How to Make Coffee (Before You’ve Had Coffee)

How to Make Coffee
Ristretto Roasters’ Spectacularly Simple Guide to Brewing At Home

By Din Johnson

For some of us, the hardest task of the day is brewing a cup of coffee in the morning— it’s a Catch 22: How do you wake up enough to make yourself some coffee before you’ve had that first cup of coffee?

This single-minded little book is about one thing and one thing only: teaching you easy, bulletproof methods for brewing a spectacularly good cup of coffee even when you are standing half-awake in your own kitchen with toothpicks holding your eyelids open.

Like any ritual, making coffee at home well requires that you do a few things right, in a certain order, every time. What coffee brewing does not require is that you drop a bunch of dough on fancy gear. Contrary to conventional wisdom, you do not need to go out and buy a multimeter, a thermocouple and a linear particle accelerator to make a cup of coffee every bit as good as the one poured by your favorite neighborhood barista. You probably needn’t spend any more on coffee than you are spending now—unless, of course, you plan on tipping yourself.