How To Start Home Coffee Brewing The Right Way

There's a start for everyone who wants to brew delicious fresh coffee at home. But not everyone had a good start, including us 🙃

In this post we share tips & tricks of all the details for new starters to get a good head start. No more hit or miss for your home coffee brewing. Let's go!

Buy brewer first or grinder first?

First thing first, The Coffee Grinder

This is one of the most frequently asked questions, should I get a coffee brewer or grinder to start home brewing?

Our answer is always, GET A COFFEE GRINDER FIRST!!

Like an apple turns brown once you cut it, ground coffee goes stale within minutes from the moment you grind it 😫

All the beautiful aromatics are began to lose due to oxidation as the surface area of coffee beans is expended once you grind it. This speeds up the oxidation and delicious aromatics go into thin air 🌬

To make sure all the precious flavours & aromatics go into your cup, you MUST grind the beans right before brewing!

For well-rested coffee & opened bag, every second of ground coffee expose to oxygen, the intensity of aromatics declines and it will be all gone by 20-30 mins (slightly longer if it’s a few days old and fresh roasted).

If you purchase a bag of beans and ask to grind the whole bag, you are pretty much wasting your money as all the aromatics will escape from the bag the moment you open it at home 😶‍🌫️

Fresh ground coffee makes delicious fresh coffee

Also, you’ll get to learn about grind size adjustments when brewing with a different roast level of coffee beans or brewers.

For a starter, get a coffee grinder that matches your budget!

There are thousands of coffee grinders in the market & the price range is extremely wide, from RM100 hand grinder all the way to RM15k commercial grinders.

But for a starter, all are pretty much the same if you are at the very beginning of home coffee brewing 😆

We highly recommend starting with a hand grinder first!

Hario Skerton is a great grinder for starters to brew any filter brew at home. If you travel a lot, the Porlex grinders is the perfect one on the go!

As your coffee brewing skills & tasting palate gradually improves over the years, there you can upgrade to a better grinder to take your home-brewed coffee to the next level!

Lastly, always take a sniff of freshly ground coffee before you brew it! It’s part of the enjoyment of delicious coffee 😁

Check out all the coffee grinders we have in store here & learn more about grind size adjustments here.

PS: Please DO NOT recommend anyone to start home brewing by buying brewers and buying the whole bag of ground coffee. This is the worst advice ever & you are feeding them stale coffee 😵

The single ingredient of good coffee is freshly roasted coffee beans.

Secondly, Coffee Beans

Now that you have a coffee grinder for freshly ground coffee, now let’s get into the ingredients. Ie coffee beans!

One of the questions we always got from new home brewer starters is, what coffee beans are suitable for a beginner? The answer, ALWAYS START WITH FRESHLY ROASTED COFFEE BEANS!

Quote from chefs, to make a delicious meal, first you need fresh & high-quality ingredients. The same goes for coffee!

Freshly roasted coffee beans are the must-have to brew a delicious cuppa, best enjoy within 1 month after the roast date 🗓

This is where coffee beans taste the best and all the aromatics & flavours are still within the beans. 

That said, you can just ignore all the dusty months-old beans on supermarket shelves 🤢

But remember that fresh roasted coffee beans take time to degas right after roasting too, so the best time to start a bag of beans is on the 7-10th days after the roast date.

Zero defect beans makes the best tasting coffee.  

Next, get high-quality beans that you can afford & beans that suit your preference.

If you like bold strong coffee, get dark roast or blends. If you like fruity coffee, Ethiopian coffee is everyone’s favourite and a great choice for starters!

Please don’t buy any expensive beans if you are starting, you probably wasting your money & can’t taste the difference anyway 😅

Skills required for top tier expensive beans.

Lastly, make sure you store the coffee beans well!

A top tip for coffee beans storage is to squeeze out all the air in the packaging before sealing and ensure as little air as possible inside the packaging.

This minimises the oxygen contact with beans and keeps deliciousness for a longer time. Also, keep the beans in a cool dry place, the kitchen cupboard is the perfect place for coffee beans!

To make it easy to find your favourite coffee, we have set the coffee quiz here for you to find the perfect fresh roasted coffee beans that will suit your preferences.

If you are looking for well-rested beans 2 weeks old beans that you wanna brew right away, the Sale coffees with clearance prices are for you here 😎

With coffee grinder & fresh beans, any brewers makes good coffee

Thirdly, About Coffee Brewer

Yes, that’s right, coffee brewers rank third in importance to delicious coffee. Without fresh beans & freshly ground coffee, you don’t get delicious coffee. Period.

Like any sport, getting the best equipment does not mean that you’ll perform better. You’ll need to train hard & improve your performance, then only get better equipment to take it to the next level!

For starters, just getting any brewers that you can afford will do!

We started home brewing with a Porlex grinder & Aeropress. Cheap & cheerful brewer that makes a good decent cuppa 🤗

As we understood more details about brewing techniques like brew ratio, grind size, water temperature & tasting skills, then we started getting other brewers like Hario V60 & other brewing tools to further enhance the brewing experience!

The easiest brewer we recommend for a starter is the French Press! You can find it pretty much everywhere and probably the cheapest to start with 🥰

Also, don't forget to get a cheap kitchen scale too! Any kitchen scale that cost probably less than RM50 will do the job, totally eliminating any chances of hit or miss. 

Good machine makes good espresso.

If you wish to start making espresso & latte, we highly recommend you start with mid-range & above espresso machines for better stability, consistency & durability.

Lower-range machines may not have good temperature control & heat retention. It will be a big waste of money to purchase an espresso machine that does not perform well and always underextract your espresso 😖

A good decent mid-range espresso machine is stable & more durable than lower range machine. Definitely, a worthwhile investment to save you a lot of money in the long run💰

Last but not least, make sure you have a good water filter at home! Alternatively, you can make DIY water for coffee too. Learn more about DIY water here & also check out all the coffee brewers in store here.

There you have it! Please share this post with your friends & families who wanna start coffee brewing at home, they will thank you & make you a delicious cup of coffee. Sharing is caring ❤️