Although I have a French press and a coffee grinder I don't make that much coffee so I hope others that are more proficient and knowledgeable will add their expertise to this thread. I will start off with a number of links to set the stage:
History of Coffee
Types of Brewing
More on Turkish Brewing and other info
I recently had Turkish Brewed coffee at a resturant and enjoyed it very much. There is a thick pasty residue in the bottom of the cup. But the coffee taste was elegant.
Practical Stuff
French Press Coffee Makers
Coffee Grinders
Some coffee aficionados think grinders are important and need to be a certain type:
Grinding your own coffee beans is a fairly easy way to ensure freshness in your cup of coffee. Grinders can be inexpensive, and some coffee makers or espresso machines even have them built in.
There are basically two different kinds of grinders: blade or burr.
Blade Grinders
Most inexpensive grinders use a metal blade to chop up the beans. The blade cuts up the beans, and you control the fineness by how long you let the grinder run. Unfortunately, the resulting coffee grounds can be uneven in size, leading to inconsistent brew quality.
Another downfall is that if you are grinding finely, and therefore leaving the beans in the grinder for a longer period of time, there can be significant heat created by the blades. This can give your final coffee a burned taste. These are fine grinders for basic use, but that's about it.
Burr Grinders
Burr grinders crush the beans between a moving grinding wheel and a non-moving surface. The positioning on the burr is what regulates the ground size, which allows for a more consistent grind. In the burr category, there are two different types.
Wheel Burr - The less expensive of the two burr grinders. The wheel spins very fast, and these grinders can be noisy. The higher speed rotation makes these grinders more messy as well.
Conical Burr - The best grinders you can get are conical burr grinders. The burr spins slower than the wheel model, which makes them quieter and less messy. You can use a conical burr grinder for oily or flavoured coffees and it's not likely to clog, like the other kinds of grinders. These are the best type, but you will pay the price for them.
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ROASTING IS IMPORTANT
Some coffee nuts roast their own beans. I hope we have a few around here to fill us all in. Some information follows that I found:
"The roasting of green coffee beans of green coffee beans develops the coffee aromas and flavors. Roasting is the process of heating the coffee beans uniformly, first to remove the moisture (about 12%) then to cause pyrolysis of the sugar in the bean cells, which means that the sugars break down to caramel, water, carbon dioxide, and many aldehydes and ketones which characterize the aroma and taste of fresh coffee.
The roast weight loss is related to bean color and beverage taste, and is often related to the mode of brew preparation and cultural taste.
Different coffee beans react differently to the various end temperatures cited. And various green beans have preferred levels of roast for best flavor developments. In the USA, too many firms roast their beans too lightly because that gives less weight loss (greater yield and profit). Often roast level is determined by the coffee buyer-taster who is used to evaluating green coffee beans at light roasts. The end result of such light roasts can be a very acid, astringent, harsh-tasting beverage which does not have optimum flavor development. It is a wasted coffee sold to the public.
Few people realize that the manner of roasting has a great deal of influence on the taste of the final roasted beans. For example, rotary steel cylinder roasters, which are traditional in the trade; e.g. Probat in Europe, due to their high operating temperatures (over 800 degrees Fahrenheit) cause searching of the beans, oil release that can coat all the beans, and smoke from burning chaff that fumigates the beans, giving them a harsh, biting, and (in dark roast) a burnt taste which is "dirty". The use of Melitta filter paper, for example, helps remove some of this bitey taste. It is far better not to scorch or burn the beans or lay a tar coat on the bean. In order to avoid this scorching and non-uniform roasting of coffee beans, Mike Sivetz developed, in 1975, a fluid bed "once-thru-air" coffee bean roasting machine that produces a clean "tar-free" non-biting, smooth tasting beverage.
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That is enough.
What are the best coffee beans (green or roasted) and where to get them?
Speak up coffee addicts.
-Zeno