Want to make coffee at home but overwhelmed by the choice? We've broken it down into basics for you.
First up - Espresso or Filter?
If you enjoy your flat whites, lattes or other majority-milk based coffees and want to recreate that at home, you're going to want to make espresso based coffee. If you like black coffee or are happy with a splash of milk, you'll want to explore filter based coffee.
Espresso coffee typically requires an espresso machine, which can be pretty expensive and take up a lot of space in your kitchen. If you're dead-set on Espresso coffee, then unfortunately this site is not quite set up for you (yet?).
If you're like us, and enjoy a good filter based coffee, then read on...
A note on brew methods
We've agreed we want to make better filter coffee at home, right? Then there are some brew methods to quickly review ("espresso" is kind of a brew method in its own right and we're not covering it here).
Making coffee simply comes down to combining ground up coffee beans (that have been roasted) and hot water. We've made this world incredibly complex because there are dozens of ways you can do this. Before you get into this world, there are a few high level categorisations of how to make filter coffee at home:
Pour over coffee
Pour over coffee is just that...you pour the water over the coffee and the brewed coffee drips out the bottom and you then drink it. There are lots of options here for the vessel and filter you pour the coffee and water into (V60, Kalita, Clever Dripper) which we'll cover later and elsewhere on the site. We like this method as it's true to the name "filter coffee" as you're "filtering" water through ground coffee.
Steeping/Immersion coffee
This involves combining water and ground coffee in a vessel and letting the two intermingle for a period of time. For this, think french press!
What about Mokapot?
We don't really cover the mokapot/stove-top coffee method here because it's very hard to get it right with high quality specialty coffee beans. Typically a mokapot involves boiling water which makes water too hot to get the best out of your coffee.
How should I make coffee at home?!
Honestly...it doesn't matter! If you have a friend who's in to coffee, you could mimic their setup, but chances are they just ended up with something that suited them. Typically people making good coffee at home will have either:
- a Hario V60 Dripper (in size 01 or 02, or both depending on how much coffee they brew at a time)
- an AeroPress - they are one of the most iconic and almost cult-like coffee maker; probably a bit more of a learning curve here
- a Chemex - but bear in mind a Chemex coffee maker is kind of a just a famous Chemex jug and filter papers, then you brew coffee direct in the filter papers which drips into the jug a French Press - there are people who've used every kind of coffee maker and they just find the french press easiest and delivers a good brew
If you're just getting started with making coffee at home and don't want to spend too much, we'd advise you get either an AeroPress or a Hario V60 - they end up being a cheaper route to getting into coffee and you can gradually evolve the kit you buy to improve your coffee skills.
Where do I start with making coffee at home?
Some people go all in straight away and buy everything. However we think it's better - and cheaper - to start small and grow as you get to learn about your tools and technique. The typical journey for someone getting into bewing filter coffee at home is:
- Buy a dripper/coffee maker
- Maybe get a coffee scoop if you don't have one so you can measure out coffee (1 scoop pretty much equals one person)
- Get some weighing scales that are accurate to 0.1g to accurately weigh out coffee
- A hand grinder to be able to weigh and then freshly grind your coffee. Ground coffee typically starts going "off" after about 15 minutes so fresh coffee is king
- A pouring kettle to control the flow of water onto the coffee (unless you're doing steeped coffee)
Once you get through that cycle you are probably going to be looking at an electric burr grinder to give your arms a rest, then people typically start evolving the quality/type of their kit (i.e. better dripper, better scales)
Get started!
Hopefully that's helped a little bit! The best thing is to just get started! You can spend £10/$10/€10 on a V60 dripper/second hand aeropress, get your local coffee place to grind up some coffee for you (tell them how you'll be making it as it will impact what size they grind it to).
Good luck, and once you're ready to start brewing please come back and browse the rest of the site, especially our pour over coffee tips which will help you up your game.
