The menu · 20 methods, fine → coarse
Brew Methods
Pick a method for its ideal ratio, grind size, temperature and a step-by-step guide.
No brew method matches.
Pressure
small, intense cups — forced through a packed bed
Espresso
Coffee at its most concentrated: 25 seconds of pressure that pull a syrupy, aromatic ounce under a cap of hazelnut crema. It's the hardest brew to master and the most rewarding once you land it.
1:2 · 93 °C · 1:20 · 200–300 µm
Moka Pot
Italy's stovetop icon — a gurgling little pressure brewer that makes something bold and espresso-adjacent without a machine. Cheap, near-indestructible, and as much ritual as recipe.
1:10 · 96 °C · 1:55 · 300–400 µm
Pour over & drip
clean, bright cups — water passes through the bed once
Pour Over (V60)
The clarity method — a single cone, a paper filter and a steady pour that turn good beans into something bright, tea-like and articulate. It rewards attention and shows off a coffee's origin.
1:16 · 94 °C · 3:33 · 450–650 µm
Chemex
Half brewer, half sculpture. The Chemex's thick bonded filter strips out oils and fines for the cleanest, brightest cup in coffee — a carafe you'll happily leave on the table.
1:16 · 94 °C · 5:35 · 700–900 µm
Drip / Batch
The workhorse. A good drip machine and a burr grinder quietly make better coffee than most cafés — set it, walk away, and come back to a full carafe.
1:16 · 94 °C · 3:40 · 600–800 µm
Cold Drip
The Kyoto tower: three chambers of glass, one valve, and hours of patience. Cold water and ice drip through the bed a drop at a time, and what collects at the bottom is a concentrate — sweeter and heavier than cold brew, and clean in a way immersion never quite is.
1:10 · 20 °C · 5 h · 700–900 µm
Cuccumella
Naples' own pot, and the one people mistake for a moka. It is the opposite: there is no pressure anywhere in a cuccumella. Water boils in the bottom chamber, a jet of steam from a little hole says so, and then you take it off the heat and turn the whole thing over — after which gravity, and only gravity, pulls it down through the coffee into the spouted half.
1:11 · 100 °C · 9:20 · 500–700 µm
Kaapi Filter
South India's everyday coffee, and one of the few brewers that makes something you are not meant to drink. Two stainless chambers drip a decoction for ten to fifteen minutes; it comes out at roughly 1:5 and goes into three or four times its volume of scalding milk, and then the whole thing is thrown between a tumbler and a dabarah from as high as the pourer can manage.
1:5 · 92 °C · 17 min · 450–650 µm
Chorreador
Costa Rica's everyday brewer: a cotton sock on a wooden stand, and nothing else. No paper, no cone, no plastic — the cloth is the filter, and the same apparatus pours coffee in the kopitiams of Singapore and Malaysia under a different name.
1:16 · 94 °C · 4:25 · 450–650 µm
Vietnamese Phin
Slow coffee, Vietnamese style. A little metal filter perches on your glass and drips a dark, intense brew — traditionally onto a layer of sweetened condensed milk, poured over ice as cà phê sữa đá.
1:6 · 95 °C · 5:50 · 800–1000 µm
Immersion
steeped, full-bodied cups — grounds and water sit together
AeroPress
The tinkerer's favourite — a syringe-like plunger that's nearly foolproof, endlessly hackable and travels anywhere. Two minutes, a rinse, and a cup that's whatever you want it to be.
1:14 · 85 °C · 3:05 · 400–700 µm
French Press
The unfussy classic — full immersion behind a metal mesh, no filters, no fiddly pour. Steep, press and pour a heavy, rich cup that tastes of the bean, oils and all.
1:15 · 95 °C · 5:35 · 900–1200 µm
Cold Brew
Patience in a jar. Coarse grounds and cold water, left alone for half a day, make a smooth, sweet, low-acid concentrate you can keep in the fridge and pour over ice all week.
1:10 · 20 °C · 16 h · 1000–1400 µm
Siphon
The showpiece. A vacuum brewer that looks like lab glassware and brews like theatre — water climbs, coffee steeps, and the finished cup is pulled back down as it cools. Clean, aromatic and a genuine spectacle.
1:15 · 93 °C · 4:20 · 500–700 µm
Percolator
The pot that made American coffee for a century, and the only brewer here that runs the same water through the same grounds over and over. Boiling water climbs a stem, sprays out under the glass knob, falls through a basket of coarse coffee and lands back in the pot to do it again. It works, and it will happily keep going until it has ruined itself.
1:15 · 96 °C · 10 min · 900–1200 µm
Prestina
Immersion that finishes under pressure, with no plunger anywhere — the cup you drink from is the thing that presses. Coffee in, water in, a minute of stillness, and you push the brewer down into its own tumbler.
1:16 · 90 °C · 2:35 · 500–700 µm
Boiled in the pot
unfiltered cups — brewed loose over heat, poured off the grounds
Turkish
The oldest way to make coffee, and one of the most ceremonial. Powder-fine grounds simmered in a cezve with the foam served on top — unfiltered, aromatic and steeped in ritual.
1:10 · 20 °C · 3:10 · 70–150 µm
Jebena
Ethiopia's jebena buna, and the oldest coffee ritual there is — coffee's own country brewing it the way it has always been brewed. A round-bellied clay pot on coals, grounds tipped into boiling water, one climb up the long neck, and then the pot stands until the grounds fall out of it. There is no filter anywhere in this method.
1:10 · 100 °C · 10 min · 500–700 µm
Dallah
Gulf Arabic qahwa, from the long-beaked pot it is poured out of. Cardamom gets the water to itself first, a very light roast simmers in it without ever boiling, saffron goes in at the end — and nothing filters it but gravity and a patient hand.
1:20 · 95 °C · 12 min · 200–400 µm
Cafe de Olla
Mexico's clay-pot coffee, and the only brew here whose recipe starts with sugar and spice. Piloncillo, cinnamon and whole spices go into the water first; the coffee goes in off the heat, steeps, and is poured out through a sieve. Sweet, dark and unmistakably of somewhere.
1:20 · 95 °C · 10 min · 800–1000 µm