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The Wirecutter Show
Stop Making Bad Coffee
00:38:12
To make great coffee at home, the right gear makes a difference. Here’s how to choose the right setup based on your space, budget, and desired level of effort.
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- [00:00]
Narrator
For centuries, the emerald was believed to have almost magical properties, including the ability to improve eyesight. Fascinated by this stone, emperor Nero always carried one with him. According to legend, he even watched chariot races while looking through an emerald. And as surprising as this may seem, some believe that this was the very first pair of sunglasses. Listen now to Voice of Jewels, a podcast by Lecole School of Jewelry Arts with the support of Van Cleef and Arpels.
- [00:38]
Marguerite Preston
People who love coffee love pour over because you have a ton of control. In theory, I think that this is.
- [00:43]
Christine Cyrclassette
The method that attracts people who really, really want to perfect the art of coffee making.
- [00:49]
Marguerite Preston
Right. Yeah, you can be really fussy about it. You don't have to be.
- [00:56]
Christine Cyrclassette
I'm Christine Cyrclassette.
- [00:57]
Rosie Guerin
I'm Rosie Guerin and you're listening to the Wirecutter. Christine, the star of today's episode. Is coffee one of your favorite things?
- [01:18]
Christine Cyrclassette
One of the most essential drinks of life. There's just so much to explore when it comes to gear and coffee. And truly, I think a great coffee setup can improve your life in a lot of ways.
- [01:28]
Rosie Guerin
I know you think that I'm a.
- [01:29]
Marguerite Preston
Strong believer of this.
- [01:30]
Christine Cyrclassette
So, yeah, I'm pumped. And we have a really great guest today. Marguerite Preston is our editorial director who covers all of our kitchen coverage. She has tested a lot of coffee gear. She just knows a ton about it. And so we're going to bring her on and kind of she's going to help walk us through the meaningful upgrades you might make in your coffee setup to dial in your morning brew.
- [01:55]
Sponsor Voice
Love.
- [01:55]
Christine Cyrclassette
So cheesy. That was such a cheesy way of saying that. But it's true.
- [01:57]
Rosie Guerin
It was very. It was very commercial. I like it. I like it very much. And I really like Marguerite. She's been on the show before, talking non alcoholic spirits and ice cream sandwiches. We also have something extra this week. We're going to release a bonus episode on Friday all about how to choose coffee beans you actually like. That's with the experts over at Coffee Project New York. It's a really great companion to this episode where we're mostly focusing on gear. So you can look out for that bonus episode this week. Okay, Marguerite Preston after the break.
- [02:40]
Narrator
For centuries, the emerald was believed to have almost magical properties, including the ability to improve eyesight. Fascinated by this stone emperor, Nero always carried one with him. According to legend, he even watched chariot races while looking through an emerald. And as surprising as this may seem, some believe that this was the very first pair of sunglasses. Listen now to voice Voice of Jewels, a podcast by Lecole School of Jewelry Arts with the support of Van Cleef and Arpels.
- [03:14]
Marguerite Preston
So we're breaking up. Why?
- [03:16]
Christine Cyrclassette
You're a great fitness app, but I've forgotten about you. What's your name again?
- [03:20]
Marguerite Preston
All pain, some gain. $9 a month.
- [03:23]
Olivia from Ollie
Right. With my new big financial friend, Experian, I can see my subscriptions right in.
- [03:27]
Christine Cyrclassette
The app and cancel all the ones.
- [03:28]
Olivia from Ollie
I don't use anymore but still pay for.
- [03:30]
Christine Cyrclassette
Like you.
- [03:31]
Marguerite Preston
Wow.
- [03:32]
Narrator
So goodbye.
- [03:33]
Marguerite Preston
More like good savings.
- [03:34]
Rosie Guerin
Cha Ching, get started with the Experian app now. Results will vary.
- [03:38]
Christine Cyrclassette
Not all subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required. See experian.com for details.
- [03:42]
Marguerite Preston
Experian.
- [03:44]
Olivia from Ollie
Hey, it's Olivia from Ollie. Is it just me or are these wellness trends getting ridiculous? Protein tracking, biohacking. It's too much. Start small with Ollie's daily multivitamin. Just two gummies a day help support your immune system, heart and bone health. It's that easy. Less tracking, more doing. You boo. Go to o l l y.com to learn more. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
- [04:13]
Marguerite Preston
Ollie.
- [04:22]
Rosie Guerin
Welcome back. Today we're talking about coffee gear with Marguerite Preston.
- [04:27]
Marguerite Preston
Marguerite, welcome back to the show. Hello. Thanks for having me.
- [04:30]
Christine Cyrclassette
Great to have you. So today we're talking coffee. I know you know a ton about coffee. If you're trying to improve your coffee setup at home, what are the first things you should ask yourself?
- [04:41]
Marguerite Preston
The first thing a coffee expert or a coffee nerd will ask you is how are you grinding your coffee? Are you grinding your coffee? Are you buying pre ground coffee? Yeah. The consensus is that freshly ground coffee is going to taste better than pre ground coffee. Once it's ground, it goes still very quickly loses that flavor. If you are grinding your coffee, how are you grinding it? Are you using a little spice grinder with some blades in it, which is what my parents used for many years, that is going to grind your coffee really unevenly, which is going to cause it to brew unevenly. You're going to get some bigger pieces that you extract less flavor from them because they're bigger. And then you're going to get some really dusty fine pieces where you get too much flavor. It's gonna make it kind of muddy. What you want, if you want really good coffee, is a good burr grinder, which is gonna grind really evenly.
- [05:29]
Christine Cyrclassette
And can you explain what exactly a burr grinder is? What's the difference between that and the sort of little spice grinder that just has the blades that were around.
- [05:36]
Marguerite Preston
Sure. So this is hard because this is an audio medium. But a burr grinder is basically, you have these burrs. Often they're kind of. One is kind of cone shaped and one is kind of like the cone fits into it and they're ridged, so the cone kind of spins around, pulls the beans down into the kind of gap between the cone and the burr that fits the cone and kind of crushes the beans. And you can adjust it so there's more or less space between the two pieces, the two burrs, and that changes how finely or coarsely your coffee is ground. But the way it's crushing, it's not kind of like randomly chopping into different size pieces. It's crushing into a relatively specific piece of size. Right. Okay.
- [06:19]
Christine Cyrclassette
And so beyond how you're grinding it, what are some other things people should think about or ask themselves when they're thinking about upgrading?
- [06:26]
Marguerite Preston
I mean, you could just think about the coffee that you're buying. Fresher beans are gonna taste better. So if you're buying beans from a grocery store that are kind of like have been sitting on a grocery store shelf, they might have been sitting there for a while, they might be kind of stale. And there's different qualities of beans too. A cheap grocery store roast, the quality of the beans might not be great. The quality of the roast might not be great. And that can give you kind of a lot of off flavors which are anything from like kind of scorched, you know, it's over roasted, to coffee. Experts will have all kinds of like, words to describe the coffee flavors.
- [07:04]
Christine Cyrclassette
Super nerdy, super, super deep. One question before we, we're going to talk a ton about here, but I do wonder how, when you want to make a good cup of coffee, how much of it depends on the quality of the beans and how much of it depends on the quality of the gear. Like, if you have great beans that are ground in a nice way and you have a cheap coffee maker, are you going to get a decent cup of coffee?
- [07:28]
Marguerite Preston
So it's hard because it really is both. And of course, it depends on your taste too, and your preference. Like, you might have a coffee that you really like, and maybe it's not a super fancy coffee, but. But like, on balance, I think if you have bad or low quality beans and you brew them in a really nice brewer, the end result, like, might be sort of like qualitatively better than what you would brew in A cheap brewer, like, you might, if you were a real sort of expert taster, you might taste it and like, get a wider range of flavors or get a more, you know, and if you'd grind them on a really nice grinder, you would get sort of like a more even flavor. But the flavor itself might still not be very good.
- [08:08]
Christine Cyrclassette
I bought our burr grinder. It's the Baritza. Is that what it's called?
- [08:13]
Marguerite Preston
Baratza.
- [08:13]
Christine Cyrclassette
Barazza. I tried it out. I had one from work and I tried it out before I bought it. And I actually did not like the coffee that I made with it at all. And I assumed that, you know, maybe I just don't like coffee that's ground in a burr grinder. But I think it was because I had a cheap coffee maker at that time. So I was using a burr grinder with some decent beans, but did not like the coffee it produced.
- [08:34]
Rosie Guerin
What didn't you like?
- [08:35]
Christine Cyrclassette
It was kind of like too sour or something. And maybe I just had not evolved yet. I was not ready for that quality of, you know, extracting that level of taste from my beans. But I do think that's something to keep in mind. If you are going to make the switch to a burr grinder, you might want to, like, play around with the beans or, you know, what are you brewing it in?
- [08:53]
Marguerite Preston
Yeah, definitely. And, you know, like, to be fair, some of these really fancy coffees are not for everyone. They are too sour for people. They're very, like, acidic and floral or fruity or whatever. And they lack the kind of, like, chocolatey, rich undertones that I think a lot of people like from coffee. And, you know, they can be really beautiful and lovely. But, like, if that's not what you're expecting or that's not what you want, like, it's fine if that's not what you want.
- [09:21]
Rosie Guerin
Okay, so putting espresso machines aside for now, as we talk about gear, what are the best options to make a really good, consistent cup of coffee every morning?
- [09:31]
Marguerite Preston
There's a few ways you can go, and this sort of decision tree is all about how much you want to spend and how much effort you want to put into making your coffee taste good. The baseline, the kind of, like, easiest route is a coffee brewer, a nice drip coffee brewer. The good ones, the ones that will brew a really kind of, like, nuanced, delicious pot of coffee are very expensive.
- [09:58]
Rosie Guerin
How expensive are we talking?
- [09:59]
Marguerite Preston
I think in our guide now, our top picks are over $200. Okay. The Technovore Mocha Master which is one of our top picks.
- [10:09]
Christine Cyrclassette
Yes, we all know I went from like the cheapest coffee maker we recommended to the Mocha Master because I was like disgusted by the coffee from the cheap one. And it's very nice.
- [10:18]
Marguerite Preston
Yeah, it's great. But it is in the $400 range.
- [10:22]
Christine Cyrclassette
Yeah, yeah.
- [10:22]
Marguerite Preston
So there's that. And then you know, you're, you're thinking about the cost of that. Plus if you're being really serious about it and you want a coffee grinder, like coffee grinders are also expensive. There's a couple ways you can save a little money in the kind of grinding portion of it, which is you could get a manual coffee grinder, which is just a little hand crank thing. The one of those we recommend now is very good. It's still like expensive for I think what it is. It's like in the $100 range, but the plug in ones are like a couple hundred dollars. You could also go to a good coffee shop and ask them to grind the beans for you.
- [11:01]
Christine Cyrclassette
Beans you've bought from that past, beans.
- [11:03]
Marguerite Preston
You'Ve bought from that coffee. Don't be rude. Don't show up with your Starbucks.
- [11:07]
Rosie Guerin
Stop at the Acme, head in.
- [11:11]
Marguerite Preston
Yeah. And the difference there is you'll go into a grocery store and there'll be those big coffee grinder machines where you can kind of buy your bag and grind it there. Those are not the greatest because how often they get cleaned is questionable at best. Even if they've cleaned it the day before, people are grinding all kinds of things on those coffee grinders, including like hazelnut flavored. Hazelnut flavored? Yeah. You don't want to get that in your coffee.
- [11:36]
Christine Cyrclassette
I mean, I don't mind it at a, at a gas station.
- [11:39]
Marguerite Preston
Sure.
- [11:39]
Christine Cyrclassette
Yeah.
- [11:40]
Marguerite Preston
That's the time and a place. And you know, the other thing is like, think about how quickly you're drinking your coffee. Like, yes, it is best to grind it fresh right before you brew it. But in practice, if you have a small bag of coffee and you're going through it in a few days a week, it's fine to grind it all at once. And a coffee shop will usually do it for you if you buy the beans from them. And usually they'll ask, you can tell them if they don't ask, but they'll ask you what you're brewing on. And the baristas at a coffee shop like that will usually know based on what you're brewing on, how fine or coarse to grind the coffee, and they can really tailor it for you.
- [12:15]
Christine Cyrclassette
The other thing to keep in mind if people are thinking about getting a grinder is that you need to maintain a burr grinder. You actually have to clean it and sharpen those burrs.
- [12:24]
Marguerite Preston
And that's not something you need to do very often. The cleaning is something you need to do regularly. Oils will build up on the burrs. Dust and fine particles will build up on them. What you'll notice if you don't clean it is that it might start running really slowly. It might take forever to grind anything. So, yeah, you do need to clean it, but you need to clean a coffee maker too, right?
- [12:48]
Christine Cyrclassette
I weigh my grounds, I weigh my beans. Do you recommend doing that or is that like, overly fussy?
- [12:54]
Marguerite Preston
No, I don't think it's overly fussy at all. I think it's a great way to sort of make sure you're getting the coffee that you want. Every time I find myself lost without knowing how much coffee do you. I think some people just kind of dump it in and it's like, whatever. You'll end up either with coffee that's way too strong or way too weak. When you do that, you might also end up in a situation where you put too many grounds in and then the whole thing overflows and you've got coffee grounds all in your pot and everything weighing, I think, seems a little fussy. But like, frankly, like, as someone who was formerly a baker, I'm like, weighing everything is good for cooking. Like, just makes everything more precise, more consistent. And it's not that hard. You just get a little scale. They're not very expensive. There are sort of like coffee specific scales out there that are very precise down to the, like, you know, tenth of a grammar. Those are for the coffee fanatics. For most people, any one of our kitchen scale picks, like the Escali, it's like a plenty $25 scale. It'll weigh to the gram. It'll give you good results. You can just look up the ratio of how much coffee to water you need to use for whatever brewing method. And, like, it'll just immediately make things so much better.
- [14:11]
Christine Cyrclassette
You've got your drip coffee maker. You could go that route. What are the other options that you'd recommend people think about?
- [14:18]
Marguerite Preston
So pour over is the other sort of like really simple, you know, pour over drippers. There's a wide range of price, but you can get one for not that much. Obviously. It's very compact, very analog. Like, it's just a little cone that you put on top of your cup. And people who Love coffee, love pour over. Because you have a ton of control in theory, in addition to controlling like how fine you're grinding the beans and how the ratio of the beans to the water, you can also very precisely control the temperature of the water, which is something that can affect how it brews because you're boiling it in a kettle. You can also control the rate at which you're pouring the water over the beans and the sort of pattern of saturation. So you're making sure that you're saturating them evenly with water. You can do it slower or faster and get different results.
- [15:04]
Christine Cyrclassette
Would we say this is the most. It gives you the most precision, it requires the most attention, it is the highest maintenance way of making coffee.
- [15:13]
Marguerite Preston
Yes.
- [15:13]
Christine Cyrclassette
Besides espresso, maybe.
- [15:15]
Marguerite Preston
Y with the caveat that like you don't have to do all that, you.
- [15:19]
Rosie Guerin
Don'T have to care that you don't. I dump a bunch of water on your water.
- [15:23]
Marguerite Preston
Yeah, I do the.
- [15:24]
Christine Cyrclassette
I've done the same thing. But I think that this is the method that attracts people who really, really want to perfect the art of coffee making.
- [15:32]
Marguerite Preston
Right? Yeah. You can be really fussy about it. You don't have to be. And with some of the pour over drippers that we recommend, like our top pick, the Kalita Wave, you can get good results without being quite so fussy.
- [15:43]
Christine Cyrclassette
Right. And the Kalita Wave, you can buy various sizes. So you could buy one just to make one cup of coffee. You could buy a bigger one that could maybe make a couple. But if somebody is say, wanting to make pour over for more people or more, you know, cups at a time, where would you go then? Would you do something like the Chemex, which people might be familiar with this like glass, beautiful ramekin that there's a pour over setup that fits on the top, right?
- [16:10]
Marguerite Preston
Yeah, it's kind of like an hourglass shaped carafe thing. And so the top of the hourglass is your pour over drink and the bottom is what catches all the coffee. And you can make more coffee in that than most pour over drippers. Like realistically, at most you're going to make a cup. As a side note, a funny thing about coffee here is that there is a sort of like slightly squishy standard in the coffee industry where a cup is defined as 4 to 5 ounces. That is not the size of a measuring cup cup. It is not the size. It's like almost half a mug of what a measuring cup is. Yeah, it is like I'm having coffee with the lady's little cup. Yeah. So if you're buying a pour over dripper, that's like a one cup dripper, it's actually probably making like half a mug. And I think we recommend the bigger size of the kalita because it'll make more like a full mug.
- [17:04]
Rosie Guerin
How about the moka pot? What is that good for? Who is that good for?
- [17:07]
Marguerite Preston
So the moka pot is, it's very Italian. The classic is the bialetti, which is the one that we recommend. It's this little traditionally like aluminum also kind of hourglass shaped, small kettle. You use it on the stovetop. It is supposed to make a sort of espresso like coffee. So again, a very small concentrated dose of coffee. You pack fairly finely ground coffee into the top, you fill the bottom with water, you heat it on the stove, and as it heats, the water shoots up into the coffee and then percolates back down.
- [17:46]
Christine Cyrclassette
I always feel like they're very romantic. My husband loves using his moka pot. I think because he lived in Germany, it's something he used there. And it always tastes a little like muddier to me than what you get from a drip coffee maker or a pour over. It's still good, but it definitely is like a thicker, toastier flavor to me than what you get in other.
- [18:08]
Marguerite Preston
Yeah, and that's because, you know, if you think about it like with a pour over a, the coffee is gonna be ground a little bit coarser. So you don't have that kind of like dusty, muddy stuff that gets into the brew. You're also filtering your coffee through a paper filter. If you're making pour over or you're dripping a brewer, the moka pot, it's just like a perforated little disc that the coffee sits in. So there's more space for those little fines is what they call them, the dusty particles to kind of get through and you're grinding it finer in the first place.
- [18:39]
Rosie Guerin
The moka pot used to be like my moment of prayer every day where.
- [18:43]
Marguerite Preston
I was like, I can see that.
- [18:44]
Rosie Guerin
I was like, if I don't have any moments of quiet in the rest of this day, I will have the moment. I am making my coffee.
- [18:52]
Christine Cyrclassette
Ah, yeah, it was really nice for really little.
- [18:54]
Rosie Guerin
What makes you, what makes you that. So if you're looking for an upgrade to your at home coffee experience, consider looking at your grinder first. And if you want to try those bird grinders, be ready for a little bit of an investment. You could also think about weighing your beans to get that ratio just right and for brewing. A few main options for upgrades, maybe the coffee machine itself or a pour over setup. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to go deeper on who these different brewing methods might be best for. And we'll talk cold brew. I'll be right back.
- [19:39]
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- [20:13]
Marguerite Preston
This podcast is supported by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab.
- [20:18]
Olivia from Ollie
Each week, hosts Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's.
- [20:21]
Marguerite Preston
Chief investment strategist, and Cathy Jones, Schwab's chief fixed income strategist, along with their guests, analyze economic developments and bring context to conversations around stocks, fixed income, the economy, and more. Download the latest episode and subscribe@schwab.com oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:41]
Olivia from Ollie
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- [21:10]
Marguerite Preston
Ollie.
- [21:18]
Rosie Guerin
We are back with Wirecutter's editorial director, Marguerite Preston. So far in this conversation, we've talked about a few of the pieces of gear you can invest in to level up your coffee game, but there are a lot of options. So now we're gonna talk about how to decide which method of making coffee might be right for you.
- [21:36]
Christine Cyrclassette
Let's focus on the the drip coffee makers first. Who is this for? Who should be getting a drip coffee maker and why?
- [21:44]
Marguerite Preston
The Dripp coffee maker is for lots of people. Maybe it's just because you want to make a lot of coffee in the morning. You live in a multi person household, even like frankly a two person household. You Might easily go through a pot of drip coffee. It's also just easy and convenient. Unlike the most of those other methods, you do have to wait for the coffee brewer to brew. And in theory, you have to set it up. In theory, you could set it up the night before, which is my, my.
- [22:16]
Christine Cyrclassette
Husband does that every night and it's like a moment of like, you love me, thank you very much. And I can just push the button in the morning, you know. But yeah, I mean, we switched to a drip coffee maker from a pour over setup because my kids started drinking decaf coffee. Let's just be clear. Yeah, I mean it was because we were making a lot more coffee and we just needed to be kind of hands off and focus on other stuff in the morning.
- [22:38]
Marguerite Preston
Yeah, totally.
- [22:39]
Christine Cyrclassette
I will say the downside of a coffee mach is that it takes up a lot of space on your countertop. So if you are somebody with a kitchen that is just a tiny kitchen or you really hate visual clutter, it could drive you to not want to have this type of thing in your kitchen. But I have a small kitchen and I prioritize having the coffee maker out on the, on the counter.
- [22:59]
Marguerite Preston
Totally.
- [23:00]
Rosie Guerin
With a drip machine. What is going to distinguish a good one from a mediocre one? And why would you want to spend a little bit more.
- [23:07]
Marguerite Preston
The good ones are better at sort of controlling all those factors that you would want to control if you were making a pour over. So the temperature of the water, the rate at which the water is kind of being poured over the coffee and flowing through it, the evenness of how it's being poured over the coffee.
- [23:25]
Rosie Guerin
All the things that impact flavor.
- [23:27]
Marguerite Preston
Exactly, yeah. One thing that we look for, although it's not the be all end all, like there are certain machines that are specialty coffee association certified. They go through this big testing process to make sure that they're within the preferred temperature range for water. To make sure they're saturating the grounds within a certain time span, to make sure they're brewing within a certain time span. You know, if they take too long to brew, they're probably over brewing. In addition to just being annoying, you know, the caveat with that is that companies do pay to get that certification. It's a legit certification. Like it is a very reputable organization and they do real testing. But just because a coffee maker doesn't have that certification doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't have those features. Some of the cheaper coffee makers, you'll open it up afterwards and you'll See, if you look at the grounds, they'll either look like kind of a big pit in the middle, like all the water is just gone straight down the center. Or they might even be a little dry around the edges. Like, depending on what about the carafe?
- [24:27]
Christine Cyrclassette
My Moccamaster has a thermal carafe. So the coffee just goes into it. There's no heating device underneath of it and it just stays warm inside the carafe. Versus other coffee makers, they have like a glass craft that is sitting on something that's heated. What's your thought on those two methods?
- [24:44]
Marguerite Preston
Yeah, so historically we at Wirecutter have preferred and recommended only thermal crafts. That's for a couple reasons. One is just kind of the durability factor. Like those glass crafts can break and usually, you know, you can replace them. You should be able to, but it's an annoying thing to have to drop money on. The bigger thing is that a thermal carafe. If it's good, we'll keep your coffee hot for several hours, up to four hours. But it won't continue to heat it up the way a hot plate will. If your coffee's sitting on a hot plate, you're going to get that kind of gas station effect where the coffee's been sitting there for a long time and it starts to scorch. It really changes the flavor of the coffee. We don't fully dismiss glass crafts at this point. We do recommend the Mocha Master that has the glass pot. We found that the temperature control is actually pretty regulated and good and it doesn't scorch the coffee. And it's also kind of a use case thing that you can think about where the thermal craft is harder to clean. You can't do it in the dishwasher. You have to do it by hand. Otherwise you'll kind of break the thermal seal glass one you can throw in the dishwasher. If you are drinking your whole pot immediately, like it doesn't matter, it's not going to scorch. Like, don't worry about it. Like, obviously we want durability. Like the more expensive machines we recommend come with at least a two year warranty. The Mocha Master comes with a five year warranty. You're spending a lot of money on them and using them a lot. So they should be able to like hold up.
- [26:09]
Rosie Guerin
Who is pourover good for you? Spoke a little bit about the idea of control, that maybe you can get a smaller setup versus with drip, you're getting more than likely a handful of cups of coffee. But what's your Thought about pourover?
- [26:25]
Marguerite Preston
Yeah. Well, I think it goes two ways. It is for the person who wants like the maximum control. If you're someone who likes to try out different beans and kind of like experiment with parameters and see kind of like, how do I make this taste better or how do I sort of adjust to like bring out more of the chocolate notes or bring out more of the berry notes or whatever. Pourover can be really fun. Like, it can become kind of a hobby where you're sort of figuring out how to capture the nuance of all these different beans that you're trying or just, you know, figuring out how to get exactly the cup of coffee you want every day. But it also doesn't have to be that. It doesn't have to be that fussy. You can still get a pretty good coffee if you're like a little bit blase about it. Again, as long as you're like grinding it well and measuring your beans and your water, it can just be like, make a good cup of coffee. And in that case, then it's like certainly a lot less expensive than a drip brewer. Takes up a ton less space and it looks cool and it looks nice. Yeah. And you can bring it with you. You know, maybe you don't want to bring like a ceramic pour over dripper on a plane in your luggage, but like they're metal ones. You can buy that.
- [27:31]
Christine Cyrclassette
I'm long term testing with a metal Kalita Wave and I take it camping because it's just, you can throw it in the gear and it's all good. So there are a lot of different shapes of these pour over. What do you call them?
- [27:46]
Marguerite Preston
Like drippers?
- [27:47]
Christine Cyrclassette
Drippers, yes, the drippers. There's ones that have flat bottom, there's ones that have are more of a cone. What do you think makes a good pour over?
- [27:55]
Marguerite Preston
So we actually recommend in total across all of our pour over dripper picks, we recommend kind of all the styles, like all the different shapes. I think there's really kind of like three primary shapes. There's one that's like, it's a cone, you know, an inverted cone, but it has a flat bottom instead of a pointed bottom. There's one that's just an inverted cone that has a pointy bottom and then there's one that's shaped rounded around the sides, but it's basically like a triangular prism. Like it's the shape of, of a sort of drip brewer coffee filter, which is not conical.
- [28:28]
Christine Cyrclassette
And the advantage to that one is that you can just buy filters at the Grocery store.
- [28:32]
Marguerite Preston
Exactly.
- [28:33]
Christine Cyrclassette
And the other ones are all using proprietary, you know, filters that you have to buy separately, which can be kind of a pain. That's something to keep in mind. If you're not willing to go to Amazon or like a specialty coffee shop to buy your filters, you might want to get one that is that shape, that last category.
- [28:50]
Marguerite Preston
Yes. And that is why we recommend one of those. I think in our testing, the coffee that it produced wasn't quite as, you know, nuanced and wide ranging and kind of beautiful, but it made a good cup of coffee and it much more convenient. And, you know, you can get a sort of Melita pour over dripper like that for really very little money of the other two shapes. So the Kalita wave is one that has a flat bottom. And the reason that's our top pick is that the flat bottom, it holds the water in the dripper a little longer. It's not just like funneling directly through and out that hole. It helps sort of the water distribute evenly through the beans, even if you're not perfect about your pouring. So it's much more consistent, it's much easier to control, it's a little more beginner friendly, and it makes a really lovely cup of coffee. The conical shape, like the Hario V60, which is what we recommend, is just a little more advanced. Like, the water will flow through it pretty quickly. You have to pay more attention to how you're pouring. The sort of advice generally is to do like kind of a spiral shape and it'll make a really beautiful cup of coffee. And, you know, even if you don't do it perfectly, you'll probably be happy with the coffee, but it can be a little trickier to master.
- [30:01]
Rosie Guerin
Am I right in saying the method of pouring water over the coffee grounds is one way you can control the taste with pour over?
- [30:14]
Marguerite Preston
Yes.
- [30:15]
Rosie Guerin
And another way is measuring the beans.
- [30:18]
Marguerite Preston
Yes. And another way is the temperature of.
- [30:20]
Rosie Guerin
The water and the temperature of the water being third.
- [30:22]
Marguerite Preston
And another way is the size of the grind of the coffee.
- [30:26]
Christine Cyrclassette
So for the temperature of the water, we recommend kettles at Wirecutter that, you know, you can precisely control the temperature. So what is the temperature, the right temperature for coffee? Is it 212?
- [30:37]
Marguerite Preston
212 is at the high end. 212 is boiling. Typically for coffee, you want it to be a little under, I would say, like in the 200 range. Like, you don't want to quite go to boiling.
- [30:45]
Christine Cyrclassette
Okay. A lot of people use a gooseneck kettle, which is for people who aren't Familiar. It has this, like, very thin little neck, and it's very elegant and pretty looking. Do you think to get the best pour over, you really need to have one of those gooseneck kettles, or can you get by just using, like a.
- [31:01]
Marguerite Preston
Regular tea kettle to get the best pour over? I think it's really helpful to have the gooseneck. It just offers a lot more control, both of sort of the direction of the water and also how much water. I think with those kettles that have a bigger, kind of wider spout, it's very hard not to just kind of dump the water on the coffee. The gooseneck kettles also tend to be smaller. They tend to hold like a liter of water, and they're pretty easy to manipulate.
- [31:25]
Christine Cyrclassette
We recommend electric ones. What is the main pick that we have right now?
- [31:29]
Marguerite Preston
Main pick is the Cuisinart gooseneck kettle. We also like Oxo's gooseneck kettle. The reason we like those is because they just have a digital dial that allows you to control the temperature. And we found them to be very accurate. So you can just set the temperature for 200 degrees, and it'll heat it up until it gets to be 200 degrees. And they'll also kind of hold it at that temperature for a while. So if you walk away and make your breakfast or whatever, like, you can come back and It'll still be 200 degrees. If you have a stovetop kettle, which I actually do and I love, and you're wanting to be controlled about the temperature, you're going to need a thermometer.
- [32:10]
Rosie Guerin
The last category we want to cover is French press. So many people know what those are. I want to know what makes a good one versus a mediocre one.
- [32:20]
Marguerite Preston
So the thing about French press is that it's another brewing method that'll make a thicker, something muddier cup of coffee. Again, that's because it is not using a paper filter. You just have this kind of little mesh. French press is basically a carafe. You soak the ground beans in the water, and then you use this little plunger to kind of separate the grounds from the coffee. Some people really like that rich, full flavor. Some people find it kind of muddy. So that's the thing to kind of know about the French press. The French presses that we recommend are from a company called Espero. Espero has developed this special filter that does a little bit of a better job of separating all of the coffee from the water and kind of stopping the brewing process. That's the other thing about sort of your traditional Like Bodum French press, which we do also recommend as like a classic, very functional, good French press. It's just this little mesh disc that plunges the coffee to the bottom. But you're. Your water is just still resting on top of the coffee. So if you're letting it sit on the table, it's just continuing to brew a little bit as you're letting it rest. The Espera filter is hard to describe. It's a little more kind of like cup shaped. I can't really describe like how it works better without like actually just showing you. But essentially it does a better job of separating the water from the grounds when you've plunged it so that it stops brewing. So you get a little bit of a cleaner cup. It also has a finer mesh and it's two layers of mesh. It does a little bit of a better job of kind of filtering out those fine grounds that are making it taste muddy.
- [33:55]
Christine Cyrclassette
If someone is in the market to like try something new and they don't have a French press, in what case would you say, yeah, get a French press?
- [34:03]
Marguerite Preston
I mean, I think French press is also arguably the sort of least fussy of the kind of analog brewing methods. So compared to a pour over with French press, you can just actually dump the water in on top of the grounds. You don't have to worry about how you're pouring it. You just worry about how much coffee you're using and the temperature of the water and how long you're brewing it for. And you can make more coffee. French presses come in all different sizes, but you can get one that'll easily fill kind of maybe three mugs, kind of equivalent to a Chemex but a little bit less fuzzy. And it's a nice looking little a Bodum or an S Pro or Honestly, most French presses that you buy are like a very pretty little carafe with a little knobbed, you know, lid on top. They look cute.
- [34:50]
Christine Cyrclassette
I also have a metal French press that I take camping and that's a great way to make coffee for a crowd on a camping trip.
- [34:57]
Rosie Guerin
I like that there's this category of like coffee on the go.
- [35:00]
Christine Cyrclassette
Yeah. I am curious, Marguerite, if you've got somebody who's traveling, what are the best methods for brewing on the go? What do you recommend bringing?
- [35:08]
Marguerite Preston
Okay, well, first of all, ooh, I.
- [35:13]
Christine Cyrclassette
Can sense there's going to be a very shocking answer.
- [35:16]
Marguerite Preston
This may not apply to the most fussy people. There is very good instant coffee right now.
- [35:22]
Rosie Guerin
Instant coffee is having a moment.
- [35:23]
Marguerite Preston
Instant coffee is Having a moment in my life.
- [35:25]
Christine Cyrclassette
It's not like the international coffee like powder, right? We're talking like high end coffee companies making.
- [35:32]
Marguerite Preston
There's a handful of companies kind of making the sort of nice instant coffee. Now the big one is called Swift. And Swift will partner with a lot of sort of high end coffee roasters to make instant versions of their coffee. We've tried a lot of them. They are all, you know, they're not quite at the level of a fresh brewed cup of coffee, but they're quite good. And I think a lot of them, if you kind of gave it to someone blind, they would drink it and not know that it was instant. The caveat is that they're expensive, can be like $3 a serving.
- [36:05]
Rosie Guerin
Why are we paying $3 a serving for instant coffee, Marguerite?
- [36:09]
Christine Cyrclassette
Why are we. Why is it when you're like stuck with no good coffee or you're. I don't know. A use case I've commonly heard is that maybe you're at your in laws and they don't appreciate coffee in the same way.
- [36:20]
Marguerite Preston
You're not always traveling to a place that has nice coffee shops around. Also, the way that I got into good instant coffee was that I was living a busy life with a small child trying to get him to school in the morning every morning. Got really sick of doing, putting any effort into making coffee with any of the devices that I had and just wanted my coffee immediately and didn't have a drip brewer, didn't want to have to leave the house. So I used instant. It was great.
- [37:00]
Rosie Guerin
All right, final question. Tell me about cold brew. Does this spark joy for you? What's the deal with cold brew? It's not just for summer.
- [37:06]
Christine Cyrclassette
I know that I am a big.
- [37:08]
Marguerite Preston
Cold brew proponent and there's.
- [37:10]
Rosie Guerin
That was a leading question, you know, I know.
- [37:13]
Marguerite Preston
And there, there are reasons beyond just that. Like it tastes good and it's the only kind of coffee I want to drink in the summer. But the great things about making cold brew at home, a, it really solves that problem of like, oh, I have to make coffee every morning. You make a batch of cold brew concentrate and it's concentrate that, you know these brewers that we recommend. Oxo is the top pick. There's also Filtron, which is what I use at home. They make this really, really concentrated brew where when you make your cold brew in the morning, you want to dilute it with water and ice so you'll get like a little carafe of it and it'll last you a week. Two weeks, depending on how much coffee you're drinking. I love summer because I don't have to think about making my coffee. I just pour it into the cup. The other cool thing about cold brew, it is very cost effective for two reasons. One, the way cold brewing works, you're pouring cold water over the coffee, letting it sit for a while. That method tends to extract less of the kind of bitter flavors that you get from coffee. It yields a much kind of like, sweeter, mellower flavored coffee. But because of that, you can really use lower quality beans or maybe a roast that you wouldn't enjoy hot. And it'll actually taste pretty good. So that's one thing. You can also double brew your cold brew.
- [38:37]
Christine Cyrclassette
Wait, what does that mean?
- [38:38]
Marguerite Preston
So what I do, you make your brew, you do the ratio of water to coffee that they recommend. You let it sit for 12 hours or whatever it is, you drain it, then you refill it. And it's better to do a little bit less water the second time around, but you just do the whole process over again with the same beans.
- [38:56]
Christine Cyrclassette
Is the second brew just as strong as the first one?
- [38:59]
Marguerite Preston
No, so it'll be a little weaker. What we like to do is just mix it all together and it makes, like, an overall slightly less concentrated concentrate. But these, these cold brew makers make like such a concentrated concentrate. The whole kind of like rocket fuel trope is like, that's what it is. So, like, you mix it all together, it still tastes good. Again, you're kind of like not getting as much of those kind of like bitter off flavors. It's a little less concentrated, but still concentrated enough that you want to add some water or milk or whatever, and it lasts almost twice as long.
- [39:35]
Rosie Guerin
Marguerite, thank you so much.
- [39:37]
Marguerite Preston
Yeah, happy to be here.
- [39:41]
Christine Cyrclassette
The coffee episode, it's finally happened. Coffee lovers everywhere. You're, I'm sure, just thrilled.
- [39:47]
Rosie Guerin
What are you taking away from this one?
- [39:49]
Christine Cyrclassette
Well, okay, My mind is blown that you can brew coffee grounds twice for cold brew. I would have thought that that was a. No, no, but apparently not. So that's pretty cool.
- [39:58]
Rosie Guerin
Not in the Marguerite Preston household.
- [40:00]
Christine Cyrclassette
Yeah, I'm gonna try that this summer. And then, you know, I don't have a gooseneck kettle, and I've always kind of wanted one, and I think it's time. I think it's time to get one.
- [40:10]
Rosie Guerin
I won't lie, it feels good in the hand. I like the controlled pour. It just makes you feel kind of nice.
- [40:15]
Christine Cyrclassette
Yeah. And it's also really pretty, so.
- [40:17]
Rosie Guerin
That's true. My takeaway from Marguerite and she's total me this offline. She's told me this on this show. Don't forget to clean your stuff, your grinder, your machine, all of it.
- [40:28]
Christine Cyrclassette
Yeah, it's true. You gotta do it, people.
- [40:30]
Marguerite Preston
She's the worst, but she's not wrong.
- [40:35]
Rosie Guerin
All right, that's it for us. If you wanna learn more about any of the products we recommended today, check out our website. As always, we'll link everything in our show notes. And don't forget to check the feed on Friday for our bonus episode about t choosing coffee beans. What does it mean when a bag of coffee says that it's going to taste fruity or chocolatey or like figs on a hot summer day? How do you find something you actually like when you take it home? We'll talk about it with Coffee Project New York. Thanks for listening. The Wirecutter show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Matty Mazziello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheva Etoupe, Rowan Namisto, Katherine Anderson and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter's deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor in chief.
- [41:36]
Christine Cyrclassette
I'm Christine Cyrclassette.
- [41:38]
Rosie Guerin
And I'm Rosie Guerin. Thank you for listening.
- [41:43]
Marguerite Preston
I am tired of fussing with the AeroPress every morning like dumb.
- [41:48]
Rosie Guerin
You could have ended the sentence with I'm tired.
- [41:52]
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