Mouthing Off | Want the best coffee in the morning? Improve your brew from the grounds up

Instead, my partner insists on buying her own beans, grinding a scoop of them each morning, and feeding the powder to her coffee maker before even looking at her phone messages.

The diligence is about flavour and practicality. She thinks instant and pre-ground coffee is horrible and unsatisfying. Fancy coffee shops make very nice brews, but drinking them can be an incredibly costly habit.

If you consistently drop, let us say, HK$45 (US$5.80) a morning for a double espresso and another HK$45 for a midafternoon latte, that is HK$450 a work week, at least HK$1,800 a month, and over HK$21,000 a year. Now you see why creating your own in the morning can make sense.

But recently, her electric bean grinder finally died. After 20 years of dutiful service, the little device sputtered, coughed and refused to spin its little blades any more. Her world was suddenly rocked.