Here’s an easy (and cheap) way to make good coffee every time, without spending a lot of money. The secret isn’t lots of expensive machines, but good ingredients that you can measure. Find the right recipe, then you can make and remake it every single time. And to make that easier, I’ve written an app. As an example of dong this on a budget, I get by with the following:
- A simple drip filter coffee maker
- Or a French Press
- A set of digital scales
- A water filter
- A coffee grinder. Which could be optional
The key is to weigh the coffee (before you grind it) because coarse ground coffee takes up more space than fine ground coffee. So you can’t go with volume.
Then measure the water.
Then make the coffee.
Now depending on whether you’re making a drip coffee or an Infusion coffee (like a french press) will depend on how much coffee / water you’ll need. And whether you want a regular or strong cup of coffee. So I made an app to help me get it right. Nothing fancy but it’s made my daily coffee a lot better. You can get it on iOS or Android
There’s lots of ways you can improve this. Grinding your coffee beans fresh will get a better cup of coffee. Then upgrading to a burr grinder instead of a blade grinder will get another level of improvement. But then it’s starting to get expensive and that increasing cost might be difficult to justify for the improvement in taste. (I deliberately took pictures of my basic equipment in a small part of my kitchen to show you don’t need a big fancy setup to get a good repeatable system going).
For me, just moving to filtered water, and then measuring the coffee to water ratio made a big difference. It’s infinitely better than any kind of instant coffee. It’s better than the capsule based coffee machines I used to have. It’s better than just standard filtered coffee because I can tell when it’s too bitter and make adjustments. Using the app made it easier for me. Hopefully someone else will find it useful too.