The C. Arabica plant is a gift to the world from Ethiopia, and making coffee at home is a centuries-old practice that's now enjoyed on every continent on Earth. At one point or another, everyone who has ever made their own coffee has wondered: How can I make this better? That question leads us down a well-trodden road with no real end, but many, many gifts in store for those who choose to walk it.
The first step on that road is a simple one: You need to figure out what "better" means to you. There is no single best cup of coffee. There's just the best version of what you love. Do you love your coffee rich, dark, and bitter? Maybe you prefer it as more of a smooth bass line beneath the melody of vanilla, sugar, and steamed milk? Or is your perfect cup found in the bottom of a Folger's can? There's no wrong answer.
It's all about what you like, and what you want. Coffee at home is like home cooking; we're not chasing a restaurant or café level of professional consistency and polish. We're just trying to help you bring the most out of your favorite at-home coffee.
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Updated April 2024: Added new advice for coffee roasts, local sourcing, and coffee grinders.
1. Know Your Roasts
When it comes to food, the better your ingredients, the better your meals. The same is true of coffee. You have to start with good beans. Good beans in a bad grinder make better coffee than bad beans in a good grinder, remember that. You don't need to start buying $30-per-bag coffee beans either, you just have to think about what flavors you like, and where you live.
First, let's talk flavor. When you're shopping for coffee you'll see a lot of different words thrown around, we're just going to focus on a couple: light, medium, and dark roasts. Each roast type is produced a little bit differently, though the longer they sizzle, the darker they get. There are other variables in there like roaster temperature, but for our purposes, we're sticking with the basics. Every second your beans are in the roaster, they're changing. Their aromas, their flavors, their color profile.
Light roasts come out of the roaster a light golden brown. These are usually roasted at a lower temperature or for less time, and the result is a bean that produces a lighter color and a lighter flavor. Light roasts often taste a little floral, a little fruity, almost like you can taste the coffee cherry the bean used to be nestled inside. Light roasts always taste like spring mornings in Portland to me. If light roasts had a playlist, it'd lead off with “Murder on the Dancefloor” by Sophie Ellis-Bextor for sure.
Medium roasts are what I drink almost every morning. Medium roasts tend to come out of the roaster a rich earthy brown. They taste like warm spices, caramel, and toffee, with gentle notes of chocolate. A well-brewed medium roast tastes like a relaxing fall morning to me. Because they're right in the middle of the roast spectrum, they produce delicious coffee no matter how you brew them so they're a great pick for their versatility, too. The medium roast playlist is the kind of thing you could listen to in the morning as you're starting your day, or at night while you get ready to go out—filled with songs like “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan.
Dark roasts are my second favorite for everyday drinking. No other roast produces the rich, deep, chocolatey, toasty complexity you get from a dark roast. Dark roasts are often used in “espresso blends” but to my palate, they make some of the best pour-over or AeroPress coffee. Either method lets those warm background flavors shine and brings out some of the spicier flavors too. For the dark roast playlist, I'd probably start with “Moonlight Magic” by Ashnikko.
2. Source Locally
Time is important for coffee beans. Time spent in shipping, time spent on the shelf, time spent on your shelf. The longer it sits, especially after roasting, the less fresh it will taste. Eventually, around the one-week mark, you'll start to notice a decline in quality. By two weeks, it's still drinkable but makes a much less flavorful cup of coffee. To make sure you have the longest amount of time to enjoy your coffee, your best bet is to buy local.
I wish we had a list of every great coffee roaster in the world, but alas, we do not. Check out a café from your nearest metropolitan area. To help, we've put together a list of some of our favorite regional picks below—some of them might be close to you!
- Bean & Bean ($18 per bag): This cafe is not only woman-owned, but it's also our top pick for coffee in New York City. Bean & Bean is based in Queens, New York.
- Partners Coffee ($17 per bag): Partners is another roaster we've tested over the years and enjoyed, based in Brooklyn, New York.
- Tostado Coffee ($18 per bag): Tostado is my hometown favorite, and it's a roaster that gives back to the community that grows its coffee. It's based in Portland, Oregon.
- Marigold Coffee ($17 per bag): Another great pick in the Pacific Northwest, I drank Marigold coffee every day for years. The company is based in Portland, Oregon.
- Grit Coffee ($17 per bag): Grit has some of the best-looking bags and best-tasting coffee I've ever had the pleasure of drinking. It's based in Charlottesville, Virginia.
- Blue Bottle Coffee ($25 per bag): Blue Bottle's decaf is my current daily driver, and I've never had a Blue Bottle coffee that let me down. It's based in San Francisco, California.
Alternatively, you can check out one of the coffee subscription retailers from our Best Coffee Subscriptions guide. It's not going to be quite as fresh as it would be if it were from your community, but they ship out very quickly and I've never received a coffee from one that was on death's door, flavor-wise. (Many of the companies above will also ship beans to you via a subscription.)
- Trade Coffee ($16 per bag): Trade highlights small roasters around the US. The website is helpful and will help match beans to your preferences.
- Atlas Coffee ($14 per bag): Atlas roasts its own coffee and specializes in single origins—meaning the coffee you're drinking comes from one place and one place only, it's not mixed with beans grown in other regions. You typically get more distinctive flavors in single origins than you do in blends.
- Swiss Water Coffee ($18 per bag): This is a relatively new subscription service, but if you are a decaf drinker, it's the best one you can subscribe to, hands-down. Every decaf coffee I've received from Swiss Water has been an absolute banger.
3. Grind at Home
This might be one of the more obvious upgrades, but after beans, a good grinder is the next most important one. Grinding your coffee at home is not only a great way to make sure your coffee is as flavorful as it can be, but it also makes your coffee last longer. Every step of the way from the farm to your finished cup, coffee's lifespan shortens. The more it's processed, the faster it deteriorates. It starts aging faster once it's hulled and sorted, it starts aging faster once it's roasted, and it starts aging much faster once it's ground. By buying beans whole, they're able to stay fresh for longer. You're effectively keeping them in stasis so they don't start rapidly aging.
Whole beans need to be ground before they're used, and how you do that is another huge leap you can make toward having a cup of coffee that will knock your socks off. Even if you're using the humble blade grinder, your coffee is going to be the best it's ever been using the tips we've discussed already. But if you want to step things up, get a burr grinder. We have several products we've personally tested and recommend in our Best Coffee Grinders guide, but here are a couple of our favorites.
This one is our top pick (9/10, WIRED Recommends) because it's pretty quiet for a coffee grinder, but it's capable of grinding coffee for every preparation method you can imagine—even espresso.
The Oxo Grinder is a tried and true favorite. It's not fussy and gets the job done at a respectable price. It can grind fine enough for espresso or course enough for French press.
4. Brew Methods
You have a good grinder. You have good beans. How do you produce a reliably good cup of coffee every time you brew? This is the fun part: Just experiment until you get it the way you love it. Here are a few suggestions to get you headed in (hopefully) the right direction. You can use nearly any brewer to brew any cup of coffee, but some brewing methods lend themselves better to different types of coffee.
- Dark roast coffee lovers should try a Moka pot: My fellow lovers of dark, rich coffee will likely enjoy brewing using a Moka pot. My favorite is this Primula Moka pot ($30). It's simple to use, produces consistent results, and is the closest thing to espresso you'll get without investing in an espresso machine.
- Medium roast fans should consider a pour-over: If you like a clean, bright medium to light roast coffee, I highly suggest trying pour-over brewing. The most popular pour-over system is the Chemex ($47), but I find it fragile, and the filters are expensive. It produces a smooth cup of coffee though. Another good option is Bodum's pour-over coffee maker ($45), which has a reusable stainless steel filter, but you can get a great cup with cheaper options like Muji's porcelain coffee dripper ($13) (filters) as well as Hario's V60 Coffee Dripper ($27) (filters). We have more information on brewing pour-overs in this story.
- Light, refreshing roast enthusiasts may like the AeroPress: Those looking for a light brew would be well served by the AeroPress, which excels at extracting the subtlety and depth of even the lightest coffee roasts. We prefer the AeroPress Go ($40), which is more compact, but read our full AeroPress guide to see which model is best for you.
If you want to have reproducible results, make sure you weigh out your beans and water using a good scale (like this Apexstone scale with a timer) so you can track the pace of your pour-over (for example), and take notes. It may sound nerdy, and it is, but after experimenting for a few days you'll likely find something you love, and if you have notes, then you'll know how to make your perfect cup of coffee every time—no matter where you are.
