Good Coffee for the Lazy
I love coffee. I drink every day. I love trying new methods of brewing at home. I am also lazy when it comes to my daily cup of coffee. I don’t want to follow the ridiculous steps that most coffee connoisseurs suggest to get the “perfect” cup. With that in mind, here are a few tips I’ve learned over the years to make a good cup of coffee as comfortable as possible.
Before we start, of course, the best way for lazy people to get good coffee is to go buy a cup at a coffee shop . So we are talking about home brewing. There are many different brewing methods . If you talk to a hardcore coffee fanatic they argue to death about how their chosen method is the best tasting method. Assessing coffee can be so complex that it requires a five-lesson guide to understand it .
Unless you spend your life trying every brew method and experimenting with many different types of roast, you will always be looking for the perfect cup . It’s fun and great if enjoying coffee is your hobby and you find joy in it, but most people don’t want to spend so much effort on their morning brew – and even some coffee connoisseurs don’t. Most of us just want our morning cup to not suck and be enjoyable to drink. Let’s get this down to the main steps.
Buy good coffee beans and grind them properly
Three factors affect the taste of coffee: the beans, the grind, and the brewing method. Getting good beans is an easy way to improve your coffee game with little effort on your part. Good beans do cost more, but they are one of the most important determinants of overall taste.
The good news: coffee roasters around the world have realized how lazy they drink coffee, and tons of roasters are offering subscription plans for coffee packages. This means you can get coffee at your door weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly with little effort on your part. Tons of roasters only exist in the US, so I would suggest finding a few locals to find one that you like and want to support. Yes, it’s more expensive than buying a pound of coffee at Costco, but you can even get good coffee through Amazon Subscribe and Save for the same amount of money. For what it’s worth, I’m a fan of Intelligentsia in Chicago / Los Angeles , Stumptown in Portland , Lighthouse in Seattle, and Pablo’s in Denver . All of these stores will send you coffee bags if you want to try them. This usually costs between $ 12 and $ 18 plus shipping. However, taste is a personal matter, so choose any beans from your favorite coffee roaster. If you don’t have a local , many other rosters have subscription plans .
With your beans in hand, chop only what you need each morning. I know that this is a guide for a lazy man and grinding grains may take 15-20 seconds of your precious life, but it also applies to good coffee. The point is, freshly ground coffee is one of the best ways to make a delicious cup, and if you’ve spent some money on good beans after all, you can handle them properly as well. When you grind coffee, it releases aroma, so you need to grind and brew for a few minutes one by one to keep that aroma in your cup before it disappears.
Generally speaking, a grinder like any of these is the best recommendation from coffee snobs because you’ll get an even, consistent grind. According to our friends at Sweethome , the best option is the Baratza Virtuoso at the absurd $ 230 price tag . I love coffee, but I don’t spend a lot of money on a coffee grinder. The Capresso 560.01 retails for about $ 90 and should work for most people, although honestly almost any sander will do if you’re not overly choosy (I bought this open box for the Bodum chopper for $ 70, but it retails for price of about $ 90). Either way, the point is that ground coffee tends to be a little stale, so avoid it and grind it yourself.
However – and some people will surely call me blasphemous for that – if you buy coffee locally on a weekly basis, you might get away with having the coffee shop replenish it for you. You will lose a little taste, but each morning you will get a few seconds and you will not have to buy an expensive grinder. In a not very scientific but still interesting study, Entimos Coffee found that while pre- ground coffee is not as good as fresh ground coffee, having it properly ground in the store gives better tasting results than using a cheap grinder at home. So, if you’re not ready to spend $ 100-200 on a grinder, use pre-ground, but buy weekly and use it all.
No matter what you grind, the bottom line is that without good beans, you won’t have good coffee.
Simplest brewing methods: good automatic or overflow machines
I believe that the French press is too dirty, the method of espresso AeroPress does not give a sufficient amount of coffee percolators throw grain, Chemex require special filters with a high price , pans Moka difficult to clean, but everything else is so damn hard that my morning brain to do it right … This leaves a droplet, but not regular brown water. We can do better.
I have two brewing methods that I like for convenience only. One automatic coffee maker. Another is manual, but still easy to make a cup of coffee (and then put away).
The Bonavita automatic overflow is the best and easiest way to brew coffee every day
The coffee lover world hates automatic coffee makers. Typically, they complain about inconsistent water temperatures, which can result in a bitter, poorly extracted beverage.
Enter my favorite coffee machine from the Bonavita series. It solves the problem with temperature , each time maintaining a constant approved coffee botanists temperature ( it is between 197-204 degrees Fahrenheit ). It is approved by the American Specialty Coffee Association. It alsomakes a damn good cup of coffee . This style of coffee maker is often referred to as “automatic pouring”.
You can find the Bonavita BV1900TS for around $ 150 . The older model is slightly cheaper at $ 130 and works just as well, and if you don’t need that much coffee, they also make the 5-cup version for $ 95.
Bonavita makes an amazing cup of coffee and requires no more effort than any drip coffee maker: pour water into the machine, grind the beans, place the beans in a regular filter you can buy at any grocery store, and press a button to brew. coffee. Every time I make coffee for guests, I inadvertently sell them the coffee maker because they end up loving the coffee she makes. The Sweethome says this is the best tasting cup of any automatic coffee maker they’ve tested, it’s not just me. Many agree with this, including Cnet and CoffeeGeek . Sweethome is slightly inferior to Bonavita in its simplicity, but if you ask me, this is the main selling point. There is one button, that’s all. That’s all you need. Programmable buttons are useless if you follow the first rule: chop the beans right before brewing. If you are lazy and want to drink a lot of coffee every morning, this coffee maker is for you.
Smart coffee dripper – cheap, fast and easy to clean
Not everyone drinks eight cups of coffee in the morning. If you just want a cup or two, Bonavita is overkill. In that case, try the $ 20 Smart Coffee Maker .
Yes, this is a “fill”, and yes, you have many alternatives here, but this is the easiest option. Chemex is loved by coffee nerds , but unfortunately it requires specialized expensive filters that cost around $ 17 for a 100-pack . Other solutions like the bee house dripper or Kalita Wave dripper make the cup delicious, but they also require a lot of skill and a steep learning curve to get the right result. The smart coffee drip is so simple that anyone can use it. It works mostly like a manual version of the Bonavita coffee maker. The process is simple and takes about four minutes:
- Place the # 4 filter inside the dropper and rinse it with water (this will get rid of the papery taste).
- Grind the beans as coarsely as in a drip coffee maker and place them in the filter (about three tablespoons).
- Pour some water over the soil to soak it. Wait about 30 seconds until the water-coffee residue stops bubbling.
- Add more water until the smart dropper is full.
- Close the lid and wait three minutes.
- Take a smart dropper and place it on your cup. It will start dripping into your cup. When it drips, your coffee is ready.
As for cleaning, you can just throw the filter away and shred it into the trash, quickly rinse the Clever Coffee Dripper and you’re done. Of course, this is coffee, so you will be able to find loads of videos likethis andthis that show off various methods to customize the taste. It’s up to you if you want to put in the extra effort.
Everyone has different tastes, and everyone’s threshold of laziness is different, so what works for me may not work for you. Luckily, you have a variety of coffee brewing methods to choose from, and each one allows you to make completely different cups of coffee. Also, it’s half fun experimenting with different methods, but that doesn’t mean you want to do it every morning.