Should You Ditch Your Coffee Maker? (Spilling the Beans Episode 1)

How do you typically make coffee at home? 

Are you a coffee snob that weighs out every gram of coffee to prepare in a Chemex or do you just throw some coffee in an old school coffee pot and call it good enough? 

Are all of the measurements and weird coffee contraptions really necessary to make a good cup of coffee? 

We wanted to find out for ourselves so we brewed one cup of coffee in a traditional coffee maker and we brewed one cup of coffee using a French press. We used the same coffee for each brew and each finished brewing at the same time. 

First, we have to admit that we are very biased against making coffee in a coffee pot. If you’re going to buy and prepare specialty coffee, it seems to us that it is worth a little extra effort to make it taste as good as it possibly can. For our taste test Greg wasn’t aware of which coffee cup contained which coffee. We figured this would remove any preconceived ideas he had about which cup would taste better. 

What did we find out? 

The coffee made in the French press tasted way better than the coffee made in the coffee pot! 

It seemed to have much more intense and pronounced flavors whereas the coffee made in the Mr. Coffee coffee maker tasted very muted and bland. Keep in mind that we used a very high quality coffee that was recently roasted. 

It tasted as if the coffee pot stole all of the unique flavors from the beans! 

Although this was a blind taste test, it was far from scientific. However, it did confirm our beliefs that coffee made from the coffee pot just isn’t nearly as good. Whatever you do, please don’t brew high quality coffee in a low quality coffee pot! That is like microwaving a filet mignon! 

If you are just getting started in the specialty coffee world and you want to make a delicious cup of coffee, we believe that using the French press is a great place to start. We will link our recipe for creating a great tasting cup of coffee from the French press here. 

What’s your favorite way to brew coffee? 

What experiments should we run next?