I stopped drinking coffee regularly for about 10+ years after recovering from a bout acid reflux (where I had to go cold turkey and was a miserable walking zombie for a month), but got back into it as a pandemic project and am now a total coffee nerd. (I’d highly recommend btw that anyone who might be interested in coffee to watch some of James Hoffmann’s YouTube videos. (or for the memes, Hames Joffmann))

Gear

Here’s my current gear, and I’m pretty happy with my setup atm.

Grinder

My main grinder is a Fellow Ode Grinder (Gen1) with the V2 burrs (finer grind and more unimodal). I have it set at 4.5, which is a bit finer than the click below 2 I used on the V1 burrs and seems to work well with the lighter roast specialty coffee I drink.

There are lots of opinions that you can read online (people love reviewing grinders) but basically, the Ode grinder is pretty compact, looks great, works reasonably well and is surprisingly fast and quiet, but requires RDT for minimizing static/retention. IMO it’s a good value for its price ($250-300).

If you’re looking for the cheapest decent electric burr grinder, that’d probably be the OXO BREW (< $100) . I f yo u^{'} re l oo kin g f orso m e t hin g b e tt er t han t h e O d e, t h e [Opt i o n - O L A GOMM I N I] (h ttp s : // www . yo u t u b e . co m / w a t c h ? v = z 6803 C HH L F Y) ($ 375) and Niche Zero ( $600) a res l i g h tl y p r i c i er b u tp o t e n t ia ll y b e tt ers in g l e - ser v in g a lt er na t i v es . B a r a t z aha s a l o t o f o pt i o n s, an d i f yo u^{'} re l oo kin g f or g r in d in g m ore, or f or m ore f l e x ibi l i t y, t h e [B a r a t z aVa r i o W +] (h ttp s : // l i f es t y l e l ab . c a / ba r a t z a - v a r i o - w - re v i e w /) ($ 600) is IMO the most interesting. If you’re ok for more retention, not as into single-dosing (I swap beans almost every day) there are other options as well.

I also have a Hario Smart G Electric as a portable grinder, although I’m usually too lazy to bring it along unless it’s a long trip and I know I’ll be making my own coffee.

Kettle

IMO, any temperature control goose-neck is fine. I’m using a 800mL Yamazen YKG-C800 that was cheap (~$50) and works great.

Scale

Any kitchen scale that lets you tare and has a timer is fine. There are a bajillion options on Amazon. I’ve tried a couple of the “smart” scales and I’m not sure I like any of them better than the simpler ones.

Recently, I had to replace my scale and ended up with something slightly fancier, an Elecom HCS-KS04BK ($30). The main selling point of the new scale for me is that it has a (mutable) ticking sound every 30 seconds (extremely useful if you’re like me and mostly doing immersion-percolation and sometimes forgetting about it).

Water

I use filtered (reasonably soft, 50-100mg/L according to 3rd party measurements) tap water and don’t stress about it too much.

Dripper

My main dripper is a Hario Switch immersion dripper. It uses Hario V60 Paper Filters and will let you do regular percolation (regular pourover) or immersion-percolation (stoppered-and-drain). I was originally using a Clever Dripper, but the stopper mechanism on mine broke one day. Since the Clever Dripper uses Kalita-style filters, I decided to try out the Hario Switch to standardize filters. It’s worked well with no problems so far.

Process

In the end of 2024, Kasuya released a new “dual immersion” (my name, he didn’t have one) Switch technique. I didn’t do comprehensive testing, but it wasn’t hard to adopt and it did seem more forgiving, making some harsh beans I had taste smoother/sweeter.

15:1 brew ratio
15g of beans (medium - 6 on my Ode w/ V2 burrs)
Boil (300g) water to 96C
Have 100g of cold (20C) water set aside
Switch closed for bloom
CLOSED 0:00-0:30 50g bloom (30s immersion)
OPEN 0:30-0:45 drain
OPEN 0:45-1:15 50g (100g total) pour/drain
OPEN 1:30-2:00 50g (150g total) pour/drain
Add cold water (aim to cool to 70C-ish)
CLOSED 2:15-3:00 75g (225g total) immersion (45s immersion)
Drain I’m still playing around with it, but overall this recipe seems to be very forgiving and make pretty tasty cups.

In early 2023, Tetsu Kasuya published a new Hario Switch “Hybrid” technique, which after A-B testing out with the 5 beans I had on-hand (every bean tasted better), I sort of had to switch to it, even though it’s a bit more involved:

14:1 brew ratio
Grind 15g of beans (medium-fine/fine - I use <4 on my Ode w/ V2 burrs)
Boil (300g) water to 95C
Have 100g of cold (20C) water set aside
Have Switch open
0:00-0:15 40g bloom
0:30-0:45 60g second pour
Add cold water (aim to cool to 70C)
1:15 - stopper/close Switch and pour 110g of water
1:45 - open Switch
3:00 - if still draining, stop, dilute as necessary (almost always fully drains by 3min)

The easier method that I was using for a long while was a variation of James Hoffman’s Ultimate Clever Dripper Technique.

Boil water to 95-99C
Grind 14g of beans
Stopper
Pour 196g of water for 14:1 brew ratio
Start timer
Drop beans on top (helps prevent filter clogging vs on the bottom)
Wait until 2m
Give a swirl/stir to break up anything on the top
Drain at 2:30m
Usually drained a bit over 3m

I used to be a big pourover nut, but for daily drinking, immersion percolation gets you most of the way there, more reliably/repeatably. IMO the main advantage of immersion percolation is how easy it is, and also that it’s much more forgiving than pourover. The best pourover techniques simply require more math and concentration than I will reliably want to muster before I’ve had my coffee. Immersion percolation also tends to give a bit more mouth-feel and body at the cost of a bit of clarity/separation.

I’ve standardized on a higher temperature 95 to off boil for my light roast specialty beans (going higher recently) - I’ve found as I go lower on these, they get more sour and the glass of the Switch itself takes a couple degrees off, but it’s more important to lower the temperature for darker roasts (90C down to 85C even) since too high temps are too bitter.

Does temperature even matter? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ-hKmz4PIY
Recent 1 cup techniques moving to higher temps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oB1oDrDkHM
Tetsu Kasuya has a new Hybrid Method for the Switch that uses the first bits of the 4:6 basically for percolation, and then a final immersion at a much lower temperature (~70C)
James Hoffman’s Ultimate Aeropress Recipe is another recipe I’ve used which is very simple, and creates a more rounded/balanced cup that I’ve found to be quite pleasant/easy to drink. It is different but about on par with the Kasuya hybrid technique

I’ve found that I can basically (and more reliably) make better drip coffee at home than most of the top-rated/famous coffee shops in town, and I get to choose my exact beans (which I’ve been getting much more into, and tend to be impossible to get at most shops(or about 4-5X the price of the beans at Ogawa, Mameya, or Starbucks Reserve when they offer similar quality beans)). It’s also much more convenient so I tend to drink my coffee mostly at home.

One nice thing about settling on process, is that I spend most of my limited coffee nerd energy on exploring beans instead. (See Bean Notes)

mostlyobvious

Explorer

Coffee Setup