Want to make the best coffee at home? Here’s how to make coffee 6 ways: pour over, French press, cold brew, espresso and more!
Over here at A Couple Cooks, we are unashamedly coffee obsessed. It’s not just about caffeine. It’s that cozy feeling when you’re holding a warm, fragrant cup and embrace the promise of a new day. Since research seems to indicate that drinking coffee is A-OK (as long as you’re not overdoing it), we’re passionate about sharing the love of a great cup of joe. Here’s how to make coffee at home: 6 different ways!
And now…how to make coffee!
The coffee that we make every day is pour over coffee, made in a Chemex. The Chemex has a beautiful, curvy beaker shape that makes the perfect cup. Making a pot of pour over takes about 10 minutes and results in 2 to 3 cups of coffee. The best coffee for this method is medium roast or light roast.
For equipment, you'll need the Chemex and its special filters, and a kitchen scale to weigh out the coffee. An electric gooseneck kettle is helpful for heating the water to a specific temperature and pouring it in a circular motion into the grounds.
Recipe: Pour Over Coffee
Also try: Add ice for Chemex Iced Coffee.
The French press is one of the easiest, most inexpensive ways to brew a great cup of coffee. It’s a forgiving method that works for all sorts of coffee beans and roasts, and you don’t need lots of extra equipment. It’s the ideal tool for your morning coffee ritual!
Recipe: French Press Coffee
Also try: French Press Cold Brew, French Press Iced Coffee, or French Press Espresso.
How about cold coffee? The great thing about cold brew is that it requires no special equipment! All you need is 24 hours. We’ve found the best type of coffee to use for cold brew is dark roast coffee.
To make cold brew coffee, you grind a boatload of coffee and place it in a pitcher with cold water overnight. Letting the coffee stand in the refrigerator “brews” it by letting it seep into the water. We love keeping a pitcher of cold brew around for afternoon coffee with no brewing required! It’s also our base for making iced coffee.
Recipe: Cold Brew Coffee
There’s nothing better than a bitter, rich espresso shot with a layer of foamy crema. Once you’ve mastered espresso you can make a whole host of espresso drinks: the latte, cappuccino, flat white, macchiato, and more.
Espresso is an Italian way of making coffee in highly concentrated shots. A single espresso shot is 1 ounce, and a double shot is 2 ounces.
Recipe: How to Make Espresso
Here’s how to make a smooth, bold brew: the Moka Pot, also known as a Bialetti! This stovetop espresso maker makes a dark, intense cup that’s somewhere between espresso and very strong coffee. It’s very easy to use, either for your everyday coffee or to make “espresso” for homemade coffee drinks like lattes, cappuccinos, and more.
The Moka Pot is a stovetop coffee maker used to make espresso-like coffee. It uses boiling water to force steam through the coffee grounds, so the coffee bubbles up into the pot versus percolating down like in brewed coffee.
Recipe: Moka Pot Coffee
The Aeropress may look a little funky, but it makes one very good cup of coffee. Our preferred method is the Chemex, but the Aeropress has its place: especially when traveling. It makes a single cup at a time and it’s quick!
The Aeropress has its own filters as well, and the method is not as exacting as the Chemex. Overall, it’s cheaper and quicker! You can use any roast of coffee with the Aeropress.
The journey toward great coffee
I first got into coffee while studying in Spain. In my university building in Madrid, there was a little cafe that served café con leche. The flavor was intense, and perfect mixed with the creamy milk and sugar it was the best I’d ever tasted.
Café con leche was my gateway to trying espresso, that astringent dark bitter liquid in a tiny cup. On our honeymoon to Rome and the Amalfi Coast, Alex and I drank espresso with breakfast and at a little Roman cafes with a pastry. We brought back our new European coffee habit to the US, mainly drinking dark roast coffee like the Italian espresso that we loved.
After a few years, our coffee tastes changed again when we met our neighbors, Sarah and Andy, who run a local coffee roastery Blue Mind Roasting. They taught us about the nuanced flavor of craft medium roast and light roast coffee. At first, light roast tasted oddly floral and almost like tea! But after starting to drink their light and medium roast coffees, we began to appreciate the unique flavors of single origin beans. We’ve been making this coffee in our Chemex every morning ever since (though I’ve since switched to preferring a morning Americano and a mid-morning cold brew!).
After years of cultivating a passion for coffee brewing, we’ve now perfected our six favorite methods. We hope you enjoy these coffee resources and that they help you in your journey. Let us know in the comments below!
I just came across your Chemex video from 2019. I just got one and can’t wait to use it. What grinder and scale do you use?
Hi! Enjoy — it makes a great cup of coffee. Currently we use OXO for both grinder and scale: https://amzn.to/3xGWd44 and https://amzn.to/3VXKJU2
Have you ever tried vacuum coffee Belgium style coffee, I was wondering why it was not included in your column, I am researching the best ways and it’s a device that sucks the coffee up to the other pot and filters down to original pot, let me know if you have any information on this please, thank you, Kurt….
We haven’t gotten to that yet but we hope to get some experience with it!
THANKS COFFEE YOU ARE THE BEST
Oh yes finally gonna use my coffee grinder again! French press, espresso and cold brew! Love to try all of these!
There are variety of recipe about coffee, I am glad to find all in one here! You deserve a 5 star! Thanks you!
Wow, never knew there were so many ways to do my coffee lol. Definitely going to give those a shot and will report back!