Equipment
What we would tell someone starting out
The things that turned out to matter, after seventy-odd articles about the things that mostly do not.
Marcus Obeng
24 articles by Obeng
Equipment
When your coffee suddenly gets worse
A routine that worked for months stops working, and the cause is usually one of a short list.
Brewing Methods
A morning routine that produces good coffee every day
Consistency comes from a repeatable sequence rather than from concentration, which is scarce at six in the morning.
Equipment
Coffee grounds and waste
What to do with spent grounds, what the claims about them are worth, and the broader waste picture.
Water & Grind
Recipe notebooks and dialling in systematically
Ten minutes of record keeping replaces months of accidental rediscovery, and teaches you things about your own equipment that no guide can.
Beans & Origin
Buying coffee: how much, how often
The practical logistics of keeping good coffee in the house without wasting money or drinking stale beans.
Brewing Methods
Instant coffee, honestly assessed
A product with a poor reputation, a genuine technical basis for that reputation, and a specialty version that changes the argument.
Water & Grind
Troubleshooting: a diagnostic guide
Symptoms, likely causes and what to change first, for the mornings when the coffee is wrong and you do not know why.
Water & Grind
Bypass, dilution and adjusting strength
Separating how much you extract from how strong the drink is, which solves a problem people usually attack from the wrong direction.
Brewing Methods
Making coffee while travelling
Hotel rooms, campsites, offices and trains — where good coffee is possible with surprisingly little.
Brewing Methods
Siphon brewing, and why it survives
A theatrical vacuum brewer from the nineteenth century that produces a genuinely distinctive cup, if you can be bothered.
Water & Grind
Filters: paper, metal and cloth
A cheap variable with a measurable effect on the cup, and one most people never experiment with.
Roasting
Small roasters, and how to find a good one
The most consequential coffee decision most people make, and the one with the least useful guidance available.
Brewing Methods
Batch brewing at home
The automatic drip machine is unfashionable and, done properly, produces excellent coffee with no attention at all.
Water & Grind
Building a water recipe
For anyone who has fixed everything else and still is not getting the cup they want.
Brewing Methods
Cold brew, done properly
Long steeping at low temperature produces something chemically different from hot coffee cooled down.
Brewing Methods
The Aeropress, and why every recipe is different
A plastic cylinder that produces excellent coffee by half a dozen contradictory methods, all of which work.
Water & Grind
Ratios and why you should weigh things
A scale costs very little and converts brewing from a guess into something you can repeat.
Water & Grind
Grind size, and how to find yours
The most powerful lever in brewing, described everywhere in analogies that mean nothing until you have something to compare against.
Roasting
Storing coffee properly
Four things degrade roasted coffee, and most kitchen storage exposes it to all of them.
Water & Grind
Water: the ingredient nobody thinks about
Coffee is around ninety-eight percent water, and the minerals in it determine what the other two percent tastes like.
Brewing Methods
French press, and why it is better than its reputation
Full immersion, no paper, heavy body — and a technique adjustment that removes almost all the sludge people complain about.
Brewing Methods
Pour over, properly
The most controllable brewing method and the one most sensitive to sloppiness, which is why it rewards attention.
Brewing Methods
Extraction: the one idea that explains every brew
Sour, bitter, thin, harsh — nearly every coffee fault comes back to how much you pulled out of the grounds.