Brewing methods
Every brewing method balances grind size, ratio, temperature and contact time differently.
This section covers extraction — how water and coffee meet and separate in a given device. For how coffee is prepared, heated and served as a tradition rather than as a technique, see the international preparation atlas, which records 47 traditions by vessel, heat technique and serving custom.
- Espresso machine
Forces hot water through a compacted puck of finely-ground coffee at high pressure, producing a small, concentrated, crema-topped shot in around 25-30 seconds.
- V60 (pour-over)
A cone-shaped dripper with a large single hole and spiral ridges, allowing water poured by hand to filter through a coffee bed at a rate the brewer controls directly.
- AeroPress
A manual brewer combining brief immersion steeping with gentle pressure from a plunger, pushing coffee through a paper or metal filter into a cup or carafe.
- French press
Coarse coffee grounds steep fully immersed in hot water, then a metal mesh plunger separates the grounds from the brewed coffee, retaining oils and some fine sediment.
- Moka pot
A stovetop brewer in which steam pressure from a lower water chamber forces water up through a puck of coffee and into an upper collecting chamber, producing a strong, concentrated coffee often used as an espresso substitute.
- Cold brew steeping
Coarse coffee grounds steep in cold or room-temperature water for many hours, producing a low-acidity concentrate that is typically diluted before drinking.
- Chemex
A pour-over method using an hourglass-shaped glass vessel and a thick, proprietary paper filter, producing an exceptionally clean, tea-like cup by removing more oils and fine particles than a standard cone filter.
- Kalita Wave
A flat-bottomed pour-over dripper with a wave-shaped filter and three small holes, designed to distribute water more evenly across the coffee bed than cone-shaped drippers, making pour technique somewhat more forgiving.
- Turkish coffee brewing
Very finely ground coffee is simmered (traditionally not boiled to a rolling boil) with water, and often sugar, directly in a small pot called a cezve, then served unfiltered so grounds settle at the bottom of the cup.
- Vietnamese phin brewing
A small metal drip filter is placed atop a cup, filled with coarse-to-medium ground coffee, and slowly drips hot water through under gravity, typically over sweetened condensed milk for the traditional serving style.
- Jebena brewing (Ethiopian coffee ceremony)
Freshly roasted, hand-ground coffee is simmered with water directly in a jebena (a rounded clay pot with a narrow neck) over heat, then poured without a filter into small handleless cups, grounds settling as it stands — the brewing step within the wider Ethiopian coffee ceremony, which also includes roasting the beans in front of guests and serving traditionally in three rounds (abol, tona, baraka). See CoffeeHQ's Ethiopian coffee ceremony history article for the ceremony as a whole; this record covers the brewing method specifically.
- Siphon (vacuum) brewing
A two-chamber glass brewer that uses vapour pressure and then a vacuum. Water in the lower globe is heated until expanding vapour pushes it up a tube into the upper chamber, where it steeps with the coffee at close to full immersion. Taking the heat away cools the lower chamber, the trapped air contracts, and the resulting vacuum draws the brewed coffee back down through a filter — cloth in most traditional models — leaving the grounds behind.