i, quaid

Look, there are a million ways to brew a cup of coffee. (If not a literal million, it often feels like it.)

This tip is for when you are doing any kind of brewing where you manually add hot water to the grinds, such as for pouring through a paper filter. It gives the grounds a chance to bloom in the water, surrounding each coffee granule with near-boiling water to extract the maximum bean juices.

1. Put the ground coffee in to a clean glass jar or cup with at least 8 oz of volume.
2. Pour boiling water in to the coffee cup you will use for making coffee. This heats the cup and cools the water slightly to  brewing temperature.
3. Pour 4+ oz slightly-cooled water over the grounds in the jar/cup, then stir until fully moistened.
4. Wait 15 to 30 seconds, but not much longer than 1 minute so it doesn’t cool down too much.
5. Pour the water and grounds over your filter, finish brewing as usual.

You can use this method to prepare coffee for a large coffee maker.

At one cafe I go to, I noticed they do a similar thing. They put the grounds in a French press, let it sit, then press it, and pour the resulting brew through a paper or gold filter. Functionally the same was what I do at home, with more to clean-up.