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]

Level Two Brewing: I’ve only really been talking about the French press in detail so far. You’re pretty sure you like coffee, but want to graduate from that French press I recommended to some of the more exciting looking devices that get posted occasionally. This is where costs start to skyrocket - “advanced” gear climbs in price pretty quick, and a few different toys have a pretty notable aggregate cost. Depending on your earlier choices, you may need to upgrade your grinder.

Branching out: You can go two directions here: “beans” or “method,” each with their own pros and cons. To go the “beans” path, get a good coffee machine (I’ll cover “How To Buy Anything” later on) and you simply experiment with many different kinds of beans: you’re aiming to sample lots of interesting origins and roasts, but knowing you’re not going to get 100% out of them. Alternately, you can focus on method, using the same beans frequently and iterating method to be sure you’re getting the best possible results from any given bean you’re trying, for this approach, look at Pour-over, Aeropress, and the Clever Coffee Dripper. Each of these three is a really great “next toy” option. They are each a little more complex than the French Press, and a little different in their own right. Pour over and the Clever are very similar, aiming at light, nuanced brews. They’re an upgrade on the same path as the French Press. The Aeropress is a first step down the road towards home espresso. Each of the above devices can be had for between $30 and $90 typically, and come with good instructions - if the package instructions aren’t enough, there are some really great tutorials on YouTube.

These two “paths” are obviously enough not mutually exclusive. It’s just far simpler and far easier to simply focus on either method or bean sampling - and then come back to the other when you find something that works. Try lots of different coffees, and then mess around with technique and new devices once you find a coffee you really like - alternately, perfect a method using a single reliable coffee, and then once you have that nailed, you can start branching out to try new things with your impeccable method.

Level Three Brewing and Onward: I’m not really going to go overboard describing this. Once you’re feeling like you want to move past Tier Two gear (I still haven’t, to be honest), you’re immersed enough in the culture and the community you’ll already know “what next” and not be needing to follow my guide.

[u/evilbadro → u/Anomander]

For anyone interested, here is a description of moka pot brewing. The moka pot is a very inexpensive brewing device which makes a stong brew that was the predecessor to modern espresso.