Intentional Coffee at Home Part 1: Setting Up Your Station

Today I’m sharing some easy tips to implement making delicious coffee at home! I’ve been a barista for over six years now and I’ve discovered some key factors to up your coffee game at home.

We believe in bringing intentionality to everything we do and that can be as simple as starting with good coffee! Slow down, create with care and precision, and then savor and enjoy. While some days call for a quick coffee while running out the door, I hope you’ll join us here at Intentionally Ordinary by waking up a few minutes early and savoring your delicious cup of freshly ground, freshly brewed, homemade coffee before you start your day.

Step 1: Source Good Coffee Beans

A lot goes on behind the scenes to get coffee to our homes, so I like to be intentional in choosing beans that support farmers, businesses that put a lot of thought and care into their coffee, products and equipment that make the coffee delicious, and processes that will result in a delicious product to wake you up in the morning.

Coffee is so fascinating, and I’m tempted to give you quite the run down about how coffee is grown and sourced. But I’ll keep it short. Coffee grows on trees in a cherry like fruit in regions around the world, but primarily in Central and South America and in Africa. The beans are harvested from the cherries and washed or dried, then packaged up and shipped to coffee roasters in your neighborhood, across the country, and all over the world. Coffee roasters turn this little green seed into the coffee beans we know and love through a detailed process of heating and cooling to achieve optimum flavor. The roasted coffee is packaged up and delivered to the grocery store, your local shop, or shipped to you. Even though this is an abbreviated version of coffee’s journey, you can see it takes and immense effort to arrive at coffee’s final form.

There are so many people involved in this process and in recent years the specialty coffee industry has highlighted individual farms that are caring for the coffee plant with intention. Because of this highlight on high quality beans, specialty coffee shops also strive to treat the coffee with intention and use products and processes that make these coffees shine.

As an experienced barista, I also want to bring this intention home with me. Many may treat coffee as a vehicle for energy, but for me coffee is meant to be delicious on its own, enjoyed with good friends, or savored in a quiet moment.

Our lives move at a frenetic pace in the modern age and I’m beginning to see the value in slowing down to not only be intentional with where we get out coffee and how we make it, but also in how we spend our moments drinking it.

So our first step to making intentional coffee at home is to source good coffee beans.

Here’s what I look for to know that a roaster cares about where its beans come from: bags are sold in whole beans, bags list country of origin and the name of the farmer/farm, bags list tasting notes, and beans are roasted “medium”. This has some exceptions and I’m sure there’s delicious coffee that doesn’t fall into these qualifiers, but for me this is a baseline evaluation of if I can trust the roaster to make a good product. If the company truly cares for its coffee, it should be highlighting these features in a majority of these products.

I highly recommend doing your research and finding a local roaster near where you live. There are some bigger companies that I would recommend like Blue Bottle, Verve, and Stumptown as starting points. These companies might be available in your grocery store. And of course so many amazing small roasters are accessible online. I love Heart, Good Coffee, Be Bright, Go Get ‘Em, AndyTown, and Saint Frank, just to name a few. But, if you live in a town that has a local coffee shop or even coffee roaster, I’m a huge advocate of supporting local.  

Once you’ve researched and sourced delicious whole coffee beans, roasted from companies that seek out high quality beans from intentional farmers, you’re ready to gather equipment to make that coffee shine.

Step 2: Purchase High Quality Equipment

There are so many products on the market that all claim to make great coffee. I’m sure many of them do, but part of living in an intentional home is only bringing in the items that are necessary and serve you and your goals. I encourage you not to get swept up by the latest new thing, simply invest in the product that will help you make fantastic coffee.

Start by evaluating what kind of coffee you want to have at home – drip coffee or espresso are the primary methods. Do you want to serve coffee to a crowd? You’ll need larger carafes to do so. Is the coffee just for you? Smaller equipment will be sufficient here.

Once you’ve evaluated your needs and your ideal set up, it’s time to purchase essential equipment. Regardless of the brew method you land on, I recommend buying a burr grinder and scale. These can be purchased at varying price points, so I’ll link one inexpensive grinder here and a pricier option here. The primary component you’ll need in a grinder is burrs – blade grinders do not produce an even grind and should not be used in making quality coffee. A kitchen scale can suffice for measuring your coffee, but I highly recommend a scale with a built-in timer if you’ll be making pour overs– here’s an inexpensive option and a splurge option here.

If you’ll be primarily making espresso, I recommend Breville products – the espresso machines come with all the equipment you’ll need like a tamp and a milk steaming pitcher. The machine is easy to program and makes delicious espresso without too much experimentation. I have this model, but there is also a larger version that comes with a built-in grinder (here’s that link). Evaluate what space you have, and which one works best for nourishing your beautifully ordinary life.

If you love the convenience and size of a coffee machine, there are multiple options on the market that make exceptional coffee. I use this one, but I’ve heard amazing things about this one. Both brew large batches of coffee, so they’re perfect for a crowd, but also have some cool features that allows for careful and precise brewing.

And finally, if you’d like to try your hand in pour over coffee, you’ll need to source a few different items. I highly recommend a goose neck kettle and for convenience, an electric kettle that heats water is a huge time saver. I have this one and I love it. You’ll also need your pour over dripper. My favorite dripper is flat bottomed (as opposed to cone shaped) and you can find it here. For larger groups I like to use a Chemex – it can hold up four large cups of coffee!

Step 3: Learn the Process

Your coffee is in hand, your equipment is ready to go – next we’ll learn about technique.

Each brew method can be pretty detailed, so I’m going to split these posts up to make the information easier to digest.

So stay tuned for part 2 - brewing good coffee in a coffee maker, part 3- making pour over coffee, part 4- making espresso, and part 5- steaming milk. It’s going to be a fun journey, so check back on the blog for each part!