Stop Making Bad Coffee

If you find yourself bewildered by this moment where there's so much reason for despair and so much reason to hope all at the same time, let me say I hear you. I'm Ezra Klein from New York Times Opinion, host of the Ezra Klein Show. And for me, the best way to beat back that bewildered feeling is to talk it out with the people who have ideas and frameworks for making sense of it. There is going to be plenty to talk about. You can find the Ezra Klein show wherever you get your podcasts.

People who love coffee love pour over because you have a ton of control in theory. I think that this is the method that attracts people who really, really want to perfect the art of coffee making, right? Yeah. You can be really fussy about it. You don't have to be. I'm Christine Sear Closette. I'm Rosie Garrett, and you're listening to the Wire Company. Christine, the star of today's episode is coffee. One of your favorites.

Most essential drinks of of life. There's just so much to explore when it comes to gear and coffee. And truly I think a great coffee setup can improve your life in a lot of ways. That's true. So yeah, I'm I'm pumped. And we have a Oh really? great guest today. Marguerite Preston is our editorial director who covers all of our kitchen coverage. She has tested a lot of coffee gear. She just knows a ton about it. And so we're gonna bring her on and kind of

She's gonna help walk us through the meaningful upgrades you might make in your coffee setup to dial in your morning brew. So cheesy. That was such a cheesy way of saying that, but it's true. It was very co commercial. I like it. I like it very much. Um, and I really like Marguerite. She's been on the show before talking non alcoholic spirits and ice cream sandwiches.

We also have something extra this week. We're gonna release a bonus episode on Friday all about how to choose coffee beans you actually like. That's with the experts over at Coffee Project New York. It's a really great companion to this episode where we're mostly focusing on gear. So you can look out for that bonus episode this week. Okay, Marguerite Preston.

Oh big yacht, the Lexus, bragging about money, those are just props. That's not the engine. That's not the emotion that my music is running on. That is, of course, Jay Z. I'm John Caramonica, one of the critics behind the New York Times' 30 greatest living American songwriters. We interviewed some of the songwriters on our list, including Taylor Swift, who hasn't sat for a video like this in a long time. Yeah, criticism has been a huge fuel for me, like a creative writing prompt or something.

something. These are not ordinary conversations. These creative superstars are sharing parts of their process in ways that you rarely have access to. On top of the mad task of picking only 30 people, we also went out and got some music world heavyweights to weigh in. Watch all the video interviews for free and check out the entire 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters Project at nytimes.com.

slash thirty greatest or in the app. And let us know if you agree with our picks. I bet you Welcome back. Today we're talking about coffee gear with Marguerite Preston. Marguerite, welcome back to the show. Hello. Thanks for having me. To have you. So today we're talking coffee. I know you know a ton about coffee. If you're trying to improve your coffee setup at home, what are the first things you should ask yourself?

The first thing a coffee expert or a coffee nerd will ask you is how are you grinding your coffee? Are you grinding your coffee? Are you buying pre-ground coffee? Yeah. The consensus is that freshly ground coffee is gonna taste much better than pre-ground coffee. Once it's ground, it goes still very quickly, loses that flavor. If you are grinding your coffee, how are you grinding it? Are you using a little spice grinder with some blades in it, which is what my parents used for many years?

That is gonna grind your coffee really unevenly, which is gonna cause it to brew unevenly. You're gonna get some bigger pieces that you extract less flavor from them because they're bigger. And then you're gonna get some really dusty fine pieces where you get too much flavor, it's gonna make it kinda muddy. What you want if you want really good coffee is a good burr grinder, which is gonna grind really evenly.

And can you explain what exactly a burr grinder is? What's the difference between that and the sort of little spice grinder that just has the blades that were around? Sure. So this is hard because this is an audio medium. But it's a burr grinder is basically you have these burrs. Often they're kind of one is kind of cone shaped and one is kind of like the cone fits into it and they're they're ridged.

So the cone kind of spins around, pulls the beans down into the kind of gap between the cone and the burr that fits the cone, and kind of crushes the beans. And you can adjust it so there's more or less space between the two pieces, the two burrs, and that changes how finely or coarsely your coffee is ground. But the way it's crushing It's not kind of like randomly chopping into different size pieces, crushing into a relatively specific size.

Right. Okay. And so beyond how you're grinding it, what are some other things people should think about or ask themselves when they're thinking about upgrading? I mean, you could just think about the coffee that you're buying. Fresher beans are gonna taste better. So if you're buying beans from a grocery store that are kind of like have been sitting on a grocery store shelf, they might have been sitting there for a while. They might be kinda

still. And there's different qualities of beans too. A cheap grocery store roast, the quality of the beans might not be great. The quality of the roast might not be great. And that can give you kind of a lot of off flavors, which are anything from like kinda scorched you know, it's over roasted to Coffee experts will have all kinds of like words to to describe the coffee flavor. Super nerdy.

Mm. One question before we we're gonna talk a ton about here, but I do wonder how when you wanna make a good cup of coffee. How much of it depends on the quality of the beans and how much of it depends on the quality of the gear? Like if you have great beans that are ground in a nice way and you have a cheap coffee maker, are you gonna get a decent cup of coffee? So it's hard because it really is both.

And of course it depends on your taste too and your preference. Like you might have a coffee that you really like and maybe it's not a super fancy coffee. But like on balance, I think if you have

bad or low quality beans and you brew them in a really nice brewer, the end result like might be sort of like qualitatively better than what you would brew in a cheap brewer. Like you might if you were real a real sort of expert taster, you might taste it and like get a wider range of flavors or get a more you know, and if you'd grind them on a really nice grinder, you would get sort of like a more even flavor, but the flavor itself might still not be very good.

I bought our burr grinder. It's the Baritza, is that what it's called? Barazza. I tried it out. I had one from work and I tried it out before I bought it and I actually did not like the coffee that I made with it at all. And I assumed that oh, you know, maybe I just don't like coffee that's ground in a burger. But I think it was because I had a cheap coffee maker at that time. So I was using a burr grinder with some decent beans, but did not like the coffee it produced.

What didn't you like about it? kind of like too sour or something. Uh-huh. And maybe I just had not evolved yet. I was not ready for that quality of, you know, extracting that level of taste from my beans. But I do think that's something to keep in mind if you are gonna make the switch. to a burr grinder, you might wanna like play around with the beans or, you know, what are you brewing it in? Yeah.

Definitely. And you know, like to be fair, some of these really fancy coffees are not for everyone. They are too sour for people. They're very like acidic and floral or And they lack the kind of like chocolatey, rich undertones that I think a lot of Yeah. People like from coffee. And you know, they can be really beautiful and lovely, but like if that's not what you're expecting or that's not what you want, like it's fine if that's not what you want.

Okay, so putting espresso machines aside for now as we talk about gear, what are the best options to make a really good, consistent cup of coffee every morning? There's a few ways you can go. And the sort of decision tree is all about how much you want to spend and how much effort you want to put into making your coffee taste good.

The baseline, the kind of like easiest route is a coffee brewer, a nice drip coffee brewer. The good ones, the ones that will brew a really kind of like nuanced, delicious pot of coffee, are Very expensive. How expensive are we talking? I think in our guide now our top picks are Over two hundred dollars. Okay. Um the Technivorum Mocha Master, which is one of our top picks. That's what we all know.

I went from like the cheapest coffee maker we recommended to the Mocha Master because I was like disgusted by the coffee from the cheap one and it's very nice. Yeah.

It's great, but it is in the four hundred dollars range. Yeah. Yeah. So there's that. And then you know, you're you're thinking about the cost of that plus if you're being really serious about it and you want a coffee grinder like Coffee grinders are also expensive. There's a couple ways you can save a little money in the kind of grinding.

portion of it, which is you could get a manual coffee grinder, which is just a little hand crank thing. The one of those we recommend now is very good. It's still like expensive for I think what it is. It's like in the$100 range. but the plug-in ones are like a couple hundred dollars. You could also go to a good coffee shop and ask them to grind the beans for you. Beans you've bought from that. That story. Don't show up with your star. Stop at the Acme. Head in.

Yeah, and the difference there is you'll go into a grocery store and there'll be those big coffee grinder machines where you can kind of buy your bag and grind it there. Those are not the greatest because how often they get cleaned is questionable at best. Even if they've cleaned it the day before, people are grinding all kinds of things on those coffee grinders, including like hazelnut flavored. Yeah, you don't want to get that in here. Yeah.

I mean I don't mind it at a at a gas station. Sure, yeah. That's the time and a place. Yeah. And you know, the other thing is like think about how quickly you're drinking your coffee. Like, yes, it is best to grind it fresh right before you brew it. But in practice, if you have a small bag of coffee and you're going through it in a few days a week.

it's fine to grind it all at once. And a coffee shop will usually do it for you if you buy the beans from them. And usually they'll ask, you can tell them if they don't ask, but they'll ask you what you're brewing on. And the Bree says that it Coffee shop like that will usually know based on what you're brewing on how fine or coarse to grind the coffee and they can really tailor for you.

The other thing to keep in mind if people are thinking about getting a grinder is that you need to maintain a burr grinder. You actually have to clean it and sharpen those burrs. And that's not something you need to do very often. The cleaning is something you need to do regularly. Um, oils will build up on the burrs, dust and fine particles will build up on them, what you'll notice.

if you don't clean it, is that it might start running really slowly. It might take forever to grind anything. So yeah, you do need to clean it. But you need to clean a coffee maker too. Right. I weigh my grounds. Um, I weigh my beans. Yep. Do you recommend doing that or is that like overly fussy?

No, I don't think it's overly fuzzy at all. I think it's a great way to sort of make sure you're getting the coffee that you want every time. I find myself lost without knowing how much coffee to use. I think some people just kinda dump it in and it's like, whatever.

you'll end up either with coffee that's way too strong or way too weak when you do that. You might also end up in a situation where you put too many grounds in and then the whole thing overflows and you've got coffee grounds all in your pot and everything. Waying I think seems a little fussy, but like frankly, like as someone who was formerly a baker, I'm like weighing everything is good. Yeah.

For cooking, like just makes everything more precise, more consistent. And it's not that hard. You just get a little scale. They're not very expensive. There are sort of like coffee specific scales out there. that are very precise down to the like, you know, tenth of a gram. Those are for the coffee fanatic. For most people, any one of our s kitchen scale picks, like the Escali, it's like a plenty, twenty five dollar scale.

It'll weigh to the gram, it'll give you good results. You can just look up the ratio of how much coffee to water you need to use for whatever brewing method and it like it'll just immediately make things so much better.

You've got your drip coffee maker. You could go that route. What are the other options that you'd recommend people think about? So pourover is the other sort of like really simple you know, pourover drippers there's a wide range of price, but you can get one for not that much. Obviously it's very compact, very analog, like it's just a little comb that you put on top of your

cup and people who love coffee love pour over because you have a ton of control in theory. In addition to controlling like how fine you're grinding the beans and how the ratio of the beans to the water. You can also very precisely control the temperature of the water, which is something that can affect how it brews because you're boiling it.

in a kettle, you can also control the rate at which you're pouring the water over the beans and the sort of pattern of saturation. So you're making sure that you're saturating them evenly. With water, you can do it slower or faster and get different results. Would we say this is the most it gives you the most precision, it requires the most attention, it is the highest maintenance way of making Besides espresso, maybe.

Yes, with the caveat that like you don't have to do all that. You don't have to care. That you don't I dump a bunch of water in you and walk away. I do the I've done the same thing, but I think that this is the method that attracts people who really, really want to perfect the art of coffee making, right? Yeah. you can be really fussy about it.

You don't have to be. And with some of the poreover drippers that we recommend, like our top pick, the Kalita Wave, you can get good results without being quite so fussy, right? And the Kalita wave, you can buy various sizes. So you could buy one just to make one cup of coffee. You could buy a bigger one that could maybe make a couple. But if somebody is, say wanting to make pour over for more people or more, you know, cups at a time.

Where would you go then? Would you do something like the ChemX, which people might be familiar with this like glass beautiful ramekin that there's a pour over setup that fits on the top, right? It's kind of like an hourglass shape. carafe thing and the so the top of the hourglass is your pourover dripper and the bottom is what catches all the coffee and you can make more coffee in that than most pour-over drippers like realistically at most you're gonna make a cup.

As a side note, a funny thing about coffee here is that there is a sort of like slightly squishy standard in the coffee industry where a cup is defined as four to five ounces. That is not the size of a measuring cup cup. It is not the size of a mug. Yeah. It is Cup is, yeah. It is like I'm having coffee with the lady's little cup. Yeah.

So if you're buying a porever dripper that's like a one cup dripper, it's actually probably making like half a mug. Uh okay. Um, and I think we recommend the bigger size of the Colita because it'll make more like a full mug. How about the mocha pot? What is that good for? Who is that good for?

So the mocha pot is it's very Italian. The classic is the Bioletti, yeah, which is the one that we recommend. It's this little traditionally like aluminum, also kind of hourglass-shaped, small kettle. You use it on the stovetop. It is supposed to make a sort of espresso like coffee. So again, a very small concentrated dose of coffee. you pack fairly finely ground coffee into the top, you fill the bottom with water, you heat it on the stove, and as it heats, the water Sheets up.

into the coffee and then percolates back down. always feel like they're very romantic. My husband loves using his mocha pot. I think because he lived in Germany. It's something he used there. It's and it always tastes a little like Like muddier to me than what you get from a drip coffee maker or a pour over. It's still good, but it it definitely is like a thicker, toastier flavor to me than what you get in other. Yeah, and that's because, you know, if you think about it like with a pour over

A, the coffee is going to be ground a little bit coarser, so you don't have that kind of like dusty, muddy stuff that gets into the brew. You're also filtering your coffee through a paper filter if you're making pour over or you're dripping a brewer. the mocha pot, it's just like a perforated little disc that the the coffee sits in. So there's more space for the those little fines is what they call them, the dusty particles to kind of get through. And you're grinding it finer in the first place.

The mocha pot used to be like my moment of prayer. Yeah. Every day where I was like I can see that. I was like, if I don't have any moments of quiet in the rest of this day, I will have the moments I am making my coffee. Uh yeah, it was. Or really little. What makes you What makes you that? So if you're looking for an upgrade to your at-home coffee experience, consider looking at your grinder first.

And if you want to try those berg grinders, be ready for a little bit of an investment. You could also think about weighing your beans to get that ratio just right. And for brewing, a few main options for upgrades. Maybe the coffee machine itself, or a pour over setup. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we're gonna go deeper on who these different brewing methods might be best for. And we'll talk cold brewing. Yeah.

We are back with Wirecutter's editorial director, Marguerite Preston. So far in this conversation, we've talked about a few of the pieces of gear you can invest in to level up your coffee game. But there are a lot of options. So now we're going to talk about how to decide which method of making coffee might be right for you. Let's focus on the the drip coffee makers first. Who is this for? Who should be getting a drip coffee maker and why?

The Trip Coffee Maker is for lots of people. Maybe it's just because you want to make a lot of coffee in the morning. You live in a multiperson household. Even like frankly, a two person household, you might easily go through a pot of drip coffee. It's also just easy and convenient. unlike the most of those other methods, you do have to wait for the coffee brewer to brew. And in theory you have to set it up. In theory you could set it up the night before, which is my

My husband does that every night and it's like a moment of like, You love me, thank you very much and I can just push the button in the morning, you know? But yeah, I mean we switched to a drip coffee maker from a pour over setup because my kids started drinking. Coffee, let's just be clear. Yeah. I mean, it was because we were making a lot more coffee and we just needed to be kind of hands off and focus on other stuff in the morning. Yeah. Totally.

I will say the downside of a coffee machine is that it takes up a lot of space on your countertop. So if you are somebody with a kitchen that is just a tiny kitchen or you really hate visual clutter. drive you to not want to have this type of thing in your kitchen. But I have a small kitchen and I I prioritize having the coffee maker out on the on the counter. Totally. Drip machine, what is gonna distinguish a good one from a mediocre one and why would you wanna spend a little bit more?

The good ones are better at sort of controlling all those factors that you would want to control if you were making a pour over. So the temperature of the water. the rate at which the water is kind of being poured over the coffee and flowing through it, the evenness of how it's being poured over the coffee. Exactly. Yeah. One thing that we look for, although it's not the be all end all, like there are certain machines that are specialty coffee association certified.

they go through this big testing process to make sure that they're within the preferred temperature range for water. to make sure they're saturating the grounds within a tr certain time span, to make sure they're brewing within a certain time span. You know, if they take too long to brew, they're probably overbrewing, in addition to just being annoying.

You know, the caveat with that is that companies do pay to get that certification. It's a legit certification, like it is a very reputable organization and they do real testing, but just because a coffee maker doesn't have that certification doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't have those features.

Um some of the cheaper coffee makers it's you'll open it up afterwards and you'll see If you look at the grounds, they'll either look like kind of a big pit in the middle, like all the water is just gone. Um or they might even be a little dry around the edges, like depending on whatever. About the carafe. Um, uh my Mocha Master has a thermal carafe. So the coffee just goes into it. There's no heating device underneath of it.

Um, and it just stays warm inside the craft versus other coffee makers, they have like a glass craft that is sitting on something that's heated. What's your thought on those two methods? Yeah, so historically we at Wirecutter have preferred and recommended only thermal craft.

That's for a couple of reasons. One is just kind of the durability factor, like those glass crafts can break. And usually, you know, you can replace them, you should be able to, but it's an annoying thing to have to drop money on. The bigger thing is that a thermal carafe, if it's good, will keep your coffee hot for several hours, up to four hours.

but it won't continue to heat it up the way a hot plate will. If your coffee's sitting on a hot plate, you're gonna get that kind of gas station effect where the coffee's been sitting there for a long time and it starts to scorch, it really changes the flavor of the coffee. We don't fully dismiss glass crafts at this point. We do recommend the Mocha Master that has the glass.

pot, we found that the temperature control is actually pretty regulated and good and it doesn't scorch the coffee. And it's also kind of a use case thing that you can think about where the thermal craft is harder to clean. You can't do it in the dishwasher. You have to do it by hand. Otherwise you'll kind of break the thermal seal. glass one you can throw in the dishwasher. If you are drinking your whole pot immediately, like it doesn't matter. It's not gonna scorch. Like don't worry about it.

Like obviously we want their ability. Like you the more expensive machines we recommend come with at least a two-year warranty. The Mocha Master comes with a five-year warranty. You're spending a lot of money on them and using them a lot. So they should be able to like hold up. Who is pour over good for? You you spoke a little bit about the idea of control that maybe you can get a smaller setup versus with drip you're getting

more than likely a handful of cups of of coffee. But what what are what's your thought about pour over? Yeah, well I think it goes two ways. It is for the person who wants like the maximum control. If you're someone who likes to try out different beans and kind of like experiment with parameters and see kind of like how do I make this taste better or how do I sort of adjust to like bring out more of the chocolate notes or bring out more of the berry notes or whatever.

Poor can be really fun. Like it can become kind of a hobby where you're sort of figuring out how to capture the nuance of all these different beans that you're trying, or just, you know, figuring out how to get exactly the cup of coffee you want every day. But it also doesn't have to be that. It doesn't have to be that fussy. You can still get a pretty good coffee if you're like

a little bit boise about it. Again, as long as you're like grinding it well and measuring your beans and your water, it can just be like make a good cup of coffee. And in that case, then it's like certainly a lot less expensive than a drip brewer. Takes up a ton less space. And it looks cool. And it looks nice. Yeah. And you can bring it with you. You know, maybe you don't want to bring like a ceramic pourover dripper on a plane in your luggage, but like they're metal ones you can buy that.

I'm long term testing with a metal Kalita wave and I take it camping because it's just you can throw it into the gear and it's all good. There are a lot of different shapes of these pour over, what do you call them like? Drippers. Yes, the drippers. There's ones that have flat bottom. There's ones that have are more of a cone. What do you think Do you think makes a good pour over?

So we actually recommend in total across all of our Pouriver Dripper picks, we recommend kind of all the styles, like all the different shapes. I think there's really kind of like three primary shapes. There's one that's like It's a cone uh you know, an inverted cone, but it has a flat bottom instead of a pointed bottom. There's one that's just an inverted cone that has a pointy bottom. And then there's one that's shaped.

rounded around the sides, but it's basically like a triangular prism. Like it it's the shape of a sort of drip brewer coffee filter, which is not conical. And the advantage to that one is that you can just buy filters at the grocery store. Exactly. Right. And the other ones are all using proprietary.

you know, filters that you have to buy separately, which can be kind of a pain. That's something to keep in mind. If you're not willing to go to Amazon or like a specialty coffee shop to buy your filters, you might want to get one that is that shape, that last category. Yes, and that is why we recommend one of those. I think in our testing the coffee that it produced wasn't quite as, you know, nuanced and wide ranging and kind of beautiful.

But it made a good cup of coffee and it much more convenient. And the you know, you can get a sort of Molita por revergipper like that for really very little money. Of the other two shapes, so the Kalita wave is uh one that has a flat bottom. And the reason that's our top pick is that the flat bottom it holds the water in the dripper a little longer. It's not just like funneling directly through and out that hole. It helps sort of

the water distribute evenly through the beans, even if you're not perfect about your pouring. So it's much more consistent, it's much easier to control. It's a little more beginner friendly and it makes a really lovely cup of coffee. The conical shape, like the Hario V60, which is what we recommend, is just a little more advanced. Like the water will flow through it pretty quickly. You have to pay more attention to how you're pouring. The sort of advice generally is to do like kind of a spiral.

And it'll make a really beautiful cup of coffee. And you know, even if you don't do it perfectly, you'll probably be happy with the coffee, but it can be a little trickier to master. Am I right in saying the method of pouring water over the coffee grounds? is one way you can control the taste with pour over. Yes. And another way is measuring the beans. Yes. And another way is the temperature of the water. And the temperature of the water being third.

And another way is the size of the grind of the coffee. So for the temperature of the water, we recommend kettles at Wire Cutter that, you know, you can c precisely control the temperature. So what is this temperature, the right temperature for coffee? Is it Twelve is at the high end, two twelve is boiling. Typically for coffee, you want it to be a little under. I would say like in the two hundred range, like you don't want to quite go to boiling. Okay.

A lot of people use a gooseneck kettle, which is if for people who aren't familiar, it has this like very thin little neck and it's very elegant and pretty looking. Do you think to get a the best pour over you really need to have one of those gooseneck kettles or can you get by just using like a regular tea kettle? To get the best pour over, I think it's really helpful to have the gooseneck. It just offers a lot more control.

both of sort of the direction of the water and also how much water. I think with those kettles that have a bigger, kind of wider spout, it's very hard not to just kind of dump the water on the coffee. The gooseneck kettles also tend to be smaller. They tend to hold like a liter of water and they're pretty easy to manipulate. We recommend uh electric ones. What is the main pick that we have right now?

Main pick is the Cuisinart gooseneck kettle. We also like Oxo's gooseneck kettle. The reason we like those is because. i they just have a digital dial that allows you to control the temperature and we found them to be very accurate. So you can just set the temperature for two hundred degrees and it'll heat it up until it gets to be two hundred degrees.

And they'll also kind of hold it at that temperature for a while. So if you walk away and make your breakfast or whatever, like you can come back and it'll still be 200 degrees. If you have a stovetop kettle, which I actually do and I love, um And you're wanting to be controlled about the the temperature, you're gonna need a thermometer. The last category we want to cover is French press. So many people know what those are. I want to know what makes a good one versus a mediocre one.

So the thing about French Press is that it's another brewing method that'll make a thicker or something muddier cup of coffee. Again, that's because it's is not using a paper filter. You just have this kind of little mesh. French press is basically a carafe. You soak the ground beans in the water and then you use this little plunger to kind of separate the grounds from the coffee.

Some people really like that rich full flavor. Some people find it kind of muddy. So that's the thing to kind of know about the French press. The French presses that we recommend. are from a company called Esbro. Esbro has developed this special filter that does a little bit of a better job.

of separating all of the coffee from the water and kind of stopping the brewing process. That's the other thing about sort of your traditional like bodum French press, which we do also recommend as like a classic, very functional, good French press. It's just this little mesh disc that plunges the coffee to the bottom, but your your water is just still resting on top of the coffee. So if you're letting it sit on the table, it's just continuing to brew a little bit as you're letting it rest.

The Esper for Filter is hard to describe. It's a little more kind of like cup shaped. I can't really describe like how it works better without like actually just showing you. But essentially it does a better job of separating the water from the grounds when you've plunged it.

so that it stops brewing. So you get a little bit of a cleaner cup. It also has a finer mesh and it's two layers of mesh. It does a little bit of a better job of kind of filtering out those fine grounds that are making it taste muddy. If someone is in the market to like try something new and they don't have a French press, in what case would you say, yeah, get a French press? I mean I think French Press is also arguably the sort of least fussy

of the kind of analog brewing methods. So compared to a pour over the French breast, you can just actually dump the water in on top of the ground. So you don't have to worry about how you're pouring it. You just worry about how much coffee you're using and the temperature of the water and how long you're brewing it for.

And you can make more coffee. French presses come in all different sizes, but you can get one that'll easily fill kind of maybe three mugs, kind of equivalent to a Chemex, but a little bit less. Fuzzy. And it's a nice looking little a bodum or an S Pro or honestly most French presses that you buy are like a very pretty little carafe with a little knobbed, you know, lid on top. They look cute.

I also have a metal French press that I take camping and that's a great way to make coffee for a crowd on a camping truck. I like that there's this category of like coffee on the go.

Yeah. I am curious, Marguerite, if you've got somebody who's traveling, what are the best methods for brewing on the go? What do you recommend bringing? Okay, well first of all Ha ha ha. Ooh, I can sense there's gonna be a very shocking answer. This may not apply to the most fussy people. There is very good instant coffee right now. Instant coffee is having a moment. Like the international coffee like powder.

Instant coffee. Now the big one is called Swift and Swift will partner with a lot of sort of high end coffee roasters to make instant versions of their coffee. We've tried a lot of them. they are all you know, they're not quite at the level of a fresh brewed cup of coffee, but they are quite good. And I think a lot of them, if you kind of gave it to someone blind, they would drink it and not know that it was instant. The caveat is that they're expensive, can be like three dollars a serving.

Why are we paying three dollars a serving some coffee, Marguerite? Why are we why is it like Stuck with not no good coffee or your I don't know, a use case I've uh commonly heard is that maybe you're at your in-laws and they don't appreciate coffee in the same way. You're not always traveling to a place that has nice coffee shops around. Also, the way that I got into good instant coffee was that I was living a busy life with a small child trying to get him to school in the morning every morning.

got really sick of doing putting any effort into making coffee with any of the devices that I had and just wanted my coffee immediately and didn't have a drip brewer. Didn't wanna have to leave the house. So I used instant and it was great. All right, final question. Tell me about cold brew. What does this spark joy for you? What's the deal with cold brew? It's not just for summer, I know that. I am a big cold brew proponent. And there's a I know.

And there there are reasons beyond just that like it tastes good and it's the only kind of coffee I want to drink in the summer. But the great things about making cold brew at home, A, it really solves that problem of like, oh, I have to make coffee every morning. You make a batch of cold brew concentrate. And it's concentrate, the you know, the these brewers that we recommend OXO is the top pick. There's also Filtron, which is what I use at home.

They make this really, really concentrated brew where it when you make your cold brew in the morning, you want to dilute it with water and ice. So you'll get like a little carafe of it and it'll last you a week, two weeks. Depending on how much coffee you're drinking. I love summer because I don't have to think about making my coffee. I just pour it into the cup. The other cool thing about cold brew, it is very cost effective for two reasons. One

The way cold brewing works, you're you're pouring cold water over the coffee, letting it sit for a while. That method tends to extract less of the kind of m bitter flavors that you get from coffee, it yields a much kind of like sweeter, mellower. Flavored coffee. But because of that, you can really use lower quality beans or maybe that are a roast that you wouldn't enjoy hot. And it'll actually taste. Pretty good. So that's one thing. You can also double brew your cold brew.

Wait, what does that mean? What I do, you make your brew, you do the the ratio of water to coffee that they recommend, you let it sit for the twelve hours or whatever it is, you drain it. Then you refill it. And it's better to do a little bit less water the second time around, but you just do the whole process over again with the same beans. Is the second brew just as strong as the first one?

No, so it'll be a little weaker. What we like to do is just mix it all together and it makes like an overall slightly less concentrated, concentrate. But these these cold brew makers make like such a concentrated concentrate. The whole kind of like rocket fuel trope is like

That's what it is. So like you mix it all together. It still tastes good. Again, you're kind of like not getting as much of those kind of like bitter off flavors. It's a little less concentrated, but still concentrated enough that you want to add some water or milk or whatever. And it lasts almost twice as long.

It's finally happened. Coffee lovers everywhere, you're I'm sure just thrilled. What are you taking away from this one? Well, okay, my mind is blown that you can brew coffee grounds twice for cold brew. I would have thought that that was a no no, but apparently not. So that's pretty cool. Not in the Marguerite Preston house.

Yeah, I'm gonna try that this summer. And then, you know, I don't have a gooseneck kettle and I've always kind of wanted one and I think it's time. I think it's time to get one. I won't lie, it feels good in the hand. I like the controlled pour. It just makes you feel kinda nice. Yeah. And it's also really pretty. That's true. My takeaway from Marguerite, and she's told me this offline, she's told me this on this show: don't forget to clean your stuff, your grinder, your machine, all of it.

Yeah, it's true. You gotta do it. People Specially that wrong. Alright, that's it for us. If you want to learn more about any of the products we recommended today, check out our website. As always, we'll link everything in our show notes and Don't forget to check the feed on Friday for our bonus episode about choosing coffee beans. What does it mean when a bag of coffee says that it's gonna taste fruity or chocolatey or like figs on a hot summer day?

How do you find something you actually like when you take it home? We'll talk about it with Coffee Project New York. Thanks for listening. The Wire Cutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddie Mazziello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson, original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia Ba Itu,

Rowan Ninisto, Katherine Anderson, and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter's deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Fruman Firecutter's editor in chief. I'm Christine Sear Clissette. Thank you for listening. I am tired of fussing with the airpress every morning. Like dump I I'm tired. Yeah.