There are lots of ways to make coffee — as you might rightly expect for a drink that has been around for over 1000 of years, and very popular for hundreds. But the question arises, which method of making coffee is the best?
To spoil the conclusion up front (that sweet, sweet internet tl;dr), I don’t think there is a single “best” method. I really like a lot of them, and you probably do too. The best coffee brewing method is really whatever kind of coffee you like, either in general or on a specific day. The arbitrary opinion of others (especially online 😛) shouldn’t shape your opinion more than you taste buds do.
“Gravity-based” options
Perhaps the common way to brew coffee, certainly in the United States, is a gravity-based coffee brew. The reason for this is the near-ubiquity of drip coffee makers in any home that makes coffee. Surely other brewers abound, especially among coffee nerds like us, but it’s rare to find a coffee-house that doesn’t also have a drip machine. Which is our first category to explore a bit more. Then we’ll get into the much fussier option of pour over coffee brewers.
Nerds would probably call these “percolation” brewers, because water passes through the coffee bed instead of soaking it. I’m calling them gravity-based because I think that’s a little easier to picture.
Drip Coffee Machines
The most famous and iconic brand of drip coffee makers to me is Mr. Coffee. I suspect that this is mostly down to its great name, but it is what I think of as the very prototype of a drip coffee maker. Now, coffee dorks like us will point out that these cheaper drip coffee machines aren’t so good at making great coffee: the water is inconsistently heated, the brew-head has a tendency to be uneven over the coffee bed, and and some designs create channeling, where water finds the path of least resistance instead of evenly extracting all the grounds (it leaves the cup tasting weaker, harsher, and less balanced).
This is where Specialty Coffee Association (SCA)-specialty drip machines come in. They’re basically designed around the promise that the water will be perfectly heated, the bed-design won’t cause channeling or bypass, and the coffee will be the best a drip coffee maker can make.
Among these, the two most iconic to me are the Technovorm, and the Bonavita that we have. But there are a number of others.
It’s also worth noting that most coffee shops and restaurants serving coffee also use a drip-style machine for their coffee. These machines are a great deal bigger than the home versions. And depending on their original design and state of maintenance, a great deal different in terms of quality.
A final note here, Mr. Coffee (and all the other similar cheap brewers) almost always have a glass carafe into which the coffee drips. Under this glass carafe, there’s almost always a small heat plate that keeps the coffee at a enjoyable temperature for people to drink. This is nice if you’re a temperature sensitive coffee drinker, but coffee snobs like us will often opine that the coffee is also being subtly changed. Specifically, made more bitter and burnt tasting.
Pour Over Coffee
After we consider drip machines, the next most common method of what I’m calling gravity-based brewing is the pour over.
This style of coffee is first encountered by most people as a “slow bar” option at more boutique/third-wave cafes. And rather than ordering “coffee, black, hot,” you choose from several coffees, each promising different flavor notes you may try to detect.
The reason for this is that the biggest difference between drip machines and pour over is how “artfully” the coffee maker (in this case a human with an electric water kettle, NOT a machine) is able to brew. This category includes popular brewers like the Hario V60, the Kalita Wave, and the ever-popular Chemex.
This often means that you’ll wait a lot longer for this coffee than a “batch brewed” coffee, and often even an espresso based drink. (About that latter category much more later.)
How do you make good coffee at home? »
Immersion methods
Immersion based brewers use a different premise than gravity-based ones. Primarily, they work not so much by passing the water THROUGH the coffee, but rather soaking the coffee IN the water.
As you might guess, these are generally thought to have a richer flavor than coffees brewed with a gravity-based method, especially when they aren’t filtered through paper. But we’ll get there momentarily.
AeroPress
Tops of this category for your Low-Key Coffee Snobs hosts here is the AeroPress.
Much less popularly known than the French press (about which we’ll say more in a bit), the AeroPress was invented in 2005. But since then it has exploded in popularity within the coffee scene, especially for those looking for no-fuss brewer that is consistently good.
Like all immersion brewers, people will talk about less “clarity of flavor.” But you’ll generally make up for that with a foolproof and simply well-rounded taste. As mentioned above, the default way to make an AeroPress is to use a paper filter, which will remove a lot of the oils and (smaller) sediments—generally the hallmarks of a French press. But it is also common (though not really for me) for people to invest a few dollars in a reusable metal filter for the AeroPress which will allow a little more of the oils through.
Which AeroPress? The Original vs. the Go vs. the Go Plus »
French Press
Launched into my awareness in the first round of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the French press is the most well-known of the immersion style brewers. Originally developed in the 1800s, it is a simple and effective way to mix coffee and water for brewing, while filtering out most of the unpleasant grounds.
The best and worst part of a French press though, is that it doesn’t filter our all the sediment. Its hallmark (in my mind at least) is that you’ll be able to see a bit of oil at the top of your cup, and especially as you get to the bottom notice some fine suspended coffee particulates.
To be clear, unless your French press is badly broken, this won’t be the unpleasant big grounds you’ll get in a crude mix of ground coffee beans and water mixed together (if you’ve ever done that, accidentally or on purpose), but fairly fine particles in suspension that are much easier to see with your eyes than taste in your mouth.
Turkish coffee
Even older than the French press (dated to the 1500s), Turkish coffee is an immersion method with absolutely no filter. Instead you’re mixing finely ground coffee with water over heat (traditionally sand, but also just a burner), and then letting gravity do what little “filtering” it provides.
I’ve honestly never had a cup of Turkish coffee (it’s not very common in the American Midwest), but the cups look espresso size and the concentration the same. Disliked for being over-extracted and gritty, its fans often like the possibly brewed-in sweetness and bold flavor.
Drippers
A fairly new, and fairly unknown, type of immersion brewer or what I’m generally calling “drippers,” though I think “held-back” or “switching” could also make sense to me as a label.
Here I think of two brewers (there may be more I don’t know) the Clever Dripper and the Hario Switch. Both basically give you a closed “tank” in which you can have your water and coffee sitting together for a while, then a simple switch to let that water drain through a paper filter into the cup.
With the Clever Dripper, simply placing it on a mug triggers the draining. With the Hario Switch, as you might guess from the name, you flip a switch.
Both of these brewers, because they pass through paper, will eliminate much of the sediment and oils of the French press, but keep the fairly simple and foolproof nature of this broad category.
Cold Brew
The last category I consider for immersion brewing is cold brew, which we often make with a Toddy Cold Brew System. As you might pick up from the name (though I was confused about this for a while), cold brew is coffee brewed with cold (or room temperature) water rather than hot water.
This is its most essential distinction from all the above and below methods of coffee. And technically, you could probably cold brew with any other method here, you’d get weak brown water. So cold brew often connotes a specific immersion-based process.
The cold brew process is general like this: coarsely grind coffee, combine it with room-temperature water, and let it sit for 12-24 hours. After that time has elapsed, in some way filter out the coffee grounds from the brew, and enjoy or save for later.
One way that cold brew can differ a fair bit in characteristics is if you filter with coarse cheese clothes vs denser felt or paper. As you might guess cheese cloth will leave some of the oils we’ve discussed thus far, paper or thicker fabric will likely absorb them.
Opinions on cold brew differ widely. Some people love it for it’s more approachable flavor, lower acidity, or greater caffeine. But for people looking for a best cup of coffee from a perspective of distinction of flavors or rich body, cold brew is likely to disappoint. This gets back to the point we started with that the best coffee brewing method for you is 100% based on what you’re looking for in your coffee (today), rather than some eternal objective criteria we might imagine.
Espresso-based options
Surely the most popular category of drinks at coffee shops, espresso-based drinks vary widely. While drip or immersion based coffee usually vary only modestly in strength, beans, and creamers used, espresso drinks often vary as well on clever flavor combos, milk used and how its used, and simply desired volume of drink vs other liquids.
Espresso Machines are Complex
For the home-brewer, I generally think of espresso machines to be hard to approach. If you, like us, have a small kitchen and a constrained budget, it’s much easier to get into basically any other brewing method we’ve discussing here as a possible answer to “best at home.” Espresso machines are almost always both expensive and (especially if you’re into milk(foam) based drinks), much more complex to master.
They also just take up a lot of space. While there are a few small espresso machines in the world, at least from a coffee nerd perspective they are pretty uniformly considered to be not very good. The kind of thing that makes it very hard to make good espresso, even if you’re giving it your all. The smallest thing I see consistently recommended is the Breville Barista Express.
Cool Cafe Drinks are usually espresso-based
Almost any drink which is (more) unique to a cafe is probably going to use espresso.
Nowadays you’ll probably have some choice of milks (versus defaulting to cow/dairy milk), but your flavored lattes, your cappuccinos, or our beloved cortado are going to be some combination of espresso “shots” and steamed milks. The drinks vary more by milk texture and quantity, not by bean type or nature.
There’s also the world of flavored espresso drinks. These range from simpler a vanilla latte (just a pump of two of flavored syrup mixed in) to more elaborate things made to evoke or contain all kinds of things from maple pancakes to ramen. (Of the latter, we got a genuinely impressive and tasty one at Discourse in Chicago a few months back, definitely worth a shot if you’re in the area.)
All of this is to say that espresso has some very legitimate claim to the best coffee brewing methods of the sheer diversity of experiences of coffee drinks (instead of strictly coffee) you can have with it. There is simply no category above or below that results in nearly the delicious variety that espresso does.
And some straight-espresso-devotees may think me silly for allowing for such milky flavored drinks, but the people have spoken and we like fun drinks!
Other ways to brew coffee at home
This is a bit of a grab-bag category of things that I want to name but don’t clearly fit into the categories above. They’re all varyingly popular with people and across countries
Percolator
One of the more classic brew methods of coffee is the percolator. What distinguishes a percolator from the above types of coffee is the continual reflowing of water (and later coffee) back through the grounds.
This is divisive trait, with some thinking that percolator coffee has a nice rich flavor and historic charm, but which most coffee nerds dismiss as weirdly over-extracted and also flavorless.
Learn how to make good coffee at home »
Moka Pot
Similar to a percolator, but also in a class all its own is the Moka Pot. This classic Italian brewer works a bit like a percolator: done on a stove top, water on bottom, coffee above, and brewing by pushing boiling water up. But it’s distinguished from a percolator because it doesn’t re-flow — the water passes through the coffee once and is done brewing, versus continually cycling.
Because of its ground coffee fineness, and the single pass nature, moka pot coffee is often compared with espresso. This means it has some of the same difficulties mastering grinding and temperatures, but can be quite satisfying for those like their coffee strong like espresso.
Convenience Brewers (Keurig, Nespresso)
I can’t avoid mentioning the quick coffee makers that have taken the world by storm in the last few decades. The Keurig is probably the most popular American coffee brewer for regular people (vs coffee snobs) of the last few decades.
Similarly, in the rest of the world, but especially Europe, Nespresso style “espresso like” makers are quite popular. Mostly marketed for convenience and ease of use (versus coffee quality), these brewer are largely popular but I’d be hard pressed to let them win a best coffee brewer showdown. (Though I admit this is my snobbish part saying so.)
Find out how to make black coffee taste good »
Instant Coffee
Instant coffee! How did I get so far without mentioning it? It is definitely popular, whether it’s a classic like Nescafe or a more esoteric specialty coffee ones which have come into their own in the last ten-ish years. Here, for those who don’t know, you just put the powder or crystals into hot water, and there you have coffee.
Then there’s Cometeer, which is kind of its own weird category. Rather than dehydrating coffee into powder, it flash-freezes freshly brewed specialty coffee into little capsules. Drop one into hot water and you’ve got something that’s much closer to a real brewed cup than traditional instant coffee. It’s still very much a convenience product, but it’s the first one that’s made me think, “Okay, I get it.”
As with the convenience brewers I’d be hard-pressed to accept any claim that these are the best tasting coffee, but I will totally cede that this is also the quickest way I know to get something that (resembles 😜) coffee.
The best instant coffee for coffee snobs »
Other more esoteric options
Finally I have to say that there are a few other esoteric coffee brewers I’ve not mentioned. Perhaps my prominent in my mind is the siphon brewer. These things look pretty cool, but they are even more complicated than anything else we’ve discussed above. And the consensus among coffee nerds I’ve seen playing with them is that the coffee isn’t nearly good enough to be worth the effort.
Swedish egg coffee, the Bripe, and Vietnamese Phin are three other brewing methods I’m only passingly familiar with. I believe the first to use an egg to “filter” the grounds out of the coffee, the second uses a copper “pipe” to make something I couldn’t describe, and the last is a pour-over like brewer using finely ground coffee. Because of my lack of experience with these I’m just noting them here. 🤓
All coffee is good coffee, amiright?
Despite my bad mouthing of a few of the brew options above, I think we can all agree that all coffee is pretty good. And perhaps more important, it holds that caffeine withdrawal headache at bay.
But it also is a delicious ceremony to start the day, however you make it. Personally, this is really the biggest reason I make pour over coffee most mornings. The slightly slower and more deliberate nature of it really soothes the parts of me that want to slow down and relax in routines. But each of us have our own preferences, and so I think it’s a bit of a fool’s errand for me to here pick a definitive winner.
The best thing about coffee is the diversity of brewing methods. There’s always one more to try, whether it be in drinking or in brewing. For instance, we’re going to try out the NextLevel Pulsar Brewer soon, which is loved for its no bypass. We’re not even sure we know how to clock that taste-wise, so it will be fun to test.
