You don’t need anything more than beans, water and a pot to brew a good coffee. A Cowboy coffee is still a coffee (and some say it’s really delicious).
Hi 👋 and welcome to yet another article on simple and ritualistic coffee brewing techniques.
At some point in my career I was working in a company that amongst other fancy craft had a very expensive espresso machine. It gave me the possibility to try out very delicious coffee. It took me a while to figure out that the coffee was that good, primarily because the beans were high quality specialty coffee. Few years later, in another company where a pretty similar machine was to be found, they used generic “espresso” beans. And the coffee tasted like mud.
You don’t need fancy equipment and half of your kitchen space to get good quality coffee. Especially nowadays, you can do it even with a piece of cloth. What you need is a good balance between the key components that make a good coffee: quality beans, precise grind and temperature. If you come to meet these three parameters - it really does not make much difference if you brew your cup in metal filter, french press, moka espresso.. You nailed the essence, and the equipment is an asset to the taste.
With this article I want to help you overcome potential difficulties when it comes to owning a coffee equipment at home, as an obstacle on the way for you to enjoy some home brewed coffee. My intention is to scale you down from the general expectation that a good coffee brewer needs expensive tools. What a good coffee brewer needs is patience and curiosity on finding the perfect balance on the essentials about brewing coffee. Equipment is not one of them.
Of course, it’s very easy to find good quality fancy stuff these days and just go after them, and I am not saying not to do that at all. I am saying to take it easy. That type of a speed might kill the moment and lead you towards full delegation of the ritual of brewing coffee to a machine. See the situation for yourself. If you are brewing coffee just for you and one another person, then stick to a manual grinder. It’s a proven remedy against stress and also familiarizes you with the smells, aromas and even tastes of the coffee. Of course you can have an electric grinder in your cabinet, just in case you want to brew a good one for your friends when they visit. But try to get there from a simpler point.
I will talk from my point of view in terms of defining the essential equipment that I think you need at home so that you brew coffee that makes you happy.
Quality specialty-coffee beans
Try to find a roastery in your area (or that delivers to you) that has really good reviews and reputation or that is recommended by a person you trust on the topic. It goes unsaid that talking to people that like coffee opens the possibilities for you to try out different blends every month. There are also lots of subscription services that do scheduled deliveries with different types and blends of coffee on each delivery. Just google around and find it yourself. In this regard getting closer with local coffee communities is not just beneficial for you as a person that enjoys good coffee but also for the small roasteries whose sales are highly impacted by the pandemic the past year. Consider supporting them (sometimes they don’t even have official websites, it could be a word-to-mouth type of recommendation).
The point is, do not go generic about your beans if you want to give specialty coffee a good try. Anything on the shelf at the supermarket, had been either roasted or ground months ago, which is for sure not something you want to base your opinion about coffee upon. There is a very short time between when the coffee had been roasted and you brewed it and even shorter between when was the coffee ground and you brew it. The non written rule is: roasted not longer than 2 weeks ago (usually marked on the package) and ground 5 minutes ago by yourself.
There is a lot more to talk about when it comes to a good selection of beans and its flavours, but we’ll leave that for another time.
Grinder
The grinder is the first thing people become suspicious about when it comes to their authentic intentions to brew coffee at home. At the beginning is not always fun. Takes time and is small physical activity. Often people do this with an electric grinder, which is not a bad thing per se, but part of the mastery in brewing coffee is the ways you grind it yourself. My appeal is that you find a good grinder, not crazy expensive, something that has good reviews (not just on Amazon, try to google it and see actual review from coffee experts), and that has some form of guarantee that there isn’t monstrous difference between the ground chunks in one batch. What that means is that, when it comes to grinding coffee, significant factor that impacts the quality of the coffee itself, is the size and the consistency (of the size) of the grounds. A good grinder is a consistent grinder.
Be sure to get to know your grinder and really familiarize with it. Check out what settings it has. Go finer, coarser. It will take a while until you can set the fineness just by the eye, but once you do it, the grinder will become your top 3 anti stress remedy and a tool you can trust.
Another important thing when it comes to familiarization with the grinder is to get to know its capacity. What does it mean for it to be full or half-full? (how much coffee in grams will it produce).
Finally you want to check the dis/assembling instructions of your grinder, as, eventually you will have to clean it - which means you will have to go a bit more in detail on most of its internal parts. So you want to know how to assemble it back. Take photos if needed, just don’t break it.
Weighing scale
I would also really recommend you to get some precise kitchen scale where you can weigh the beans and the ground coffee. At least until you get a complete feel doing it without measuring. There are lots of coffee specific scales out there you can check out, but they could be very expensive. What you need is something that gives you grams measurement once you put something over it. As simple as that 🤷♂️
Filter paper / metal filter
Now you might be, hey I never ordered filter coffee! But see it this way: pour-over coffee will be your main brewing recipe and I am 99% convinced that filter paper or a metal filter should be considered essential equipment for brewing coffee.
Paper filter
If you decide to go filter-paper, go a bit more than the first thing you see at the groceries store. Do a short research in terms of what is good paper and in what ways it aids your intention to brew good coffee. Choose a brand name that has at least some promise on the impact of the quality or some history that gives credibility to it. There are lots of generics out there and some of them might destroy a good brew for you. In another article I will explain in a bit more detail how filter paper impacts the taste of the coffee. In that regard, some of the known brands offer isolated filter paper (packed in plastic bags or so) that protects paper from learning about its surroundings. Have in mind that paper does not like words only, it likes aromas too and it will not be shy at all to release it when it comes close to your coffee.
Using filter paper means that you have to have either Chemex or a funnel to lay the paper on and do the actual pour-over. I’d recommend you to go with a plastic 102 funnel at the beginning.
☘️ For the more environment-aware readers: even though most of the popular filter paper nowadays are decomposable and fully recyclable, using filter paper has a significant impact on the environment. It’s similar to diapers, just filled with something better smelling. You use them once and throw them without any potential for reusability. So, this might be for you 👇
A metal filter
If you ever decide to go using metal filters, you should know that there is a slight (well, slight depending how picky you are) difference between a coffee filtered through paper and metal filters. Metal filters produce stronger brew with more oils and coffee left-overs (sediment). So it could be that the metal-filter coffee tastes deeper and stronger.
But eventually you will end up with the same filter reusing for all of your cups (the biggest pitfall is its cleaning, which is of course nothing terrible).
Whatever method of filtering you choose, keep mindful on the purpose of the filter. And its purpose is: keep the water long enough in the upper part so that all goodies from the ground coffee are released at the right time and a good brew is born. Also, zero grounds in the coffee after filtering is done.
French press
Another essential coffee equipment I’d really like to recommend to give a try from the same start is the French press. French press (or as known in some parts of France - Italian Press), is a device originally invented by two Italian inventors, long time ago. Over the years it became known as cafetière, press, french press, plunger, etc.
French press is good for two things: it helps you extract subtle aromas from the beans and also its reusability comes very handy for other things like homemade latte or a chococino (my kids love it 🐣).
Actually, there is not much philosophy when it comes to the French press. There is a plunger with a filter that stops grounds spilling in your cup. Brewing filtered coffee in a french press is really a ritual and I personally enjoy every time I do it. You can find really good presses in shops like Tchibo (to those that know it) or Amazon. Or Starbucks for that reason - even though a bit more pricey. It has to be very well pressure-isolated and have some guarantee on the non-rusting qualities of the metal parts.
Moka Espresso pot
If you don’t have it already, go for it, find an original brand and order one. Well, this for sure is not an essential equipment, but I want to mention it here because I want to inspire you to try out something new and get another brew in your spectrum of coffee you’ve tasted. In my opinion, when it comes to Mokka Espresso, being a really fine grind, there is a very thin line between being completely wrong on either side (too strong or too watery in taste). But that makes it fun to do it.
The way Moka pot works is that it boils the water in a lower (bottom) container and when boiled gets pushed through an internal filter filled with coffee into the upper container under pressure, from which the coffee is to be served. I am really not the biggest fan of moka espresso as a taste, as the flavors it extracts are too strong for me - so sometimes I experiment with blonde blends which are labeled as anything but espresso (mostly filter coffee) so that the taste is not too sharp. But, I like it as an experimentation device and for sure it’s the closest one can get to Espresso machine without having an espresso machine at home.
💡 Espresso as a name, comes from the fact that the coffee is brewed under high pressure (es-presso or pressed-out in Italian).
Conclusion
I know, I am biased by the equipment I have at home. But trust me, I’ve been tempted many times to just go out there and order a 2k euros worth of a bike for a 3km long ride. And resisting that temptation without avoiding the satisfaction from nicely brewed coffee this whole time, is a simple proof that going fancy is really not necessary, at least not at the beginning. It might exhaust you, thicken your interests and eventually lead to abandoning coffee as a hobby. Coffee is just a seed from a cherry and water, so keep it as simple also when it comes to brewing.
Feel free all the time to reach out and give feedback. I am also learning about all these things and I am very open to discussion. Have fun!