For years now I have been a heavy coffee drinker, and up until this last year the only one in my household who enjoyed what I call “my sweet morning elixir.”

My wife started to complain about how tired she was feeling all the time, so I suggested that she start drinking coffee. It would help wake her up in the morning and also help her be more alert throughout the day. There was only one big problem: she didn’t care for the flavour.

Throughout the summer, she experimented with cream and sugar to mask the coffee flavour and get a taste she could somewhat enjoy. I still joke that her recipe was something like 50% coffee, 25% sugar and 25% cream. I don’t know if she was benefiting from the caffeine or from a pure sugar rush.

My mother was also a coffee drinker, but she preferred flavoured coffee creamers in her coffee. My wife’s mom was the same way. So with much help from my mother-in-law, I was able to get my wife to try drinking coffee with these flavoured creamers.

Read: Jazz up your java!

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As comedian Lilly Tomlin was famous for saying, “there’s always somethin!”

Last week it was radon gas and this week it was the big concern about how clean some coffee shops are.

Now, the coffee shop thing doesn’t bother me all that much because I discovered while perusing the CBC Website that what I should really be worried about is the coffee itself.

I have always known that too much coffee kind of made me feel sick, now I know why. Did you know that a large coffee about a 500 ml cup, contains between 200 to 400 mg of caffeine. Health Canada’s maximum recommended daily dose for caffeine is 400-450 mg. Even a small 200 ml cup of coffee contains 70 mg.

Read: Add some caution to that coffee

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Who needs a Starbucks when you’ve got the Dacor fully automatic coffee system happily brewing in your own kitchen? Growing popular with contractors looking for a high-end kitchen toy and available at Coast Wholesale Appliances, the Dacor system has a pre-plumbed option and height-adjusts to brew right into a travel mug.

On top of making regular coffee, it brews single and double espresso shots (long and short), steams milk and comes equipped with heated storage for those very important, tiny white cups.

Cost: $4,000. At $3 a piece at a coffee shop, you’d have to make 1,333 cappuccinos before you break even on this coffee investment.

Read: If I had a million dollars

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Visitor Question: How can I make good cofee at home?

Answer: That depends on your budget and your personal taste. If you’re just trying to make the best pot of coffee from normal brand name coffee (Folgers, Maxwell House, Nabon, etc) I would play around with the amount of coffee used to amount of water.

Personally I can’t stand the taste of the coffee when I use the measurements recommended on the package. I never could figure out why I couldn’t make a cup of coffee home that tasted good, but I enjoyed the coffee at my mother-in-laws. I used the same type of coffee, but it never tasted as good.

She just used an unmarked measuring and the coffee was good every time. One day I asked her to measure out the amount of coffee she is using. It turned out she is using little over a tablespoon per 3 cups of water. Since then I’ve been using the same measurement and found that I enjoy the coffee at home now too! I usually take a heaping tablespoon and level it off so that’s it’s not a perfect tablespoon, but just a little extra. The same applies for 6 cups of water. Use 4 tablespoons or 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons = 1/4 cup). Usually with the 1/4 cup I do the same, I measure a heaping amount and level it off that it’s little more than a 1/4 cup.

Also, I recommend that you keep everything clean and use cold water only.

Personally I like Columbian coffee. My favorite brand name coffee now is Maxwell House 100% Columbian.

So that’s my tip to making a good cup of coffee with regular brand name coffee.

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