Everything you need to make great coffee – and the kit that's not worth your money

The Guardian

31-01-2025

If your belief in nominative determinism has led you to the Filter expecting coffee content, then – on this occasion at least – you're in luck.
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And if you're here because you're not entirely happy with the coffee in your cup now – or wish you could replicate the £4-a-cup magic brewed by your local barista – then you've definitely come to the right place.
Let me be clear: brewing good coffee doesn't require magic or outlandishly expensive equipment. OK, fine – expensive equipment can help, in the right hands. But it's by no means a necessity. With a little knowledge, anyone can make a life-changingly (or at least a morning-changingly) good cup of coffee at home.
Here's a quick cheat sheet of coffee-brewing essentials and a few tips to help you begin your journey. We'll start with good-quality coffee beans and a decent grinder, move on to a competent and affordable brewer (or coffee machine if you can afford it) and round off the recommendations with a few pretty but non-essential fripperies.
Red Brick
£13 for 350g at Square Mile
This espresso blend from the wonderful Square Mile – a roastery co-founded by James Hoffmann, author of How to Make the Best Coffee at Home – is always on point. The precise blend varies from crop to crop, but it consistently makes a delicious espresso or espresso-based drink in my experience.
Ethiopia Werka Wuri
£10 for 250g at Clifton Coffee Roasters
You'll find a huge range of seasonal specialities flitting in and out of roasters, but you can't go wrong with a good house roast such as the Werka Wuri from Bristol's highly capable Clifton Coffee Roasters. This is a great showcase for the more delicate, floral, tea-like flavours synonymous with lightly roasted Ethiopian coffees, and it makes excellent filter, pour-over and potentially even cafetière brews. It's well worth trying at least once.
Colombia Tumbaga Decaf
£9 for 250g at Craft House Coffee
Craft House Coffee's blend of reliably high-quality roasts, intriguing variety and sensible prices has kept me loyal for many years. Among my recent favourites is this Colombian single-origin decaf. It's bright, subtly fruity, milk-chocolatey joy, perfectly scratching my afternoon itch without the caffeine buzz.
The next stage in the process is the grind, the importance of which cannot be overstated. It's usually better to pair a great grinder with a more affordable coffee maker than the other way around.
If you can't afford to spend big bucks on a grinder, then the key advice is to buy a burr rather than a blade grinder. Blades simply smash and crack the coffee into pieces, and are terrible at getting a consistent grind, making for a terribly uneven brew. Burr grinders have two spinning, serrated metal surfaces that crush the coffee to a more even consistency, so as long as the burrs are nice and sharp, they're a better bet for a balanced cup of coffee.
You can pick up a basic electric burr grinder for about £50, but bear in mind that not all will be a step up on a blade grinder – many cheap models use dull 'false' burrs, which are little better than a blade. If you want to really up your coffee game, though, then pushing your budget to £100 or above will upgrade the evenness of the grind and, consequently, the quality of coffee that ends up in your cup. If you buy wisely, you'll end up with a grinder that you can repair and maintain for many years.
Kingrinder K6
£92.99 at eBay£99 at Amazon
This hand grinder is a great starting point for smaller single servings of everything from pour-over to espresso, with good-quality 48mm burrs and 60 clicks of adjustment for grind size. You can grind up to 35g of coffee at a time, and while the large handle still gives you a bit of an arm workout, it doesn't take too long. It's brilliant for camping or on-the-go grinding, too.
Wilfa Svart
£99 at Wilfa£89 at Horsham Coffee Roaster
It doesn't grind fine enough for espresso, but the Svart is a regular sub-£100 recommendation for coarser filter, pour-over and cafetière grinds. The design is smart, the burrs are replaceable, and the timer setting delivers a preset amount of coffee with the press of a button.
Encore ESP
£159.95 at Baratza£146.73 at Amazon
The Baratza Encore ESP is a great mains grinder for beginners. The ESP model increases adjustability above the standard Encore, which is crucial for dialling in a perfect espresso grind It's also perfectly capable of coarser grinds for brilliant pour-over and immersion brews. Spare parts are plentiful, too, so repairability is top drawer.
Once you've ticked off the first two steps on the journey to coffee nirvana, you'll need something to, you know, make coffee with. While I recently tested some of my favourite coffee machines for the Filter, there's a lot to be said for manual brewers. They're way cheaper than a half-decent machine and they make better than half-decent coffee with the tiniest bit of effort. Often, they can even be slung in a bag and taken on holiday to guarantee good coffee.
There's a winsome simplicity to a cafetière – if you can live with the occasional sludgy bits at the bottom, that is – but if you prefer a lighter, less intense cup, you should explore the results from other manual brewers such as a V60, AeroPress or Clever Dripper. And especially so when you only want to brew one or two cups at a time.
Bodum Kenya cafetière
£26 at CafePod£12.95 at Amazon
You can't go wrong with a basic Bodum cafetière. The metal-framed Caffettiera model (£16.49) is prettier, but the plastic-framed Kenya model offers more protection to the glass carafe, making it a tad more accident-proof. Add some coarsely ground beans, pour in freshly boiled water and you have a recipe for delicious coffee with minimal faff.
AeroPress
£35 at Argos£35 at Amazon
The AeroPress is a small, plastic manual brewer that makes a stunning cup of coffee. The results can be mind-blowingly good, but be warned: the quest for the perfect cup may leave you disappearing down a Reddit-fuelled technique rabbit hole from which you may never escape. And if you really fancy your brewing talents? Well, you can always consider entering the 2025 World AeroPress Championship. Let us know how you get on.
Hario V60 coffee dripper set (size 02)
£11.99 at HR Higgins£12 at Hario
Hario's V60 coffee drippers have become synonymous with pour-over coffee. You can spend big money on its ceramic versions or immersion drippers if you like, but the simple, cheap, plastic V60 is a great place to start. Getting the very best results can require a little (or a lot of) honing of technique – aficionados will recommend a specialist pour-over kettle, as recommended further down the page – but the simplicity is winsome. Don't forget to pick a colour that matches your kitchen decor.
Clever coffee dripper
£20.99 at Clumsy Goat£35 at Amazon
This immersion brewer looks like a standard V60 but it's far more forgiving for beginners. Simply stand it on your kitchen surface, add a paper filter, coffee and boiling water, then allow the coffee to brew for a couple of minutes. Pop it on top of a cup and the valve releases perfectly brewed coffee. It's great for slinging in a travel bag or rucksack, too, if you're so inclined.
These are hardly essential, but if you're brewing beautiful coffee, there's something even more satisfying about drinking it from an equally beautiful cup. A good coffee cup is about more than just aesthetics, though; the best cups can also keep your coffee hot for longer.
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Halo Brew tea/coffee cup
£27 at Harts of Stur£34 for two at Denby
Denby's Halo range is a typically charming glint of kiln-fired, hand-crafted loveliness, with a two-tone reactive glaze and a 10-year guarantee against defects in workmanship. Take your pick from handle-free beakers, espresso cups and larger mugs – each adds a tiny spoonful of tactile, aesthetic joy to a fresh, attentively brewed coffee.
Pavina double wall glass set
£32.95 for four at Bodum£32.95 at Amazon
Truth be told, I bought these cups because they look pretty, but they're impressively multi-functional. They may not look it, but they're actually more effective than traditional cups or mugs at keeping coffee warm (or iced coffee cold). The secret is the hollow construction, which creates a thick, insulating layer of air between the two glass walls. Reassuringly, a little rubber-bunged vent on the underside ensures that pressure doesn't crack the glass, and they're dishwasher-, microwave-, freezer- and even oven-safe up to 180C.
Carter Move mug
From £29.99 at Coffee HitFrom £30 at Amazon
What else could a coffee lover need more than this perfectly proportioned and achingly stylish travel mug? The Fellow Carter Move comes in three sizes – 8oz (236ml), 12oz (341ml) and 16oz (455ml) – and uses layers of ceramic, stainless steel and BPA-free plastics to keep your drink hot on your travels. It also comes with a little splash guard to prevent you from slopping frothy cappuccino all over your work clothes. Helpfully, you can brew straight into it with a Hario V60 dripper or Clever Dripper or similar, which cuts down on washing up.
Hario heat-resistant server, 750ml
£58 at Hario£39.95 at Redber Coffee Roastery
I wouldn't be without a thermal jug. This one from Hario has an ample 750ml capacity and a tough aluminium exterior so you can carry it without worrying about smashed glass. Pop a V60 on top and you can brew directly into the jug, which is a nice touch. Coffee then stays hot for a claimed 90 minutes – but I've had drinkably warm black coffee several hours later, even outdoors during camping trips.
Among the simultaneous joys and dangers of coffee is how easy it is to slide towards full-blown obsession over every minutiae. Could it be tastier if only I were using an [insert coffee gadget here]? In some cases, yes, of course, it could. But that depends on how much time you have to master said item, and whether your palate can actually taste the difference. These upgrades are by no means necessary for the beginner – they're just nice to have.
Minipress coffee scale
£31 at MiiCoffee£33.99 at Amazon
If any of these gadgets are an essential purchase, then it's a set of scales. If you can measure out a consistent amount of coffee every time, then all else being equal, you should get a consistently lovely brew. These cute scales from MiiCoffee measure up to 2kg with 0.1g precision and have a built-in timer to help keep track of your brews, which is super helpful. You can buy a cheap set at a third of the price on Amazon, but it's something of a lottery – I've had to bin a couple as they stopped giving accurate readings.
Nespresso Aeroccino 4
£89 at Nespresso£119 at Amazon
I've had an Aeroccino in my kitchen for years now, and it gets regular use for everything from topping up filter coffee to babyccinos for the kids. It can simultaneously heat and froth the milk – with a choice of two froth levels – but you can also opt for plain hot milk or even cold frothed milk if you prefer. It produces a thicker, more meringue-like froth than the silken microfoam you'd get from a carefully wielded steam wand on an espresso machine – or a decent assisted espresso machine for that matter – but for froth without the faff, it's a winner in our household.
Fellow Stagg EKG pour-over electric kettle
From £139 at Borough Kitchen£165 at Amazon
If you're considering buying a kettle designed solely for achieving a perfect, laminar flow of boiling water for coffee, then yes – you've fallen head-first into the coffee-brewing rabbit hole. It works, though. The Fellow Stagg EKG has the gooseneck design typical of the breed, providing a concentrated, precise stream for penetrating and agitating a bed of coffee grounds (or tea leaves) powerfully enough to create an even, balanced brew. With a 0.9l capacity and precise control over temperature (from 57C to 100C), this kettle ticks all the boxes.
Rhino flat coffee tamper
£29.95 at Redber Coffee Roasters£49.99 at Coffee Hit
This may be a revelation for espresso enthusiasts. If you've already got a decent machine but struggle to wield a standard tamper due to limited strength or dexterity, then a flat push tamper is a great call. This cute one from Rhinowares is expensive for what it is, but if your espresso machine has a 58mm portafilter, then its adjustable tamping depth and simple, palm-friendly design may make your brewing life just that bit simpler and more consistent.
Flavoured coffee beansWe've all been there, walking around the local market or similar and finding a stall selling alluringly flavoured coffee beans. Beware: it's rubbish coffee with additives. Coffee doesn't need added flavouring. Great coffee well brewed will naturally burst forth with a vivid spectrum of flavour; cast your cup wide enough and you'll discover varieties that taste of chocolate, honey, vanilla, blueberry, booze-soaked fruits and beyond. There's a whole world of coffee out there – go explore.
Expensive coffee scalesThink twice before splashing triple figures on pricey coffee scales. Indeed, add the word coffee to any product type and you'll notice a dramatic price mark up. I wouldn't endorse buying the cheapest scales you can find with 0.1g precision – I've had to bin a couple over the past decade or so – but if you can afford something a little nicer, such as the £31 MiiCoffee Minipress I recommended above, then it'll do the job. Don't feel the need to spend megabucks.
Barista cosplay accessoriesYou don't need a premium rubber tamping mat or fancy-looking espresso knock box to make great espresso. Ask yourself, do you really want to spend £50 on a 1:10 scale replica of a plastic kitchen bin and a small piece of rubber? That money could pay for a far more meaningful upgrade, such as a new grinder. Or you could just treat yourself to some really great coffee instead.
Sasha Muller is a freelance tech and consumer journalist, avid coffee drinker and craft beer enthusiast with more than two decades of experience in testing products and avoiding deadlines. If he's not exploring the local woods with his kids, boring people talking about mountain bike tyres or spending ill-advised amounts on classic drum'n'bass vinyl, he's probably to be found somewhere swearing at an inanimate object