How to Make Good Coffee at Home – Do You Need Fancy Coffee Equipment

Making good coffee at home without a ton of work is kinda the holy grail of a nice morning routine in my book. My memory of when I started to care about good coffee is foggy, but when I think back to all the cups of really bad dirt water I drank and even made for myself, I cringe a little. If you’re like me, it’s good news for you that you can learn how to make good coffee without spending a fortune or filling your counter with complex, difficult-to-learn, ugly, noisy, gadgets. My recommendations for how to make the best coffee at home are relatively simple.

What Makes for a Bad Cup of Coffee at Home?

My neighbor was just asking me about this. I walked up to him with some Japanese style, flash-chilled cold coffee (thanks for converting me from my 18-hour cold brew, Buzzfeed.) in my hand. He asked, I started to explain, and then he commented how they really need to get a kitchen scale and to learn to do “that fancy, swirling the water in a circle thing that baristas do while babysitting that expensive type of coffee.”

I inquired about how they make coffee now, and his answer made perfect sense for someone who has never tried. Starting with a random bag of ground coffee from the store, the add “some” tap water into their anonymous drip machine, and after a cup each for him and his spouse, the leftover go into the fridge for an afternoon cold cup. Ugh. That just sounds unpleasant.

He wants to enjoy his morning coffee, not just rely on the caffeine, but he professed to be mystified about what affects how good it tastes.

Three Simple Recommendations to Make a Better Cup of Coffee at Home

My recommendation to him is the same as I have for almost everyone. 1. Get a grinder. 2. Buy a French press. 3. Use filtered water. It’s that simple.

1. Grind Your Coffee at Home.
   Coffee starts to oxidize and lose flavor as soon as it’s ground. That means ground coffee in the store is… old and bad, or treated with other chemicals. So with a grinder, you can purchase whole beans, grind it fresh every morning, and enjoy a whole host of new, delicious flavors instead of just bitterness.

An entry level blade grinder is all you need for now (but fair warning, if you continue down this path, you’ll want a burr grinder soon enough), and this kind of grinder is compact and inexpensive.

Try the one my dad has used for literal decades. Here’s my Amazon affiliate link.

2. Use a French Press to Make Great Coffee at Home
   This is a French Press.

You put the coffee and hot water in, press the plunger down after a few minutes, and pour out black deliciousness. The main benefit of this method versus a random drip coffee machine is that it produces a less bitter, more flavorful cup of coffee, meaning you can taste all the benefits of having ground your coffee. There are a ton of other brewing methods that are comparably good, but this is one of the simplest for beginners.

I’m still using this French Press on the regular, and it looks great on the shelf: Mueller French Press (my affiliate link of course). Read a short guide on the steps to make French Press coffee, like the one at the end of this blog and you’ll have the technique down after one or two tries.

Et voila. Now you’ve learned how to make good coffee at home without a ton of new equipment.

The great thing about this approach is that you get a HUGE boost in quality so easily, and the entire setup will cost a total of less than $60 (which sounds like a lot to me until I think about how much decent coffee costs at a coffee shop).

Both of these use almost no space, and are very easy to get started using. You can boil water in any pot or kettle, and you can be very loose with your ratios and still get a good cup.

3. Speaking of Filtered Water – Better Water Makes Better Coffee at Home

If your water tastes funky it’ll mask the coffee flavor. Same goes for hard water. If you have a Brita or other at-home water filter, use that, not water straight from the tap. Worst case scenario, bottled water.

So how do you actually MAKE this good coffee at home? Here’s what I’d recommend.

Easy Steps to Make a Good Coffee as a Beginner

1. Buy a bag of medium roast, whole bean coffee from anywhere. Go for single origin and sustainably sourced if you can. Stick with a budget of about $15.
2. Grind around five tablespoons of whole bean coffee in your grinder. Count five tablespoons of coffee as you scoop from the grinder into your clean French Press. If you wanna get fancy, shake the carafe a bit so the ground coffee levels out flat.
3. Bring between 2 cups of water to a boil, and then remove the pot/kettle from the heat. (You want to pour in about 1.75 cups of water when you brew, but you’ll lose some to evaporation, hence the extra.) The goal is to brew with water that’s at around 200 degrees, but since we’re not dealing with thermometers, and easy hack is to just let the water cool off from a rolling boil, but still have bubbles coming from the bottom in a continuous chain of bubbles like a string of pearls.
4. At first, just pour in enough water to wet all the grounds, roughly half a cup. Let it sit for 30 seconds. Take a deep breath. This is the most fussy step in the whole process. But it makes a big difference. By letting the grounds bloom, meaning sit there with just a bit of water to help them release the air inside them, you ensure a clearer cup of coffee because the water will be able to extract flavor from the entirety of each ground.
5. Pour the remainder of your 1.75 cups of water into the french press, and give it one nice swirl with a spoon. Then put the plunger in but don’t press it down.
6. Let the coffee steep or brew for three to four minutes, but no more than four. Letting it steep for too long will produce a much more bitter, harsh cup. You can shorten your brew time in the future to tune it for the bean you are using and your preferences.
7. Press the plunger all the way down gently. Then pour all the coffee into a cup. If it’s too much for you, pour whatever is left into a different carafe or travel coffee mug.

That’s it. You have really learned how to make good coffee at home. Amazing how much better it tastes with just a few minutes and a few bucks. Nobody should suffer bad coffee, or be afraid there’s some barrier of magic and money between them and a delicious cup of joe.