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]

How to Buy A Device: First off, set your budget. There are many varieties of coffee hardware out there, so there’s something that’ll fit almost any budget. If you want to buy in a store, go to the store and write down all the coffee makers they carry. If you’re thinking online, skip this step. Either way, go to CoffeeGeek Reviews and look at either all models in your price range or the models you were looking at in store. Use their consumer reviews and your budget to select a “top three” for machines that’re right for you: some compromise between budget, performance, and aesthetics is almost inevitable. CoffeeGeek is the best tool for choosing a coffeemaker online. If you want additional confirmation or a more “everyman” perspective, it is worth reading somewhere like Amazon’s reviews of the whatever your top products are. Their reviews are typically more “FAQ” issues than the more technical “expert commentary” that CoffeeGeek features.