Coffee

The Moka Pot is a traditional Italian tool for preparing coffee. Many people have them, but no longer use them, thinking they prepare coffee with an unpleasantly strong, bitter taste. Brewed correctly, they're fantastic. Here's a guide to how they work, and loads of tips to get the best out of your stove-top brewer.

Iced coffee is usually prepared by chilling hot-brewed coffee. Cold-brew coffee can taste great if prepared well. Here's my very simple recipe and some commentary.

I've recommended to several of my friends that they try the subscription service over at Has Bean Coffee. It's called In My Mug, and you can order to receive a different coffee every time - either weekly, fortnightly or monthly, over either a month, quarter, half-year or full year. The coffees are very different from one another, and are all absolutely first class (even if you prefer some to others), as you'd expect from HasBean and Stephen Leighton.

Photo: Scot NelsonA little exchange on Facebook last week made me think it was time to write a basic guide to the two most common types of coffee. This will be very familiar ground to any readers with a keen interest in coffee, but may be new ground for some.

There are three species of the Coffea genus - three kinds of coffee plant that cannot be interbred. Only two are grown commercially.

The good quality coffee plant is Coffea Arabica, and accounts for about 80% of the world's coffee production. There are a number of varietals within this one species. Most of the time, you get red ripe cherries to pick, inside each of which are two flat seeds. This is the coffee that has the best taste, although the quality of what is grown varies enormously. Please don't make the mistake that some branding and marketing executives want you to make - if it says Arabica on the packet it must be good. The preparation, roast and subsequent