Ten Adventures in Coffee

I bought my first burr grinder in 2003, mostly to get a barista friend to stop telling me my drip coffee tasted like dishwater. He was right, and it cost me about $40 to find out. Twenty years later, that’s still the single best purchase I’ve made for my morning routine, and it’s the kind of thing that never occurs to most coffee drinkers to even try.

Most people settle into a coffee routine early and never touch it again: same bag, same machine, same nine minutes before work. Nothing wrong with that. But if you’ve got a free Saturday and a little curiosity, there’s a lot more to coffee than the version you’ve been drinking on autopilot. Here are ten ways to shake it up.

1. Try a different coffee

If your coffee aisle habits haven’t changed in years, the easiest adventure is also the cheapest. Skip your usual bag and grab something from a region you’ve never tried. Real Jamaican Blue Mountain or a good Kona will run you real money, but as an occasional splurge it’s worth knowing what the fuss is about.

2. Learn to make coffee a different way

Drip coffee is easy because it asks nothing of you. Filter, water, button, wait. Stepping outside that is where coffee actually gets interesting: a moka pot on the stovetop, a pour-over cone, a phin like the one used for Vietnamese ca phe. Each method pulls different things out of the same beans, and you’ll never fully believe that until you taste it side by side.

3. Become a home barista

Making real espresso at home is genuinely satisfying, and the entry price has come way down from where it used to be. You can get into a beginner-friendly machine for well under $100, and our budget espresso machine guide covers the current options worth actually considering. Look for one with a real pump rather than a steam-pressure toy, or you’ll be disappointed fast.

4. Buy a coffee grinder

If you only change one thing on this list, make it this one. A burr grinder that lets you grind fresh right before you brew does more for your cup than any amount of money spent upgrading the machine itself. Pre-ground coffee starts losing aroma within minutes of grinding; a bag that’s been sitting pre-ground on a shelf for weeks has already lost most of what made it worth buying.

5. Roast your own coffee at home

Until roughly the 1930s, most households bought green coffee beans and roasted their own in a pan on the stove. It sounds intimidating and it really isn’t. We cover two low-cost ways to try it yourself: roasting on the stovetop with nothing but a pan and a strainer, or roasting in a hot air popcorn popper, which is the more popular route among home roasters. Either way, our guide to the stages of coffee roasting will help you know what you’re looking and listening for.

6. Go to a coffee cupping, or hold your own

A cupping is coffee’s answer to a wine tasting, and it makes a genuinely fun excuse for a party. Pull together a few different coffees, a handful of coffee-curious friends, some cups and spoons, and go through them side by side. If you want to sound like you know what you’re talking about while you do it, our coffee taster’s glossary walks through the actual vocabulary professional cuppers use, so “bright” and “earthy” and “briny” mean something specific instead of just sounding fancy.

7. Check out the independent coffee houses in your area

You already know what to expect from the chains. Independent coffee houses are where the real variety lives: one with an open mic night, one with a wall of secondhand books and a couch you don’t want to leave, one where the regulars and the staff already know each other by name. It costs nothing but an afternoon to go find out which one you like.

8. Grow your own coffee plant

You can’t farm coffee outside frost-free climates, but the plant itself grows perfectly well as a houseplant, as long as it comes indoors before the weather turns. Start from seed if you’re patient, or buy one that’s a couple of years along if you’d rather skip ahead. Set your expectations honestly, though: a well-cared-for plant typically takes three to four years to produce its first real harvest, and even then a single houseplant yields only a few pounds of green coffee a year, nowhere near enough to caffeinate yourself daily. It’s a genuinely fun project. It is not a way to cut your coffee budget.

9. Experiment with coffee recipes

Coffee has been a cooking ingredient for as long as people have been brewing it, in everything from cakes to coffee-spiked desserts. You don’t need to buy flavored coffee to get flavor into your cup, either: a cinnamon stick or vanilla bean stored with your beans will scent them over time, since coffee readily picks up whatever it’s stored near. We put together a full set of brew-your-own coffee recipes if you want somewhere to start.

10. Change your ratio, not just your beans

This is the adventure nobody thinks to try because it costs nothing and takes ten seconds: adjust how much coffee you’re actually using per cup. Most home coffee is brewed weaker than it needs to be, and dialing in the right coffee-to-water ratio for your specific brew method can transform a cup you’ve been drinking the same way for years, without buying a single new piece of equipment.

Not all of these will be for you, and that’s fine. Coffee snobbery is its own kind of boring. Pick the one that sounds the most fun on a Saturday morning and go be a little adventurous with your coffee habit.