Coffee:
How someone brews and drinks their coffee is truly of a personal nature. Here are some tips that will make your coffee better no matter how you partake of it.

• Start with a clean coffee maker. Avoid the build up of oils in your maker by keeping it squeaky clean.
• Always start with fresh COLD water. Cold water is more highly oxygenated than warm, hot, or already boiled water, which (containing less oxygen) will impart a flat taste to the coffee.
• Use a tablespoon of ground coffee per cup (6 oz of H2O). A heaping tablespoon of beans will yield a rounded tablespoon of ground coffee.
• Bring the cold water to a rolling boil and pour it over the coffee grinds immediately.
• Be sure your coffee is ground properly for your brewing method.
• Avoid reheating or boiling your brewed coffee as this will make it bitter.

Tea:
Start with fresh, cold water, brought to rolling boil. Preheat your teapot by rinsing it with scalding hot water. Use one rounded teaspoon of tea per cup, plus one for the pot. For longer leaf, bulkier teas, use a slightly heaped spoonful.

• Black tea:
  add the water at a rolling boil, and steep for three to five minutes.
  
  
• Oolong:
  let the water cool for 30 seconds before pouring over tea, and steep for four to seven minutes.
  
  
• Green:
  let the water cool for one minute before pouring over tea, and steep for two to three minutes.
  
  
• For Chai:
  add the water at a rolling boil, and steep for five minutes. Serve with warm or steamed milk.

  For a stronger brew, add more tea, or steep the tea longer. If the tea becomes too bitter for your taste, decrease the steeping time.

  Oolong and green teas can be brewed more than once, and each infusion enjoyed for its subtle changes in flavor.

  For example, two people might want to enjoy four rounds over the course of morning or afternoon. You would add eight or nine teaspoons of tea to the pot, but only pour in enough water for the first two cups, and let steep for only a few minutes. Pour off all the liquor and serve. Add only enough freshly boiled water for each subsequent infusion, but allow the steeping time to increase with each round.