I take it slightly sweet with just the barest splash of milk or cream (usually milk, but some beans lile cream more). Yeah, that means I'm not a black coffee purist, and I will fight allll fucking day long on that issue, and plan to explain that in another paragraph.

If it's to go along with food in general, I tend to go with the barest hint of sugar, with milk varying depending on what it is.

For dessert in specific, I go sweeter, with the milk again varying based on the exact dessert. If it's chocolate based, I go with as little sugar as it takes to not clash with the sweetness of the dessert. The gooier the dessert is, the more milk I use usually, but it does still vary.

If it's social coffee, I usually go with a single sugar and a generous splash of milk since most people tend to have meh or crap decaf, which is all I can drink now. So the single sugar is to be gentle on their supply and the milk in quantity to cover up the flaws in the coffee.

Now, sugar and milk, or rather sweetener and milk, do not ruin coffee, and fuck any snob that insists that anything other than black is wasting the coffee.

See, even a perfect brew still produces coffee, which is a roasted product. This inherently introduces at least a little bitterness that's not part of the bean itself. That's the case in even medium or light roasts. Sugar counters that perfectly, and as long as you don't go crazy, it won't counter any (or not much) bitterness from the bean itself. You want a little, tiny bit of bitter because it satisfies more. But coffee's natural sweetness is so often muted by the roast that covering it up isn't a real concern.

And note that I specified sugar. Other sweeteners are okay if that's what someone else prefers. But white sugar brings no, or nearly no, taste of its own. Honey, unrefined sugar, agave, etc, all have at least a little taste that's detectable over the coffee itself. Again, enjoy it if that's your preference! I tend to prefer as little added tastes as possible while still reaching my ideal presentation of the coffee.

And that brings us to dairy, which absolutely brings taste of its own.

But what dairy also does is lift other flavors. It mutes some floral notes for sure, but it brings spicy and fruity notes to the front as long as you're careful about how much you use.

Now, there are specific cases where I won't use milk and/or sugar. Perfect example is Jamaican blue mountain, which does have floral notes, a gentle sweetness when roasted well,and whose fruitiness is easy to overwhelm. So it gets only the merest kiss of sugar if any; and milk is just a drop or three if the roast is darker than it should be.

Ethiopian coffees often have an earthy richness that benefits from a little extra milk.

Coffees that are blended, and/or include robusto beans tend to want a little more milk (and often cream) than single source ones do. This is especially true of blends for chain coffee and mass produced (think Starbucks or peets). The problem with those is usually that they roast in such big batches that you get uneven results per bean. So things get muddied and you pick up a little burnt here and there.

So there's no single "best" preparation of coffee. There can't be because it's a living product influenced by growing conditions, then the processing. A given batch of beans will likely have the same overall sweet spot in terms of preparation though. And you'll certainly only need to tweak a given bag of coffee the first cup or two from the standard of whatever source you're getting it from. Like, two bags of Starbucks breakfast blend are only going to vary a little and thus need only minor adjustments; but two bags of kona can vary enough to bed adjusting between bags every time.

And to think, I put this kind of nitpicking into decaf. You should have seen me adding in milk with a dropper when I would get blue mountain when my dad would visit Jamaica and bring back a few pounds of it straight from one of the plantations. Holy crap, that coffee was worth fiddling things that closely and writing down exactly how much was helpful. That's my personal best coffee, btw. Blue mountain is already a delicate, sweet, and complex coffee. But getting it as fresh as possible, roasted by serious pros on site, then carried in vacuum packages back here? Fuck me! There were some batches where I cried it was so good. Just this wash of perfection (for my palate) no matter if it were black or added to.

I never have been able to get any other regional coffee that fresh and perfectly treated, so that may have influenced how much I love that. And, to be fair, the blue mountain I can get retail is only marginally better than something like a kona, particularly since I have to stick to decaf except in the most minute amounts. Even water processing does strip the most delicate flavors of any coffee, and an already delicate type suffers most.

Fuck, I'm going to be so fucking angry and sad when coffee becomes unobtainable by normal folks

There’s better enemas for sure.

Crisp.

You just made me realize I wasn't actually following the girls drinking coffee community [nsfw] (I usually view all, not subbed), thanks kind Albatross ;p

e: also, isn't blahaj nsfw free anyhow?

By mouth

Shaken, not stirred.

In a cup i guess?

Black, high quality Arabica, preferably home roasted by me, cold brewed, over ice.

I like my coffee like I like my women: white and bitter.

I wish I could care about anything as much as this person cares about coffee.

dried fermented and ground to a powder?

Dark roast, drip, hot. No additives.

Brewed? Black or with a little stevia. Instant? Always with milk/creamer and a little stevia.

A quarter pinch of salt counters bitterness.

I recently acquired whole vanilla beans, so for the last couple of weeks, I've used about a tenth of one (split and scraped) to my grind. I've stopped adding honey in the last week, but still add maybe 30 mL of whole milk or when I can get it, unsweetened oat milk with just oats and water (they may add salt, I forget).

I use to sugar my coffee but I've grown to prefer it without. I still put in a dash of cream, that handles the bitterness just enough.

I do that sometimes, but I also find that it flattens the overall profile. Because of the way salt interacts with everything by activating bonds on the tongue, everything gets bumped in the process, so it becomes harder to pick up subtleties.

That tiny amount works better in tea for my preferences.

Nothing wrong with that :)

I've had my tastes and preferences change over the decades a lot. Way back as a teenager, I basically liked a little coffee flavor in my sweet milk lol.

Nowadays, particularly since I have to hunt disk and pay extra for the best decaf I can afford, making sure my cup is as close to perfect as it can get means that I can actually enjoy the coffee itself. The cheap grocery store brands I grew up on were just meh at best, so it took the extras to make them mostly enjoyable to my palate. I would do without rather than drink that stuff now tbh

I’ve been boofing boiling hot coffee for years. This way I don’t worry about staining my teeth.

I have cheap instant coffee at home, with sugar and almond milk. Its all I need and I am content.

Oh, you ol' romantic.

Like my women, strong, rich and from a pod.

(Not really from a pod.)

Fair enough. I tried it when I bought a coffee some elderly wealthy people rave about that imo was awful. Completely undrinkable, imo. I was going to throw it away but a friend suggested it may become less disgusting by adding a pinch of salt. A pinch was a bit much but I experimented a few days until I finally got a drinkable (but still not good) cup.

Oh, heck yeah! I used to do home health, and some of the older generation I worked for would be all hyped about sanka of all things lol. I guess it makes sense, what with the coffee industry having been different over the last fifty years compared to the fifty before that.

Not that I'm hating on the old school mass market coffee entirely. It's a solid, drinkable caffeine delivery system. It just ain't for sipping as a form of pleasure. Since I neither want nor need the caffeine, why bother? I'd likely throw that half to quarter pinch into that stuff nowadays

My grand used to drink that, exclusively. Tbf, I'm under the impression it was the only decaf brand, at the time (I'm old, ok?!).

Oat milk is kinda weird in most contexts, but it is magnificent in coffee. The nutty fullness of a high cream oat milk kicks it up many notches more than real milk or any milk-based creamers.

Hey, I'm old as fuck too lol.

There was a time where sanka was indeed the only option for decaf.

Anally on a cold morning.

Dark roast made with a French press, with a couple shots of half and half and a packet of sweet n low (pink packet, saccharin.)

My goto is French press with James Hoffmans technique, I add some cinnamon right after stiring and removing the foam and wait for about 10-15 minutes, don't like it too hot, then put a paper filter I've cut into a circle (you get two from each filter with a 2 cup size press) before slowly pressing down the plunger. Then add a small pinch of salt and two small pinches of sugar to my cup before pouring, only enough of both to boost the flavor but not add any noticeable saltiness or sweetness.

I like hazelnut in it. It's fucking fit

Mate you really shouldn't take advice from a random lemmy account. There's a good chance they're trolling you

Life is grand(parent aged)!

Yes.

I'm a simple person. Black is good :)