I Love My Coffee (Gear & Beans Edition)

UPDATED: March 2020 – WFH Edition

Coffee brings me joy. I’m not overly precious about it – if Starbucks is the best available choice so be it – but living in a great coffee city like San Francisco, I don’t see much need to consume just an average cup, whether at home, Homebrew HQ, or working from a cafe. Accordingly here’s my 2019 State of Caffeine

Beans

I generally prefer lighter and medium roasts. And will err towards exploration of smaller roasters versus sticking to a single brand/region. That said, here are two recs:

TRADE COFFEE: a startup offering both subscription and a la carte selection of beans. You can complete a simple set of questions to get recommendations or just search/browse. A lot of wonderful regional roasters and some smaller brands I’d never heard of before. Working my way through a bunch of bags. In particular give Onyx (Arkansas) and Passenger (Lancaster, PA).

YESPLZ Coffee: Another coffee startup but one with a long heritage of commitment to beans. Cofounder Tony Konecny (aka Tonx) worked at some of the earliest third wave roasters before starting a subscription coffee site that exited to Blue Bottle. Once that noncompete expired, he went back at it, and with YESPLZ is focused on high quality affordable blends. It’s definitely coffee with love, and a cool zine is included in each order celebrating things unrelated to coffee. I’m on the monthly subscription plan which gives me a chance to include YESPLZ frequently in our office rotation.

Some Favorite Roasters Include (you can order directly): Passenger, Onyx, Verve, Cat & Cloud,

Gear

At the office we use the Oxo Brew Nine Cup machine. It’s top-rated on Wirecutter and I find combines ease of use with a good, consistent brew that you don’t need to babysit.