Friends who love coffee are certainly not satisfied with just drinking it; eventually, they will want to enjoy the experience of brewing it themselves. The simplest way to achieve this is to get a pour-over setup.
Compared to espresso machines, pour-over coffee has a much lower entry cost, but as your skills improve, you'll end up investing more and more money (better beans, better equipment). In theory, there's no upper limit.
So, Front Street Coffee will calculate the initial investment cost for beginners this time. (The equipment chosen won't be the cheapest, because we need to consider the difficulty for beginners, so the budget calculated below is intended for long-term coffee brewing, with equipment that won't need replacing within a year.)
As an important tool for pour-over coffee, it's like a swordsman's sword—choosing a kettle is like choosing a sword. There are pour-over kettles for a few dozen yuan and ones for over a thousand yuan on the market, with a wide variety of styles. For beginners, choosing a more common pour-over kettle is easier to handle. If you have a water heating device at home, buying a pour-over kettle without a heating element will be cheaper. Based on prices across platforms, we'll use the B kettle at 280 yuan. If you choose a temperature-controlled version, the price is 500 yuan.
If you're not using a temperature-controlled kettle, you'll need a thermometer. Of course, thermometer prices vary greatly, from as low as 20 yuan to over a hundred yuan. As for their differences, Front Street's experience is that higher-priced ones refresh faster and give more accurate readings, while lower-priced ones refresh slower. Given the experience issue, Front Street uses the price of a Masahiro thermometer at 85 yuan as the calculation benchmark.
For the dripper, beginners are advised to buy a resin version of the V60, which will let you brew all kinds of coffee beans initially. If you only consider functionality and can compromise on appearance, choosing a non-transparent resin version costs 40 yuan.Filter paper prices are all about the same. Based on the Kono filter paper used by Front Street, 100 sheets per pack at 32 yuan.
This is actually not essential; you can buy a nice glass container from major glassware stores for about 40 yuan. If you're not fussy, you can just use any container at home. (Sometimes at home for convenience, I often use my own mug as a server.
) If you want a bit of ritual, then buy professional coffee equipment, priced at about 100-150 yuan.
Front Street believes this is the most important tool—only a good grind can produce good coffee. For beginners, choosing a manual grinder is cheaper, but Front Street does not recommend buying cheap manual grinders, as their grinding precision and quality are hard to guarantee. If you really want to brew delicious coffee, this tool, in Front Street's opinion, is worth a big investment. We'll use the mid-range Timemore manual grinder at 699 yuan as the calculation benchmark. Then, manual grinders need cleaning tools—brush + blower, with a budget of about 30 yuan.
For beginners, an electronic scale with a timer function is very necessary. Like thermometers, low-priced electronic scales have the drawbacks of slow refresh and jumping readings. Based on Front Street's experience with electronic scales, we do not recommend designs where the buttons and weighing platform are integrated, because when pressing the buttons, the finger pressure is applied to the platform, causing temporary distortion of the data. We'll use the Watchget electronic scale at 85 yuan as the calculation benchmark.
H. Coffee Beans
When all the coffee equipment is ready, it's time for the protagonist to appear. If you're just learning pour-over coffee, Front Street does not recommend buying expensive coffee beans right away, as the cost is too high. We suggest choosing some entry-level single-origin beans for pour-over, such as Front Street's 7 origin daily beans, priced at 25 yuan/100g. The purpose of Front Street creating this series is to let more beginners understand the world of single-origin coffee at a lower cost. To start, calculate the coffee bean cost at 100 yuan/month.
Based on the total, from zero to comfortably enjoying brewing coffee at home requires about 1400 yuan. This is much lower than the initial investment cost of an espresso machine. The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
