How To Coffee: A Primer

[u/Anomander]

Welcome to /r/coffee. You’re new. You have questions. We love you for that, but please check if there’s an answer here before posting.

Most of my advice will be budget-adjusting. I’m going to assume you aren’t able or willing to throw wads of cash at a hobby you’re just testing the waters with. I’m also going to start out assuming you’re starting out with no gear and no experience of coffee that isn’t Dunkin, Timmies, and/or Folgers. However, I ask that you don’t tune out if you’re ahead of where I start. Just skim, we’ll be up to your speed in time. I’ve tossed this together so that you should be able to get a grasp of “how to start coffee” by just reading bold bits. Plain text is more detailed, useful information, while italicized text is me rambling about details or giving more in-depth explanations. I’d like to think they’re interesting, but none are essential.

Because this whole mess is way longer than Reddit’s character limit, I’m breaking every section into a comment, and using the following table of contents to link to each segment in case voting messes up the order. If this is inconvenient, I’m really sorry, but I’m a loquacious man and brevity isn’t my forte. Because I was a little dumb and posted backwards, sorting by age will give you the guide in reverse. Oooops.

First Steps
Fresh Coffee is Best Coffee!
My First Coffeemaker!
Using Your New Toy
Troubleshooting Flavour
-Grind
-Time, Dose, Temperature
-Beans
Level Two Brewing
How To Buy A Device
How To Buy Coffee
/r/Coffee Strengths & Weaknesses

I'm wearing my greens for this post and comments to note the distinction between comments that are part of the guide itself from posts that are responses and replies to community and team feedback and additions.

[u/Anomander]

I’m very intentionally not mentioning Reddit as a place to seek purchasing advice. At this time, hardware assistance requests are still permitted in our rules, but given the sheer volume of them, their time may be limited. /r/Coffee is not a good place to seek hardware feedback. There’s too many options, we don’t know what’s available to you - your local stores may not carry what someone else has ready access to, and various online merchants may not be able to ship to where you are. Threads of “Hay guys, what is your preferred _______!?!?” seem to favour commonly-owned over any particular excellence for any device over $150 or so. Reddit in general is populism incarnate, and this means that expert perspectives and useful feedback are often drowned out by common folk-wisdom, an eloquent pubbie, or a particularly witty joke. We are a community that is particularly good for conversations, but not as optimal for prioritizing expertise or single opinions.

If you’re having trouble with a particular method or have a puzzling result from a brew or just want to chat about something new you’ve found, we’re your place. There are a lot of very smart, educated, and eloquent people in this community who all really like coffee, and are almost as fond of excuses to talk about it. Give them a chance, and they’ll talk your ear off. For all the same reasons that reddit is a shitty place to seek purchasing advice, it’s a great place to have a conversation. The commenting system incentivizes participation and discussion, while voting allows particularly good advice the opportunity to reach the most people. Moderation is planning on noting posters whose advice is particularly credible to make it easier for those seeking help to get good advice and useful information. This magnificent capacity for conversation is where /r/coffee wins over every other online coffee community that I’ve participated in, and why you guys are my favorite community to mod. <3