After seeing a whole lot of nonsense about coffee over the years, I put together a coffee primer for new coffee drinkers a few years ago. A few people have asked that I post it here, so here you go:

A coffee primer

I started drinking coffee about 10 years ago as an alternative to the Red Bull/Ritalin/stimulants my LDS coworkers were using to stay awake on the night shift. Since this was a health-oriented decision as much as anything, it only made sense to drink coffee without all of the calorie-laden additives, so I put a lot of effort into figuring out how to make tasty black coffee (also, I’m kind of an obsessive geek). To save you the effort, I’ve condensed 10 years of geeky research into the following primer.

A quick note: if you’re planning on adding a bunch of cream and/or sugar, disregard this. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s silly to spend much money, time, or energy on coffee type/roast/brewing technique when the taste of the creamer is going to dominate anyway. Someone needs to write a primer on great creamers and you should read that.

With that said, my best coffee tips (in order of importance):

1. Buy good coffee - I’ve tried and tried to avoid this, but it really is the most important factor. Notice, I said “good” not great. You don’t have to spend $45 a pound on single origin coffee. You may get into that some day, but it’s expensive, and remember that single origin coffee is hobby coffee--it’s fun, but a good blend tends to be more drinkable. Spend $15-20/pound (pay attention here--many roasters sell in 12 oz packages), buy from a local roaster (publik, blue copper, la barba, salt lake roasting company are my favorites in slc), and something that was roasted in the last 2-4 weeks (if it doesn't say this on the package, it's not a good roaster). You may find cheaper, but I have never found drinkable coffee under $10/pound (and I’ve tried). Before you go into too much sticker shock, realize you’re going to get 25 cups out of that pound, coming to $0.40 for a passable cup, and $0.80 for a really good one.
2. Choose the right roast level - This is the next most important factor in influencing taste. People like what they like, but I recommend a medium or light roast. At the dark roast point, the roast is dominating the flavor of the bean, and you’ll miss all of the fruity (and frankly, complex and interesting) characteristics that you’ll get in a great bean,so if you’re going that way, don’t spend a lot of money on it. It would be the equivalent of spending $100/lb on a Wagyu ribeye and then eating it well-done (and maybe adding ketchup? :) ). “Cupping”--another term for coffee tasting--competitions always uses medium or light roasts, and you’ll find that the best roasters often don’t even offer dark roasts. Note: there used to be a myriad of confusing roast labels (city, italian, french, etc)--most have gone back to the basics here, but if you come across one, google it.
3. Brewing technique - Some people give up on black coffee--most often because of bitterness--when adjusting technique would do wonders for them. There are dozens of videos and tutorials on all of the above techniques, but I’m going to summarize a lot of chemistry into a few simple principles:
   1. Ratio: Your ratio of coffee to water should be around 1:15 by weight (~18-20 g for your average cup). Ironically, if you try to use less coffee, it will tend to taste more bitter. So if your coffee is bitter, first check your weight ratio. If regular coffee tastes too strong (not bitter), much better to keep to the ratio for brewing, and then dilute with water afterwards, then to change that ratio.
   2. Temperature: Stop burning your coffee! There is a lot of debate on ideal brewing temperature, but everyone agrees that fresh off the boil is too hot, and will result in burnt and bitter coffee. This will depend on taste a little, but 205 F/95 C is generally agreed to be the hottest your water should be. I think a quick-read thermometer is a worthwhile investment ($20 or so) and I use it every day (BBQ is my other geeky passion, and you should be using this for cooking meat too).
   3. Time: First, a new term--extraction. Extraction describes the process of extracting the tasty compounds from the coffee bean (and Ieaving the less tasty ones). Bitter compounds are, in general, the last ones to be extracted, so if a coffee tastes bitter, it is considered “overextracted” (underextracted coffee usually tastes sour). The ways to overextract coffee: use too much water, heat the water too high, or let the water sit in the ground coffee too long. So next solution for bitter coffee: shorten your brewing time.
   4. Grind size: There’s another cure for bitter coffee--coarsen your grind. This is where a good burr grinder can help you. Water is a solvent--think of it as “attacking” the compounds in the coffee particle and pulling them out. It can do it more efficiently when it’s hot, when there’s a lot of it (it, meaning water), and when it has more time to work--but also when it has better access to the molecular compounds of the bean. The whole reason we grind up beans before brewing is to increase the surface area the water contacts, and the finer the grind, the higher the surface area. So if it’s bitter, coarsen the grind size (or conversely, if it’s sour, make it finer).
   5. Was your roast too dark? Roasting increases extraction rate, so dark roasts will tend towards bitter, light roasts towards sour.
   6. Salt: when all else fails, add a tiny pinch of salt.
4. Brewing method - Important, but not as important as the above. It helps to realize that while there are dozens of established brewing techniques (with new ones popping up all the time on kickstarter), they all come down to crushing up a bean, soaking it in water, and somehow straining off the fibrous parts to get that tasty extract we call coffee. All of these methods exist for a reason, and are equally capable of making great coffee, but here are some of the basics that I’d recommend for a first-time coffee brewer:
   1. Pourover - (Melitta, Chemex, V60) Basically a filter, placed in a cone with a hole or two in the bottom. Place the ground coffee into the cone, pour hot water into it, and catch the filtrate at the outlet.
      1. Pros: can be a nice meditative ritual; price (a Melitta costs $4 at Walmart); my favorite flavor
      2. Cons: a little tricky to dial in (but once you figure it out, easy and reliable); most “labor intensive” (although still--we’re talking minutes)
   2. French Press - a half to full liter container in which you pour the ground coffee and then the hot water. Let this steep for 3-8 minutes (or even up to 15--I’ll discuss steeping time in the next section), and then you press a metal strainer down through the container and pour the coffee off the top.
      1. Pros: unfiltered, and the best mouthfeel (pretty subtle, and most people would fail a blind taste test here); can easily make 4 cups at a time; no paper filters involved
      2. Cons: PITA to clean up afterwards;silt in the last ounce of your coffee; need to immediately serve all of your coffee to avoid over-extraction; requires a burr grinder if you’re going to fresh grind (and you should)
   3. Aeropress - kind of a mix between the above two (and tougher to describe--just google a video)
      1. Pros: Versatility--can make everything from an iced coffee to a pseudo-espresso (and all of the associated drinks--latte, cappucino, etc); easy cleanup; speed; infinitely tweakable (Google “world aeropress championships”)
      2. Cons: can really only make one cup at a time, despite claims to the contrary
   4. Moka pot - consists of two metal containers attached one on top of another. Heat the water in the bottom, and it “steams” up through the coffee grounds in the middle to the top container
      1. Pros: Fun to do; cheap way to make a decent espresso (how most Italian households make them)
      2. Cons: Can be messy; tough to perfect the technique
   5. Coffee Machine - obviously varies, but most are an automated version of the pourover method.
      1. Pros: Can wake up to fresh coffee; takes out human error
      2. Cons: no ritual; unless you get one with an included grinder, you’re drinking old ground coffee; variable in quality from very good to not so much--you’ll need to spend at least $100 to get very good
   6. Cold brew - Pour several liters of water into a large container with some coffee grounds. Let sit at room temperature overnight, then filter off the grounds. If you have a French press, or even a mason jar and some cheese cloth, you can try this right now (Google for method), although the commercial products (Toddy and Filtron are the two most frequently used and are about $30 on Amazon) will do a better job.
      1. Pros: mildest, most beginner-friendly taste; almost fool-proof; can use old coffee; least labor-intensive - can brew a lot of coffee at a time, that can then be refrigerated for up to 2 weeks; some claim less acidic (although I disagree)
      2. Cons: mildest flavor that some say misses out on a lot of the greatness of coffee
   7. Keurig - I hate Keurigs, so I don’t even like including them. They’re an environmental disaster, and they make average-to-poor coffee. Yes, they’re easy and convenient for a quick single cup, but not really much easier or quicker than an aeropress. They’re sort of appropriate for offices, I guess, but not at home. Please, don’t buy one of these, but if you do, buy one of the reusable cups and fill it each time with freshly ground coffee.
   8. Espresso - This is a method, NOT a type of coffee bean. It’s your quickest route to a cup of coffee (an Americano is simply an espresso diluted with hot water to approximate a regular cup strength), which is why it is so commercially popular. It is also your most complicated. To paraphrase James Hoffmann, “Don’t do espresso unless you’re looking for a new hobby”. It’s expensive ($400 for a grinder just for starters) and tough to do consistently well unless you’re doing it every day and multiple times a day.
5. Grind immediately before you brew - This isn’t absolutely essential, but it is the next most important factor making a difference in your flavor. Think of the difference between fresh-ground pepper and regular stale pepper--the regular stuff tastes fine, but it’s missing something, right? Same thing. There are two kinds of grinders:
   1. Blade grinders - beans go into a container and a fast spinning blade cuts them up. They’re cheap, and you can get one that will do everything you need for $20-30. Some coffee geeks claim that it burns the beans, but I’m fairly confident that like many coffee geek things, this would fail a blind taste test. Note: blade grinders do not work well with a French Press.
   2. Burr grinders - A legitimate problem with blade grinders is that the coarseness of the grind is tough to objectively set (I’ll talk about why this matters in the next section). You can kind of do it by timing your grinding, but this is a pain, and you have to worry about the amount of coffee in the grinder as another variable. Burr grinders eliminate this concern by breaking the beans between spaced burrs into (ideally) identical sizes. For a good electric burr grinder, you’re looking at at least $100 (do not spend less or you’ll regret it, I’m told). You can buy a good manual one for $30 (I have a Porlex Mini that I take on the road with me that fits inside the aeropress--$40 on Amazon).
   3. Summary: Burr > Blade >> pre-ground coffee
6. Water - This is getting picky now, but depending on where you live, can be important. If you have soft or normal water, a Brita or fridge filter may be plenty. If you live in Utah, your water is probably hard, and you may notice an improvement by fixing that. Crystal Geyser is the most commonly available good water brand for coffee out there, but just to try things out and see if improving your water would help your coffee. Obviously, for environmental and cost reasons, bottled water is not a great long term solution. There are also plenty of “recipes” for making your own. Here’s a relatively easy one: https://www.velodromecoffeecompany.com/pages/matt-perger-water-recipe . Note: Don’t use distilled or RO water. You need electrolytes to properly extract the coffee.

TL/DR version - buy good coffee, use 18 g per mug. If too bitter: lighten the roast, shorten the time, cool the water, grind more coarsely. If too sour, do the opposite.

And there you have it--far more than you ever wanted to know, but also far less than there is out there. Hopefully, that helps!

For more info:

• I can’t recommend enough anything by James Hoffmann. His book, “World Atlas of Coffee” is the definitive guide on not only the sourcing and roasting of beans, but how to turn them into great coffee. He has a ton of youtube videos as well, and you can trust about anything he says. He does a nice job of separating the useful from the overly fussy, which is a bit rare in the coffee world.
• https://www.reddit.com/r/Coffee/ - quality varies here--there is still plenty of nonsense, but there are also some very smart people on here, and you can ask about anything. There are also espresso and aeropress subreddits, if you want to dive even deeper.