- Tell me about that
big fella next to you.
- This is my friend.
(both laughing)
(upbeat music)
When it comes to making coffee at home,
there's a huge variety
of different machines
and methods to consider.
- If you're like me, you love coffee,
but you don't wanna
think about it that much.
I just wanna hit a button
and be done with it.
- But if you're like me,
you make your coffee a
million different ways
depending on your mood or
how much time you have.
- [Hannah] We're gonna take a look
at Lisa's more elaborate setup
and my more minimalist setup
so you can choose your
own coffee adventure.
- All right, Hannah,
coffee rookies go first.
Let's go to your kitchen.
(upbeat music)
- All right, so here we are in my kitchen
with my minimalist coffee setup.
Coffee in its most basic form
is simply ground up coffee
beans steeped in water
and then strained.
You wanna start with good beans,
and you do wanna grind them fresh,
we found that was pretty important.
So I have a Capresso Burr Grinder here.
This one is our best buy,
so that means our best inexpensive option,
and it won because it's so simple to use.
You load the beans in the hopper on top,
you turn this dial
depending on the number of cups you want
and it produces the perfect amount,
and then I move on to make the coffee.
I make it in the Technivorm Moccamaster,
which is our winning coffeemaker.
Lisa tested coffee machines
and it kind of blew my mind.
Lisa, will you tell them a
little about that testing?
- Yeah, that was an amazing coffee test.
We tested a bunch of different
automatic drip coffee machines.
I had seen this one on
some coffee aficionado's
website's bloggers talking about it
saying this was like the
coffee geek's ultimate
and I bought it as sort
of a funny sidebar.
I was doing more mainstream ones
and said hey, let's look at this thing,
and every time I made coffee in it
I was blown away by how
good the coffee was.
I did measurements of the coffee water
as it was hitting the grounds.
I temped it and I also timed
the length of a brew cycle,
so when it made a full pot of
coffee how long did that take.
The Specialty Coffee
Association has metrics for that
that they've done that
are scientifically proven
that you want the water
between 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit,
and it should be done
within seven minutes.
And this was the only machine
that did that every single time.
Most of the other machines
spent most of their cycle
trying to get hot enough
and then getting too hot.
- Wasn't this thing,
the shower head, too, pretty important?
- Definitely. You want a
shower head type situation.
If you have the coffee sitting there
and the water is just
coming from one point,
it just sort of drills down.
I mean, you can imagine
that, this drilling down
through one part of the coffee,
it's not getting all of
that coffee nice and wet
and really interacting
with all the grounds.
- So I got this machine
after Lisa's testing
because of this tasting
she had with 21 tasters
and we tried coffee from all
of the different machines.
She bought a giant batch of beans
so they were the exact same
beans from the same batch.
She ground them the exact same way.
The only difference
was the coffee machines
and the difference
between them blew my mind.
There were some that were weak and watery,
others were bitter,
some were perfectly rich and smooth.
So your coffee beans are
a really important part
of getting a good cup of coffee,
but so is the machine.
This thing really does a nice job.
It is expensive, it's around 300 bucks.
We also have a best buy from Bonavita
that's a good option,
that does the best job
of hitting that time and
temperature parameter
on the lower end of the money scale.
All right, so let's make some coffee.
Here's the insulated craft.
This is called the brew-through lid.
You can brew and it's
gonna keep it warm still,
which is really cool.
Lid back in.
All right, so I'm gonna grind my beans.
I've got the Capresso here.
It's already set on medium
which is perfect for a drip coffeemaker.
Perfect.
Got my filter in here already.
Pour the grinds in.
Lid on.
And then now just hit the switch.
So it's burbling away, it'll
be done in a couple minutes,
but that's it, that's the gist.
It's easy as can be,
but excellent, excellent coffee.
I'm a minimalist, though,
I don't like to think
too much about my coffee.
I can't wait to see Lisa's
maximalist spread over there.
(upbeat music)
- Okay, so here I am
with some of my coffee
machines and methods.
I have my Breville Barista.
This is an automatic espresso machine,
semi-automatic, you
need to do a few things.
I have my French Press from Bodum.
I have my Bialetti Moka Pot.
I have a Melitta Cone,
which is the original pour-over
with an old vintage pot to drop it into
if you don't wanna do it into a cup.
I have a Turkish Coffee Maker,
I actually have two of those,
so I just only brought out one
because I didn't wanna
look too over the top.
- Wow, Lisa, that is amazing.
You have so many cool coffee tools.
How do you decide which ones to use when?
- A lot of it depends on two things.
One is how much time do I have,
am I running out the door,
or do I have time, like say, on a weekend
to fuss around a little bit.
If I have a little bit of time
and want strong, strong coffee,
I'll use my Bialetti Moka Pot
which makes a very strong
fierce little pot of coffee
and I'll drink the whole thing.
If I have a little more time
and I want the heavy
body of a French Press
because the particles are
really suspended in that coffee,
you get a thick almost sort
of slightly gritty texture
which is I find really pleasing,
some people don't love,
I might use my French Press.
That takes a little more time.
This pour-over cone is pretty quick,
but you do have to be there
to pour it over slowly.
The Turkish coffee,
I have to say I've always
loved Turkish coffee.
It's very, very strong,
super fierce, tiny strong cup,
foamy on top, sort of a froth,
that's part of the coffee,
not like a crema, it's a
different kind of froth,
and it's very, very fierce
and often sweetened right in the pot
as you brew it.
So this is kind of fun,
but this definitely took some mastery
to figure out how to do it
and it takes some time.
And obviously the Breville Barista
Semi-Automatic Espresso
Maker is another choice.
This is really, really
quick in the actual brewing,
so espresso fast, right,
20 seconds or so to brew,
but the build-up and
breakdown takes minutes.
So I do this
if I got up on time
and I have a little time in the morning,
or if it's the weekend and
I wanna sort of fuss around
and make myself a beautiful
cappuccino or latte.
So of all the many, many methods I have
for making coffee here at my house
I'm gonna show you two
of my absolute favorites.
One is the French Press.
This is the Bodum Chambord,
and this is our best buy
which has a glass vessel.
The winner has got a metal
body and it's insulated
and so it's not as breakable.
These can be a little fragile.
It has a mesh on the bottom
and a lid that comes down
and basically pushes down.
So you take that out,
and I have already ground some coffee.
This has to be coarsely ground
and you basically want to,
I'm gonna make four cups,
so I've measured and weighed this out
to a good proportion.
And I've heated some water
in my electric kettle.
It's 200 degrees. I
checked with my Thermapen.
I'm just gonna pour this over the grounds.
It has markings on the
side, this is four cups,
and that's about right.
So you put this on top, and
you just rest it on top,
and now you're gonna wait four minutes.
Just as with an automatic drip
where you want that water and the coffee
to interact for a certain
amount of time, same here.
So this has been sitting for four minutes.
I'm not gonna start pushing down right now
because that makes a sort of,
the coffee floats to the top
and makes a little bit
of a tight raft on top,
and you don't wanna start pushing.
That's how people break
French Presses a lot.
So I'll just lift it up
and I'm gonna either use my wooden spoon
or my wooden chopstick, not a metal spoon,
and we're just gonna stir that up
to loosen it up and blend it in
so that it'll be easy to push down.
I think that's a key tip.
When I learned that, it was like,
oh, that's why it was so hard.
So now the mesh disc
is gonna be on the end of the stick
and it presses down very easily.
You see people really
stressing and straining
and that's when they break this.
And that's it.
I'm gonna get my cup and there you go.
Inside the lid, there's
even a little filter
that just holds back larger particles,
but that's it, it's very simple.
It's a very relaxed
and mellow kind of way to make coffee
and your coffee is gonna be strong
but really delicious and luxurious.
Speaking of luxurious
experiences with coffee,
we're gonna talk about
the Semi-Automatic Breville
Barista Espresso Maker.
We wanted semi-automatic espresso machines
with built-in grinders
because otherwise you're getting
into rating the grinders
as well as the machines.
So this has a built-in grinder.
This is the hopper where
you put your beans in
and it basically grinds
and makes the espresso.
It also has an attached
steam wand for milk.
I rated six different machines.
They went up to almost $2000.
This is one of the more affordable ones
at around 5 or $600.
So it's pretty expensive.
This is dedication.
On the other hand, if
you really love espresso
and you go out and you buy it everyday,
it's like two bucks for
a little one ounce shot,
so it pays for itself pretty quickly
if you love espresso.
And I sure do.
I like having the espresso
before I go out and have to
order an espresso somewhere.
Some of the machines were
super complicated to use,
really cryptic little
diagrams, they were huge.
This was a fairly compact machine
as was its co-winner, the Gaggia Anima,
which is even smaller and
is even simpler to operate.
It's more of a push-button.
This is a little more hands-on.
It has a water tank on the
back that lifts right out
and you can fill that at the sink.
Has a coffee grinder on the top.
You put your beans right in here
and you can store them in there.
This has got a little gasket on it.
It keeps it all air tight.
And that can come right off for cleaning.
This top area is a warmer
so you can keep your ported filter
or little cups up there
and they'll stay warm.
With espresso, everything is about
leading up to this 20 seconds
where it makes your shot,
and then, of course, you
have to clean up after it,
but warming everything up,
getting everything going
is part of the deal
with an espresso maker.
It also has a little drawer
with some secret storage in the back,
which is so cool.
Here's the little filter.
So you pop it in.
You put it right in these
little embracing arms,
and it's on double, I
have my double filter.
Push it once.
It's ground and dispensed
the amount of coffee that I like,
which is a lot.
And then this is something
you wanna practice.
I did this on a scale to learn,
but you wanna use,
I think it's 30 pounds of pressure,
as you tamp down that coffee,
and this is really critical.
This makes all the difference
between a good shot
and a not so good shot.
You wanna press it down and twist it
and you wanna level it off,
and then you put it right
in here and lock it in.
Next I will steam the milk.
So I'm putting about a
half cup of milk in this,
maybe less,
actually probably closer to a quarter cup.
So we got a little foam.
It's a double espresso,
and it's got a really gorgeous
kind of creamy tan and brown swirl to it.
But there we have it, that's it.
- Wow, so that is such an
amazing array of tools,
but coming from a minimalist like myself
can you tell me why someone
would want so many options?
- All of these methods give me
the most delicious flavor
and the most options
for enjoying that flavor.
I love coffee and I drink one
great cup of coffee a day.
I enjoy the heck out of it.
And depending on my mood
and the amount of time
I have to put into it,
I will choose from my
vast array of coffee toys
and make myself that great cup of coffee,
and I think that's worth it.
- Coffee is a real
choose your own adventure type of project.
You can be a minimalist,
you can be a maximalist.
You can be a minimalist one day,
a maximalist the next day.
So coffee is so fun and cool that way,
and, Lisa, I can't wait 'til we can drink
a cup together again.
- Yeah, definitely.
In the meantime, you know, here's to you.
For more information
on all the products we showed you today
check out the links below.
- Make sure to leave us
your coffee questions in the comments
and hit that subscribe button.
(upbeat music)
