Milk maketh the coffee, methinks...

I love my coffee.

Nothing can quite match up to a fantastic tasting cappuccino. I just have a weakness for such things.

Now although I am a devotee of the drink, I can in no way claim to be any kind of barista or professional-coffee-making-type-human.

Even so, I certainly go out of my way to make a good cuppa whenever the opportunity arises.

I get a kick out of it when a guest comments on decent cup of coffee that I conjured up myself :)

That, and of course it's always damn good to make a great cuppa to enjoy on my own.

So what is it that makes a great-tasting cup of coffee? 

Obviously the coffee itself needs to be of a certain quality, and that even applies to instant coffee - I mean Ricoffy instant doesn't quite match up to say, Douwe Egberts or Jacobs instant. Pretty obvious.

There is, however one factor which I am sure coffee professionals know all about, but which a pleb like me had to find out about the hard way - by drinking dodgy tasting coffee.

That factor is the milk - obviously if you like your coffee black, then this is not going to affect you.

It is all too easy to fall back on a carton of long-life milk when your fresh milk supply is all out, however in my experience, this is one of the things that can trash an otherwise perfectly decent cuppa joe.

I have no clue what it is - perhaps some process that long-life milk goes through to alter the taste or some other factor, but it just adds an unpleasant aftertaste to any cup of coffee that I make with it, even if I use the best quality coffee that I can find.

Coffee bean (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are you a coffee-lover?

Does long-life milk do it for you or does it wreck the experience?

For me, it's fresh milk all the way... :)

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