The Brew Blog

The French press is the most misunderstood brewer in the kitchen. Treated as a forgiving novice tool, it produces bitter, gritty, slightly sad coffee. Treated properly, it makes some of the richest cups you can brew at home. The difference is four small decisions.

The AeroPress is the most versatile brewer ever designed — filter coffee, espresso-style concentrate, iced, travel, a dozen variations in between, all from $40 of plastic. If you owned only one brewer for the rest of your life, you could do far worse.

People love to make this an ideological fight. It isn't. The AeroPress and French press produce different coffee for different situations, and once you know what each does well, the choice is usually obvious within thirty seconds. Here's the honest breakdown.

The Clever Dripper might be the most underrated brewer in specialty coffee. It costs about $30, requires no pouring technique, and makes a cup roughly 90% as good as a well-executed pour-over with about 30% of the effort. Here's why, and how to brew with one.

The siphon is the most theatrical brewer in coffee — two glass chambers, a burner, water rising on vapour pressure and falling on vacuum. It produces an almost analytically clean cup. Whether you should actually own one is a different question, and the honest answer is in here.

Inverting the AeroPress eliminates the one annoying quirk of the standard method: drip-through during steeping. You get full control over contact time, which matters more than any other variable in the brew. Step by step, including the flip — the only tricky part.