| I roast coffee professionally, and there's just a few things that will make up 98% of your coffee quality, and none of them have to do with technique. And without these no level of technique will ever compensate. 1) Sourcing high quality coffee to the roast level you enjoy. Try a lot of different coffees - from "Ultra Light" to "American Light" to "Medium" to "Dark" - and find what you enjoy, then find a roaster that produces those coffees to a high quality standard. There will not be a ton of these roasters in your country. Maybe even just a couple, even if you live in the US. 2) A good grinder, of course. Fortunately in the last few years this is wayyyy more accessible. There are pretty good options starting around $300, and the workflow isn't terrible for these picks, either. Of course the sky is the limit here, but it's really vital to a good cup. 3) Good water. You'll want to either find a bottled water brand you like for brewing, or use an reverse osmosis (can be a gravity type) system and remineralize it. Cafes do this (if they are any good) and you should too. There's a chance your tap is great for coffee, but only if you're pretty lucky. 4) Decent brewing equipment. The cheapest is a v60 for pour over. You can make good coffee with pretty much any machine, but some will get in your way and cause you to have to fuss with them much more. Then, after those, is technique - and the most important part of technique is really grind size and water temperature (I suggest you do not go above 88c in most cases). |
The importance of technique was demonstrated to me over half a century ago. I grew up in Santa Cruz which has the Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company. They have been doing the pour overs since the early 80's. They have two cafes. A sit down large cafe and about four blocks away an annex in the bus depot (no longer there). The annex was basically a small room with a coffee bar. Both the main cafe and the annex did the pour over with the same coffee, same bad city water (probably filtered), same kind of grinder and same coffee bar pour over setup. The only difference was the cafe was large and the employee pouring would walk off and do other job related tasks. In the annex the person pouring was trapped and therefore much more attentive to the pour. The annex had consistently vastly better coffee.
As to "Maybe even just a couple, even if you live in the US.". I now live in Portland with 48 independent roasters. They all suck? I wonder how they would rate your coffee roasting. Yes, slathered on a bit thick.
I love coffee because the good stuff is really good. The decent stuff is still pretty good and the bad stuff is passable when you really need it.