Quarantined? Working from home? Need to save some money?
With a daily trip to the coffee shop costing, on average, over $1,000 per year(!), making your daily cup o’ joe at home is one easy way to enjoy great coffee and cut costs in your budget. If you’re new to this or need new, delicious ideas, here are some at-home-barista tips.
The Good Ol’ Drip: Commonly found in homes or (on a larger scale) gas stations is the automatic drip coffee machine. All you need is this simple percolator ($20 in store for the basic) and some coffee filters. This will give you an easy and quick brew—just a cup, or endless cups! A great choice if you like to sip on coffee all throughout the day.
The Classy Press: To get more of the true flavor out of your coffee, the French press is a great option ($20-$30). Using a cylindrical container and a mesh, press-down strainer, hot water is poured over coarsely ground beans. For about four minutes, the beans infuse the water until the plunger is pressed, separating the beans from the brew. This time of allowing the beans and water to become “acquainted” gives the coffee a fuller and truer flavor. Grind size, water temperature, and acquaintance time are keys to perfecting this method, but even amateurs can produce a delicious cup. A French press may be the next gadget to try if you want to venture into the world of coffee beans.
Give Me a Latte: Don’t want to give up those fancy drinks your coffee shop whips up? Your simple—or fancy—latte can be achieved at home too! Though there are various methods of making the basic latte (espresso, steamed milk, and foam), some are cheaper than others. If you are avid and want to learn the art of latte making, you may want to invest in a good espresso machine (such as Breville) or experiment with a cheaper machine first. However, another method is simple and much more cost effective: a moka pot (i.e., stovetop espresso maker) ($20-$30) and a handheld frother ($10). A staple for Italians, the moka pot pressurizes water up through finely ground coffee, resulting in a very strong brew. A few ounces can be added to warmed, frothed milk, whipped up with a simple battery-operated frother. Using fresh beans, you may find that you no longer need a bunch of flavorings in your coffee! But if you’d still like to sweeten it up, coffee syrups can be easily made or bought, such as chocolate syrup for a mocha, or vanilla syrup for a vanilla latte. A simple vanilla syrup recipe is one part sugar dissolved in one part boiling water, with vanilla added to the cooling mixture. Swirled in a latte with some Irish cream liqueur, this creates a delicious weekend treat!
Beans or Bust: Your coffee bean choice, along with water, will dictate the quality of coffee you’ll be able to create at home. Unless you have very pure tap water, you’ll want to use filtered water for whichever method you use. As for beans, you can surely find a cheap bag at your grocery store; but these have usually been burned during the roasting process (destroys the flavor of the bean) and often have a lot of additives, not to mention they may have been sitting on the shelf for a few years. The tastiest and best choice is a local roaster, where you know the beans are fresh and what is—or isn’t—added to them. Our beans at Windy Prairie Coffee are organic, fair trade, of high-quality grading and authentic flavor, and sourced from small farms as much as possible—oh, and did we mention FRESH? Without harmful additives and with the small farmers being fairly sustained, our beans are a great choice that will leave you feeling great, body and soul.
One other way to get the most out of your coffee beans is to grind your beans right before using them—in other words, have your own coffee grinder! For consistency and to achieve a variety of grinds, from fine to coarse, a burr grinder is what you should look for. If you don’t have a grinder, though, your roaster or coffee shop should be able to grind them for you.
With these basics, you are set to save money, explore the world of coffee, and drink some “quarantine coffee.” 😊
At-Home Brewing Methods:
