At the start of the pandemic, I was very happy making coffee with manual burr grinder, using the approximate grammage mark in the grinder itself, and my trusty Aeropress. Right now, I have an electric burr grinder, a specialised coffee weighing scale, and a pourover setup and two favourite recipes.
I’m quite happy with how I got here, though. I used to use pre-ground coffee and a French press. Then, a friend of mine made me a genuinely excellent cup of coffee with his Aeropress, and I realised that for around 10-15% more effort, I could get a minimum 50% better coffee. And I decided to make that my measure for each step I’d take, rather than taking a standing jump into the inevitable rabbithole which can be quite a money sink (if you know me at all, you know that I can get slightly obsessive about new stuff I like).
Same with the manual grinder – I stopped using pre-ground coffee when I realised how much better home-ground coffee is. And in the pandemic, my friend Sahil and I started exchanging notes on coffee, and I started watching a lot (I mean a lot) of videos by James Hoffmann.
So I took baby steps – first I got a cheap kitchen scale so I could brew by weight rather than by eye. That turned out great. Then I got a temperature-controlled electric kettle. That helped a lot. Finally, I took the plunge and bought an electric burr grinder because the cheap manual one had started to annoy me, and the better-quality manual grinders were extremely close in price to the Baratza Encore, which is supposed to be a great budget electric grinder.
Then I started thinking about the difference between pourovers and Aeropress coffee. Same thing happened – Sahil made me a pourover cup of a rather nice Kenyan coffee, and the pourover version was far superior to what I’d been brewing with the same coffee in my Aeropress. And making a good pourover requires a good coffee scale, so I got a nice one which came with a timer.
I think the only thing I’ve got left in this particular step of the journey is to get a nice gooseneck kettle to do good pourovers, and I’m contemplating if I should get a stove-top one or just spring for a good electric one with temperature control like a Fellow Stagge or something.