Brewing Your Own Coffee Doesn’t Have to Be a Sacrifice
Four methods to brew coffee you look forward to, for cents a cup
If I had a nickel every time I heard the advice about brewing your own coffee to save money, I wouldn’t need to read personal finance blogs at all. This tip is repeated exhaustively, and some of those articles frame making coffee at home as a painful sacrifice in your lifestyle. However, that advice always puzzled me, because I already make my own coffee and have never considered it a sacrifice. On the contrary, I’ve honed in on several easy methods, and these days I go to bed excited about which one(s) I’ll get to have when I wake up. Making my coffee is a morning ritual, and besides the money I’m supposedly saving (according to those bloggers I should be a millionaire by now), I also appreciate not having to stop in the middle of my commute to pick something up.
To be clear, I'm not saying you must brew your own coffee to be wealthy. If coffee is that important to you and you have no time or energy to make it yourself, go ahead and devote enough of your healthy budget to have someone else make it for you. I won’t judge your priorities if you don’t judge mine. However, if coffee isn’t quite that important to you, but you still want to make yourself something a little tastier than the drip machine, you may find these four methods appealing. None of them are hard. I'm neither a barista nor do I own a $1000 dollar espresso station. Each of these methods requires about fifty dollars in start-up costs, can be learned by anyone, and produces results that are just as good or (in my opinion) better than the Starbucks equivalent.
Cold brew
Cold brew is great for fast-paced mornings, since the brewing is done overnight in the fridge. All you have to do is filter, pour, and go. Furthermore, the longer extraction time leaves the coffee bolder and less acidic than its hot-brewed counterpart.
Note, cold brew refers to the method, not to the equipment. Lots of companies upsell products marketed specifically for cold brew, but you can make cold brew in any number of ways: I put the grounds in my French press, pour the water over and then let the carafe sit in the fridge overnight before I filter out the coffee in the morning. If cold brew is the only method you want to try, you don’t even need any “coffee” equipment at all: any container where you can combine grounds and water works, while using a cheesecloth to filter.
French press
After buying an electric kettle for my tea, I was pleasantly surprised to find the kettle has a 200-degree Fahrenheit setting specifically for French press coffee. That discovery coincided with the onset of colder weather, so I started brewing hot coffee again. The French press process is very easy:
- Heat water
- Grind beans coarsely in either my manual grinder or an electric, blade grinder (normally I’d recommend burr grinders, but this was a hand-me-down and works just fine for coarse grinds)
- Pour water over grounds in French press, let steep 5–8 minutes and filter
Needless to say, heating water on the stovetop would work just as well, it’s just easier with a kettle.
Aeropress
The Aeropress is a really neat, recent addition to the coffee scene. It offers a minimalist, traveling- and camping-friendly package, and still brews delicious espresso that can be cut into lattes or americanos. It’s also very easy to clean, and cheap, at around $35. It’s an espresso maker for people that don’t have the money or expertise for an expensive machine, but still want to enjoy delicious espresso at home or in the office.
Espresso requires finer grinds than cold brew and French press, so if you choose to grind beans for espresso yourself, you may want to purchase a nicer grinder. Since all I have at the moment is a blade grinder, I buy my espresso pre-ground from Costco, and have been perfectly satisfied.
Turkish coffee
Most Americans are not familiar with Turkish coffee, which makes it a unique treat to prepare when hosting guests. It’s a fairly simple, albeit longer, procedure.
Turkish coffee requires very finely ground coffee; there may be grinders out there that can handle it, but just to be safe, I buy mine pre-ground all the way from Turkey ($12-ish on Amazon). I also use a cezve (cheap and widely available) to really make the process authentic and spark interesting conversation. Although the steps start-to-finish may take 12–15 minutes, they are quite simple: I follow the technique outlined here and it always turns out well.
“Brew your own coffee and stop buying avocado toast” is a meme at this point, but there is truth in the advice. Luckily, making coffee can be easy and cheap in your own kitchen, and there’s plenty of room to be creative. Give one or more of these techniques a try and see that skipping the drive-thru doesn’t have to mean letting go of coffee you actually look forward to.
