Manual coffee grinders can be a slippery slope. It only takes about $70-$80 to find one that will do your specialty coffee justice, but as the price creeps upward, so too do build quality and grind consistency and overall refinement. At some point, you’ll hit diminishing returns. So the question becomes: what does it take…
Pour-over brewing is a fun and easy way to enjoy great coffee at home. But if you’re on the road much, then you know the difficulty of packing all that paraphernalia. Having spent several months on the road in recent years, I’ve tried almost everything under the sun. What follows are my two favorite ways…
Everybody loves espresso, but not everybody wants to deal with an espresso machine. There’s no denying that the end product can be great. But the cost is significant, the maintenance is nothing to sneeze at, and dialing it in is not easy. So when you see the AeroPress’s plunger design, you might think, “Hey, that…
Timemore was one of the first brands to sell legitimately high-end hand grinders at an affordable price. Early reviews were few, but positive, so around 2018 I took the plunge on their original Chestnut model. (It’s now called the Chestnut G1, but I believe it was the only “Chestnut” model at the time.) The Chestnut…
Roasting coffee at home is the best way to keep fresh, delicious beans on hand. It’s cost-effective, and perhaps better yet, it’s a lot of fun. After using different roasters over several years, I’ve found that the Fresh Roast SR800 (available here) is the best home coffee roaster for most of us. It isn’t cheap,…
The best way to enjoy coffee more is to enjoy more coffee. What do I mean by that? Just like good wine, good coffee contains more flavors than perhaps any single person could pick out. There are hit-you-over-the-head obvious flavors, like the chocolates or nutty ones. Then there are subtler flavors like specific berries and…
True or false: making great coffee at home requires either a finicky pour-over coffee set-up or a fancy, expensive automatic brewer? For most people most of the time, the answer is false. That’s good news if you’re just getting into brewing coffee at home, or you’ve struggled to get consistent pour-overs, or your cheap-o coffee…
The AeroPress is an easy way to make great coffee anywhere. There are also a million different ways to use it. With a little practice and exploration, it’s like at least two or three coffee makers in one. Light-bodied brews like you’d get from a pour-over with a coarse grind? Check. Strong, almost syrupy brews…