Getting the Most for Your Coffee Dollar

Have you ever tried to come between people and their cup of coffee first thing in the morning? It can get ugly! Americans love—need—their coffee. According to a March 2009 article in Consumer Reports, Americans drink 400 million cups of coffee per day.

That’s a lot of coffee grounds and potentially a lot of money being invested in the black brew. So how do you get your biggest bang for your coffee buck?

• Choose a reasonably priced coffee that rates pretty high in taste. The coffee ratings for caffeinated Colombian ground coffee in the March 2009 issue of Consumer Reports point to Eight O’Clock Coffee 100% Colombian as the #1 ranked coffee at $6.28 per pound, with a “very good” taste rating, and Chock full o’Nuts 100% Colombian as the #8 ranked coffee at $5.19 per pound, with a “good” taste rating.
• Buy a three-month supply of whole coffee beans to maximize flavor, and grind as you drink (grind a couple of days’ worth of coffee beans at a time). If you buy your coffee ground, you will lose some of the flavor and aromatics because the smaller coffee particles are exposed to air.
• Freshly grinding your whole coffee beans becomes particularly important if you like to drink decaf. You already lose some of the aromatics when they extract the caffeine from the bean, so buying it pre-ground only increases the loss in aromatics (and flavor). That said, most Americans buy their coffee pre-ground. I guess people are willing to forgo some of the flavor in favor of convenience. Given that I have a half-pound bag of ground decaf in my cabinet, I guess I can’t argue with that!

By Elaine Magee, MPH, RD
The Recipe
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