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To make vs. to cook coffee

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WRONG: I cook coffee for my colleagues every morning.
RIGHT: I make coffee for my colleagues every morning.

In English, we cook food, we don’t cook coffee. Or tea, for that matter! We make coffee. So each morning, you might put the kettle on and make coffee for your family/colleagues etc.

What about prepare coffee? Well, it’s true. You do have to prepare the things for coffee – get the coffee jar out, find the sugar, get the milk out of the fridge. But putting them together in the cup is not ‘preparing’ a coffee, it’s ‘making’ it.

You wouldn’t ask your mum to prepare you a coffee, you’d ask her to make you a coffee.

While we are talking about coffee, let’s clear something else up. It’s both countable and uncountable. When we talk generally about it, e.g. I like coffee, it is uncountable and doesn’t need an article. If you are referring to an individual cup of coffee, it is countable and we say, „I drank a coffee, or I drank 2 coffees today.“

 

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