One day you’ll wake up, boil water for instant coffee, and then out of the blue say: “Hey! I want to begin my coffee journey!”. You then go to social media, join a coffee group, and ask: “Hey! I want to begin my coffee journey! Any suggestions?”. You’ll then get inundated by a plethora of suggestions that you probably won’t know what to start with. Here’s another one, whether you agree with it or not and decide to follow, that’s up to you. I just need to write content for this blog, so…

Do you need a TDS meter for coffee at home? Not really, but they’re not too expensive anyway

I know – it’s nice to have your coffee station with all those equipment there, both electric and manual. People suggesting things for you range from professionals, entrepreneurs, and just passionate home brewers. I am none of those. I just like to drink coffee, and that’s how I started my coffee journey. I have some equipment now, including a water jug with a filter (Jesus), but my affinity for coffee came before all those – this blog came before most of those.

My suggestion, and it’s an absolutely basic one (fair warning), is to figure out how you like coffee. See, no matter how good a coffee is prepared, if you don’t like fruity and acidic coffee then you don’t want fruity and acidic coffee. It can change, maybe, but anyone suggesting you how to brew coffee to be fruity and acidic may disillusion you from drinking coffee. In fact, don’t even listen (yet) to how coffee should taste. You might get frustrated if you don’t taste persimmon then you may end up being intimidated from drinking coffee.

Now, this will be a good time to tell you, since you’re starting your coffee journey, that coffee does not always taste like the coffee flavor you’ve grown accustomed to. That’s what I mean by figuring out how you like coffee to taste. For majority of people, starting their coffee journey means moving from commercial coffee to specialty coffee. Once you’ve figured out what sort of flavor profile you like, then I suggest that’s when you start experimenting.

That is, in fact, a coffee based drink

This is easier with a professional guiding you through it (guide, not impose what they like) but you can still do it at home by finding a roaster and ordering some beans. Start with a relatively cheap brewer, like a small French press, and just try to find the coffee taste you like. All those professional’s suggestions? You’ll start to understand why they’re necessary as you go along with your coffee journey. But it should start by you finding out if you actually like coffee and then how do you like coffee to taste.

Picture this (pun intended): you buy an expensive camera because you said you wanted to try photography, and specifically because you asked in a forum what to do, and of course they suggest you buy a good camera – someone might even sell one to you “cheap”. You then keep getting frustrated as you keep trying to shoot but don’t get pictures similar to what you see online. You decide to take a class or watch online videos, and they tell you “it depends on what you want your photographs to look like”. Worst case scenario: you get frustrated too much that you just stop trying to shoot. Your camera then becomes an expensive waste. Now if you start with a base camera, hell even your smart phone’s camera, and learn the basics of shooting, then upgrading to a better camera

All these brewers and machines you see in Instagram or YouTube are beautiful and functional, no doubt, but unless you actually understand what you want and thus how you’ll have to use them, I’m afraid you might get disillusioned with specialty coffee and end up saying “there’s nothing different between instant coffee and specialty coffee.”

Drink coffee. If you start this way, you’ll also be more discerning and not just buy anything you see online because everyone’s using it.  What’s next after that? I’m not qualified to say that, go look for a group on Social Media and ask them. At least you’ll know the answer to “how do you like your coffee to taste like?”

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