The Brew Blog

The V60 has a higher ceiling than any other home brewer and a lower floor. This is the grind, ratio, temperature and pouring breakdown that gets you to the ceiling instead of the floor, plus what to change when the cup comes out wrong.

The Chemex looks like a chemistry flask and brews coffee like one too: slowly, deliberately, and with a clarity that makes you wonder what's been hiding in your cup. Here's the ratio, grind, filter fold and method that earn that clarity.

The Kalita Wave is the dripper most home brewers should probably start with, and the one almost nobody recommends first. Three exit holes, a flat bottom, and a wave filter conspire to make a cup that holds its own against any cone-shaped pour-over.

The Origami takes both V60 cone filters and Kalita Wave flat-bottom filters, which means one brewer gives you two genuinely different cups depending on the paper. It looks like a gimmick. It isn't. Here's how to brew with it and when each filter wins.

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.