Holy crap, I just realized that I haven’t posted in this thread at all. Which means it’s time for…
peterb’s guide to making the best fucking pourover coffee in the world, at home, for the least amount of money spent on equipment.
The factors I optimize for in my coffee brewing are:
(1) Taste. In terms of equipment, this ends up being expressed as “minimize the use of plastic”.
(2) Cost. The goal is to spend as much as you need to spend to make awesome coffee, but not more.
(3) Space. When not in use, the coffee equipment shouldn’t take up half your kitchen. This also means that, all things being equal, if you can buy something general-purpose, that is used for things other than coffee, favor that over special-purpose equipment.
EQUIPMENT
(1) A grinder. This is the unavoidable special-purpose device. If you want to make good coffee, you effectively have to grind your own beans, and you have to use a burr grinder. I use (as mentioned in my last post) this Cuisinart grinder, which is cheap and works great for pourover - I think I paid something like $40 at Costco for it, which is insanely cheap for a burr grinder. If you want to make espresso, you’ll need something fancier and the rest of this post won’t apply to you. So the cost for this can range from between $40 - $200.
(2) An electric water boiling kettle. You may not believe me now, but this will become your best friend in the kitchen once you have it. You’ll use it for coffee, for tea, and for cooking - if you’re making pasta, you can cut the prep time in half by using the kettle to bring a pot of water up to temp quickly. There are tons of options here. I used this Breville Ikon for a while and liked it, and have since tried several other pots. As I indicated above, I recommend a stainless steel kettle rather than a plastic one. Glass is another option, but is obviously more breakable. One sad thing is that it seems that some degree of fragility is inherent in all of these devices - I’d say on average the ones I have bought have lasted about 2 years before the contacts between the kettle and the base get out of whack and you have to replace it. So factor that in. You can spend from between $20 to $150 for one of these, with the average price for a decent stainless steel model probably being around $75.
(3) A porcelain filter holder, like this or this. It’ll run you between $15 and $20, fits in a cabinet easily when not in use, and is dishwasher safe. “It’s dishwasher-safe” is also the answer to the question “Why should I do this instead of investing in a chemex pot”?
(4) Something to drip the coffee into. I use this Zojirushi thermal carafe. $27.
(5) Consumables: No. 4 paper filter holders, and coffee.
Process
(1) Grind your beans. You’ll need to experiment to find the right grind, but the right grind is probably coarser than you think.
(2) Set water to boil.
(3) Perch filter holder on top of thermal carafe.
(4) Place paper filter in filter holder.
(5) Place ground coffee in paper filter.
A word here about steps 4 and 5. There are all sorts of finicky rituals you can engage in here - you can wet the filter, you can wet the grounds and pour out the first drips, etc etc. But in my experience any taste improvement this confers is pretty much well nigh undetectable. In my opinion that stuff is the Monster Cable of coffee making, only instead of spending extra money for imperceptible gains you’re spending effort. But if you think it makes a tastable difference to you, knock yourself out.
(6) When the water is boiling, pour it over the coffee, fairly slowly to allow for it to bloom. For a full carafe of coffee you’re going to do something like 2 and a half pours, or you can stand there and slowly dribble the coffee in. I’m pretty lazy, so I just fill and then refill when there is enough room.
One alteration here is that if you only want a cup, it’s perfectly fine to just perch the filter holder on your mug and drip directly into it, using less coffee. That’s another advantage of the porcelain holder plan over the Chemex.
A word on coffee itself.
Find a local coffee shop that roasts it’s own beans, and get them fresh-roasted. If you have the option, prefer lighter roasts over darker roasts, at least until you zero in on the flavors you like. Freshness of the beans trumps nearly every other consideration. For example, I like Intelligentsia’s beans, but if I had to choose between Intelligentsia beans roasted 3 weeks ago and some other brand I hadn’t heard of roasted last week, I’d go with the other brand nearly every single time. If you’re buying your beans at a fancy-schmancy coffee shop it’s likely that the roasting date will be on the bottom of the package.
Phew! That’s a lot of typing. I’ll go back and edit this later if I think I’ve forgotten anything. Any questions?