Pairing coffee lovers with great roasters

It's a tough job, but Erika Vonie says she can help you find a coffee that you're going to love every morning. The 2017 NYC Coffee Masters Champ is the director of coffee at Trade, a direct-to-consumer brand committed to helping you make better coffee at home.

Trade CEO Mike Lackman says it's simple. Head to their website, answer six basic questions, and one of the best roasters in the country is going to make a bag of coffee for you on demand and ship it right to your house.

One of those roasters is Pulley Collective in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a collective that makes roasting quality coffee easy and affordable for small businesses and startups by using shared equipment. Pulley's roasters are among hundreds that Trade may pair you with after you take the online quiz.

Some of the questions you'll answer: How do you make your coffee? What kind of flavors are you looking for? Do you grind your beans?

Mike says Trade will grind your coffee one of eight different ways depending on what kind of equipment you have in the house. Using an algorithm, they'll find a few dozen roasters among the 400 on the site that are a perfect fit for you so you can feel more like a coffee master yourself.

Erika says one of the biggest misconceptions about coffee is that you're making it wrong. But it is actually pretty simple. Buy quality beans within two weeks of roasting. That freshness is key. Erika says the fresher the coffee is, the more you'll get out of it, giving you more explosive flavors.

Trade's coffees start at $12 a bag, and they won't roast your beans until you order.

However you like to brew them, Erika says, be sure to use filtered water and extract your coffee at 200 degrees, which is the optimal temperature.

That, plus coffee from Trade, she says, will help give you the best cup of coffee you've ever had.