My default coffee making is to heat milk, add coffee and steep it for a couple of minutes before I sieve it and voila.
This does not seem to work for this coffee. I have tried water, boiling it with the water or milk and it simply will not mix. What am I missing?
Edit: I know about grinding, I have a burr grinder, a French press and I know the various ways to make coffee. None of the methods I know, work.
Burr grinder = bar grinder. I made that mistake.
I read through the comments and replies here... have you considered that it's just aged out or a bad batch somehow?If it does not extract, show some reaction to boiling water, or darken the water, there is a problem. If this is pre ground it could be >6m old. Not sure there's another explanation here.
In one comment you mention that it "actually tastes good"... How do you know this if it's not properly "mixing" with boiling water? Diluted coffee tastes not great, so it's a confusing thing to say
I know someone who bought a bad batch of coffee. It was dirt cheap and tasted like water. You just had to compensate by using an obscene amount of grinds to produce a little bit of something that is almost drinkable.
I've also bought some old coffee that was just barely within its shelf life. It tasted awful, but I guess you wouldn't notice if you always use lots of creme and sugar. I drink my coffee black, so the only way to make it barely tolerable was to use 2-3x the normal dose and use an aeropress to make a super fast extraction. The longer the extraction takes, the more bad stuff will end up in the cup.