I'm getting back into my old coffee obsession and am looking for ideas from others.

What is your favorite method of brewing coffee? Pour over? Press? Keurig? Espresso? Good ole automatic drip?

What are your favorite coffee beans/region/roast?

Any suggestions on bean grinding equipment?

I used to use a Bodum French press, buy whatever whole beans I could get from Starbucks, and had a blade grinder... so plenty of room for improvement.

We use a coffee maker, but it has a burr grinder in it so each pot is fresh ground whole beans.

I have a boutique shop in town that imports and roasts their own beans. I have found their stuff is such high quality I like all of their beans and my taste buds now are repulsed by generic or diner coffee. I never enjoyed black coffee until this routine started years ago.

I prefer the medium to dark roast stuff from central America. Their African stuff tends to be lighter and more caffeinated. Still tasty.

Eight cup Chemex, Chemex filters, Baratza Encore grinder, electric gooseneck kettle with filtered water, and a gram scale for a 16.5/1 water/bean ratio (for my usual daily amount this means 710g water/43g beans).

Whole beans are gotten weekly and stored in an airtight container, placed in a cool, dark cabinet. Grind right before starting the water, no exceptions! Lately I've been alternating between the Metropolis La Cordillera and Counter Culture Fast Forward beans.

Grinding can introduce a static charge, which makes it a real mess to empty the hopper (a common complaint for the grinder I use, and probably any with a plastic bin), but a little trick is to mix in one or two drops of water to your beans before grinding- it almost completely dissipates any static charge, allowing the ground coffee to slide out like a dream.

First I place the filter, then pour enough screaming hot water from the tap to soak its diameter up to about an inch from the top. Doesn't take much water here. When it's fully drained into the vessel, I carefully hold the filter in place and pour the water out. People say this step gets rid of a "paper taste" from the filter, but I've done it without and didn't notice a difference. The other reason I see mentioned is to "prime the vessel" with the hot water and help bring it up to temperature for the actual pour, which makes some sense, but I've never done a direct A/B comparison, so who knows. Maybe it's all voodoo. I mostly just do this because I'm a crazy person.

To start, I pour 85 grams water (2/1 water ratio is recommended for the bloom pour- I use 43 grams coffee so 43 x2 gets me my 85 grams) right off the boil, let bloom 45 seconds, then pour slow and steady the remaining water until scale reads 710 grams. Whole process should take no more than five minutes, or your grind is off.

I like to warm a mug for 30 seconds in the microwave before pouring the coffee, with a quick swirl of the Chemex right before pouring to get the oils all nicely distributed.

What.

^ And this is why I wanted to ask PRF. I love it when folks get real detailed with stuff like this.

-I definitely back the burr grinder, that was a game changer for me.
-Mostly French press, pour over as well from time to time
-for the most part I seek out what small, independent roasters have beans on sale at the grocery store, and spring for good stuff when I am traveling. Always organic, light roast. Fuck greasy over roasted beans. No sugar and just a touch of cream to soften the acidity and piss off the hipster baristas. Apparently adding cream is poser shit.
-I really love Ethiopian beans when I can find them, but mostly I like to explore and try different single origins.
-Favorite roasters in Northern California: Blue Bottle, Sightglass, Avid(acre) Taylor Lane, Four Barrel. Too many great ones to mention them all!

It's a bummer that I cannot drink it past noon, or I will be up all night. I stick to 2 cups in the morning these days. I love coffee!

I use a blade grinder that’s small enough to pick up and shake gently while grinding to reduce heat buildup. Maybe a burr grinder will be in my future though, since a lot of FMs are singing their praises.

My preference is for a Yama siphon or a pourover. I drink drip coffee sometimes and have had drip pots that I liked, but I don’t think any good ones are still made in a reasonable price range. Maybe not even in an unreasonable range.

If you’ve mainly had Starbucks, you’ve got a whole world to discover. Starbucks does something weird and all their coffees taste similar.

I like a lot of light through medium-dark roasts. Some favorites are Kenya AA and Tanzanian peaberry in light roast, Nicaraguan, Indian monsoons Malabar and Papua New Guinea in medium, and Costa Rican in medium-dark (what used to be called Vienna roast). I don’t like the truly dark roasts as much. I’ve also had great Ethiopian and other African coffees, and Guatemalan. Javan and Sumatran seem to be more ideal for people who put cream and sugar in their coffee, which I don’t usually. Yemen Mocha was a favorite of mine for a while but is unobtainable due to the tragic situation the Saudis are causing in Yemen right now.

I applaud you gourmet motherfuckers! We are so lazy here, we just rock a lame Cuisinart machine.

I used to be able to drink 50 cups a day, now it's 3 if I'm really partying. Decaf after that. Sad.

Always dark roast, strong AF.

BLACK. Adding cream is poser shit.

I do a pour over every morning, using Scott Rao's updated method. Briefly:
- between a 2:1 and 3:1 bloom (I start higher and experiment based on the beans)
- 15:1-17:1 overall ratio (same re: experimenting)
- plastic V60 dripper, to which I'm very accustomed
- Rancilio Rocky grinder

For beans I alternate between Coava and Good Coffee, with the occasional trip to Barista or Heart.
I generally prefer light roasts with some kind of big-ass flavor that isn't chocolate.

Pour over
Chemex carafe
Hario kettle
OXO burr grinder set on 12 (out of 15, 15 being the most coarse grind)
Sputnik coffee beans (local guys, Back of the Yards, available at the local Valli here - cheap!)

Don't even know how much beans - I figured it out by timing a long time ago and just dump all the beans into the hopper, reload when they're almost gone. About 14 seconds worth of beans, and that makes about two decent sized mugs.

• boil the water

• pour enough water into the filter'd carafe to wet it down. This adheres the filter to the glass and creates the vacuum or some shit

• pour the water out of the carafe

• t'row in the ground beans.

• pour in enough water (which will no longer be boiling) to wet down the beans.

• let that shit drain.

• AGAIN I say, pour in enough water to cover the beans. It should bloom unless your beans aren't perfect. It'll still work, don't panic. Nobody cares. You're fine.

• Let that shit drain

• now go for broke, go for circles or make lines, whatever you want pour the hot water in there, try to keep the beans evened out, don't let the level get closer than an inch or so from the top. Keep at it champ, you're doing great. stop when it looks like there's enough water in there that when combined with the coffee already made, will be approximately equal to what you have in mind.

That's how I do it, anyway.

M

51 oz. Bodum French press here. I used drip machines for years, though.