But, no matter what beans you are using there are three things that make the difference between good coffee and swill:

1) enough coffee. As counterintuitive as it sounds, too little coffee is what makes your brew bitter. If you skimp on beans it overextracts and you get bitter coffee. If the coffee is too stong add hot water after you brew. This will actually make even crap coffee taste drinkable (i.e. if you office has pre-measured packs of coffee for the automatic drip use 1 and a half packs, you’ll be surprised at the improvement.)

2) Don’t let the water get too hot. You can only control this if you use a french press. But, if you do, don’t let the water boil. Ideal water temp is about 190 degrees.

3) Drink immediately. Good coffee has a half-life of about 10 minutes. If you let it sit on the burner of your drip maker for more than 20 minutes its trash. It will keep a bit longer in a thermos, but if someone made office coffee at 9am, its not drinkable a noon, no matter how it was stored.

A few other tips. Milk and cream make bad coffee taste worse (as does cinnamon in my opinion, but that is an opinion). If the coffee is good, add cream or sugar, if its bad and you need to drink it for medicinal purposes, skip the condiments. If you get coffee at a restarant and it turns grey instead of “cafe au lait” color when you add cream, that means its old — send it back and ask for a fresh pot. No joke I once has a waiter in a “nice” restaurant tell me they always made the coffee at 9am to serve at lunch.