Weigh your coffee
Level 1
It is OK to get instant coffee, add two teaspoons to your mug and pour in some hot water. There are a lot of good-tasting instant coffee brands. Just try different ones until you find one that you like.
Nitpick 1: It would be great not to have your water at 100°C, to be honest. Even 80°C is too hot to drink anyway, so try to heat the water to the temperature you actually enjoy drinking. Basically, the idea is this: instant coffee is pre-brewed coffee. There is no point heating it up to brewing temperatures again. That just causes it to lose more flavour and technically burns it at temperatures above 90°C.
Nitpick 2: Tea is a great drink, such a flavour town, but no, it is not a replacement for the caffeine kick of coffee, unfortunately.
Level 2
If you like a properly cooked steak or an exotic cocktail, the more intense and/or fun flavours of the coffee world might interest you. Obviously, if you are just eating to survive and drinking coffee to function, and you do not care much about taste and aroma, there is no point in weighing your coffee. Level 1 is great, just stick to it and you will continue to be happy.
But if you are interested in what coffee can really taste like, get a French press. Any on the market will do, but in my experience glass ones are too fragile. I prefer stainless steel versions. Some are even double-walled, acting like a thermos to keep the coffee warm.
And by the way, get some pre-ground coffee from the supermarket. All you need to do is mix the coffee with some boiling water, wait a couple of minutes, then press down the mesh plunger of the French press.
Level 3
Get high-quality, recently roasted beans from your local coffee roastery or from an online coffee subscription. You want to see the roast date on the packet, not the expiry or best-before date.
When you buy this “speciality” coffee, ask them to grind it for a French press. Both local roasteries and online subscriptions almost always offer pre-ground options.
To be honest, this is the single biggest thing you can do to improve the taste of your coffee. Unfortunately, good coffee is expensive, but I guarantee that if you loved what you got at Level 2 and want to proceed to the next level, this is the step to take.
Level 4
OK, now we are finally going to weigh our coffee. Get some digital scales that measure down to 0.1 grams. Essentially, the idea is to be precise with the amount of coffee and water you are mixing, as well as the brewing time.
It is like cooking a steak medium-rare; you do not want to overdo it, but you also do not want to under-extract it either. Read online about recipes from actual coffee experts like James Hoffmann, etc. I am just the messenger!
Level 5
Pre-ground coffee is nice, but for the next upgrade you need to start grinding your own beans. You probably already have a food processor or a spice blender at home. I firmly believe you do not actually need a dedicated coffee grinder for a French press at this level. Just throw some coffee beans into the blender and call it a day.
Just make sure the blender is clean, you do not want a garlic or clove smell in your coffee (at least for now).
Nitpick 1: If you do not have a blender or grinder, you will need to buy a cheap hand grinder. I know it is not fun cranking it every morning, but it is a cheap way to move to the next level.
Level 5.5
I am pretty sure that by Level 2 we have already lost at least 90% of the population, and by Level 4, 99% have just sipped their French press coffee, closed this tab and moved on with their lives.
If you did stick around though, prepare to spend more money. We now need a flat 54mm–80mm+ burr, filter and espresso-capable motorised coffee grinder, which will set you back a couple of hundred pounds.
If money is not a big deal for you, you can even get separate grinders specialised for filter or espresso individually. The DF54 grinder is a relatively well-priced option that can cover both filter and espresso grinds.
Level 6
Unfortunately, water temperature affects brewing. You probably cannot tell the difference between coffee brewed at 90°C versus 92°C, but you will definitely notice 100°C boiling water producing bitter coffee.
Remember the horribly bitter Turkish coffee you had in Istanbul five years ago? Yes, we want to avoid that. You should get a kettle with a built-in thermometer or buy a separate food thermometer. (You can boil the water first, then add a bit of cold water while measuring with the thermometer to achieve a 90–95°C range.) A separate food thermometer will also be useful for cooking the perfect steak.
Level 7
By now we have probably lost 99.99% of the population. If you have reached this level, you have probably started noticing many more brewing methods beyond the French press.
At this point, you can start experimenting with V60s, AeroPress, or moka pots, etc. Each will have its own unique flavour profile and will cost you more money. You can also skip this level entirely and move straight to the next one.
Level 8
You love everything about coffee. You are making incredible French press, and now you are ready to dive into the world of lattes, cortados and espresso. Stop.
In recent years, especially during the COVID work-from-home era, espresso machines entered many people’s homes. As a result, most people now think it is the first thing you need to buy to drink good coffee. That is absolutely not correct.
Please do not spend your money on an espresso machine if you are going to use cheap supermarket beans in it. I guarantee that the Level 3 coffee in this post will taste a million times better than supermarket beans in an espresso machine.
Even if you buy good beans but do not weigh them and properly dial in your grinder, that espresso will still taste worse than a Level 3 French press. Just do not bother. Buying an espresso machine only makes sense if you have completed Levels 1 to 6 and genuinely enjoy both the taste and the process.
If you have done all the previous levels and are committed to this, welcome to spending hundreds more pounds. Not only will you waste weeks researching a good espresso machine, you may even decide to upgrade your grinder. There is a whole r/espresso subreddit waiting to roast your questions and choices.
I cannot tell you what to buy, as there are multiple options, guides and reviews for every budget and style. However, I will give you one piece of advice: whatever you do, make sure you buy the espresso machine and grinder as separate devices. Do not buy machines like the Sage/Breville Barista Express that come with a built-in grinder.
First of all, you should already have a decent grinder by this stage, just use that and buy only the espresso machine. Secondly, keeping them separate increases their lifespan. You will not need to throw away the whole machine if only the grinder breaks.
I had a Sage/Breville Barista Express and had to throw the whole thing away because the espresso machine block corroded. If I had the grinder separately, I could at least have kept using it.
Personally, I chose the Gaggia Classic E24 espresso machine. My reasoning was the good Italian “hand-built” quality and the internal simplicity of the machine. After all, this blog is about technology!
Level 9
I mentioned technology, but I chose a machine with very simple internal electronics. What is going on?
Enter Gaggimate, Gaggiuino, or various mod boxes available online. The simple electronics of this machine have allowed generations of people to modify it and add all the missing features from high-end espresso machines.
Gaggimate is an open-source Arduino-based box with a bunch of cables that allows you to run open-source espresso software. This enables precise temperature control, water flow and pressure control, pre-infusion, remote control, endless brewing profiles, and so on.
You can even get fancy baskets and use a tea brewing profile to brew a precision tea. What a marvellous world we live in.
Obviously, installing this will void your warranty (so do it only after it has expired), and it requires capable hands and a bit of bravery to install properly. I am sure you have got this!
Final words
I just hope we never discover some terrible health impact of coffee that forces us to give up this amazing drink.
