Equipment

Grinds coffee beans between two abrasive burrs to produce a consistent particle size, which affects extraction more than any other single variable.

A burr grinder turned by hand. At the lower end of the market it out-grinds electric grinders costing several times as much.

A spinning blade that chops beans rather than grinding them, producing a wide mixture of particle sizes at once.

The two cutting surfaces inside a grinder. Their geometry, size, material and alignment decide what the grinder can actually do.

The pressurised steam outlet on an espresso machine, used to heat and aerate milk in a single continuous movement.

A countertop jug that heats and whisks milk on its own, producing hot foamed milk without a steam wand or any technique.

A battery-powered whisk on a stick that aerates milk you have heated separately, producing a light foam in seconds.

A lidded jug with a fine mesh plunger, worked by hand to force air through hot milk. No power, no batteries.

A milk carafe or tube plumbed into a bean-to-cup or automatic espresso machine, which draws, heats and foams milk directly into the cup.

The stainless steel jug milk is steamed in. Its size, shape and spout do more to determine what comes out than most people expect.

A weighted handle with a flat base, used to compress ground coffee into a level, even puck before extraction.

A handle carrying several fine needles, stirred through the dosed grounds to break up clumps before tamping.

A depth-adjustable disc with angled vanes, spun on top of the dosed grounds to flatten the surface before tamping.

A ring that sits on the portafilter rim, containing the grounds while dosing and stirring so nothing lands on the gasket seat.

A small cup ground into rather than the portafilter, so the dose can be weighed and settled before it reaches the basket.

A rubber or silicone pad that holds the portafilter level and clear of the counter while tamping.

The perforated metal cup the coffee sits in. Its type — pressurised or not — changes what espresso making even involves.

The handled carrier that locks the basket into the group head and directs the extracted espresso into the cup.

A portafilter with the spouts and chamber machined away, so the underside of the basket is visible during extraction.

A thin metal mesh disc laid on top of the tamped coffee, sold to protect the puck surface and keep the shower screen clean.

A two-walled basket that generates back-pressure through a single small hole, so a drinkable shot can be pulled from pre-ground coffee without a grinder.

Weighs coffee dose and water/yield precisely, which is essential for a consistent, repeatable ratio.

A dial or digital probe clipped to the milk jug, used to learn where the right stopping temperature actually is.

A small, fast, drip-resistant scale that fits under a portafilter and usually times the shot as well as weighing it.

An optical instrument that measures dissolved solids in brewed coffee, from which extraction yield can be calculated.

Strips or a drop test that report how hard and how alkaline your water is, which is what every other water decision depends on.

A conductivity probe reporting total dissolved solids in brewing water. Useful, and routinely asked to answer questions it cannot.

A kettle with a narrow, curved spout that gives precise control over pour rate and placement, important for even pour-over extraction.

An ordinary electric kettle. Boils water quickly, controls neither temperature nor pour, and is enough for several brewing methods.

A kettle that heats to a set temperature and holds it, removing the boil-and-wait step from filter brewing.

A kettle heated on a hob or camping stove, including the gooseneck versions favoured for pour-over away from a power supply.

A jug with a replaceable cartridge that reduces chlorine and some hardness in tap water before it reaches the brewer.

A cartridge plumbed into the supply of an espresso machine, treating every litre that enters it rather than a jugful at a time.

A membrane system that strips nearly everything from water, after which minerals are added back to a chosen composition.

Uses a pump or lever to force hot water through finely-ground, tamped coffee under pressure to produce espresso.

A cone or flat-bottomed dripper (such as a V60) that holds a paper or metal filter and coffee bed while water is poured through by hand.

A manual immersion-and-pressure brewer that steeps coffee briefly before pressing it through a paper or metal filter.

A full-immersion brewer using a metal mesh plunger filter, producing a fuller-bodied cup that retains fine sediment and oils.

A stovetop brewer that uses steam pressure to push water up through a coffee puck, producing a strong, concentrated coffee.

A steeping vessel with a filter used to steep coarse coffee grounds in cold or room-temperature water over many hours.

An hourglass-shaped glass pour-over brewer used with a thick proprietary paper filter, producing a very clean, light-bodied cup.

A flat-bottomed pour-over dripper with a wave-shaped filter and three small holes, designed to promote more even water flow than cone-shaped drippers.

A small, long-handled pot, typically copper or brass and often tin-lined, used to simmer very finely ground coffee and water together. The same vessel is called a cezve in Turkey, a briki in Greece and Cyprus, a džezva in Bosnia and Serbia, a jazve in Armenia, a jezve in Georgia, a rakwe in the Levant, a djezoua in Algeria, a zezoua in Tunisia and a turka in Russian; the narrow neck is the functional part, concentrating the rising foam so it can be watched and lifted off the heat at the right moment. The list is long because the Ottoman transmission was wide, and it is a list of names rather than of designs — what varies between them is proportion and local manufacture, not kind.

A small metal drip filter that sits directly on top of a cup, used to slowly drip-brew strong coffee in the traditional Vietnamese method.

A rounded clay pot with a narrow neck, traditionally used in Ethiopia and Eritrea to brew coffee over heat as part of the coffee ceremony — a genuinely different vessel from the Gulf Arabic dallah or the Turkish/Balkan cezve, despite all three being small traditional coffee pots (see CoffeeHQ's terminology register for the distinction). Two forms exist and the difference is functional rather than decorative: the pot usually described for Ethiopia has a separate side spout for pouring, while the form described for Eritrea, Tigray and Sudan more often has a single opening at the top that both fills and pours. With one opening the pour itself has to hold the grounds back, which is why the coffee is poured from a height in a single unbroken stream, sometimes through a plug of horsehair or plant fibre set in the neck.

A heated bed of sand that a briki or cezve is pushed down into, so heat reaches the pot through the sand rather than directly from a flame. Traditionally the bed was hot ash and embers — which is what the Greek word χόβολη (hóvoli) actually means — and the sand version now sold as a hovoli machine, gas-fired or electric, reproduces the same behaviour with a medium that is easier to keep at an even temperature. It is a heat source, not a brewer in its own right: the coffee is still made in the pot, and burying the pot deeper or shallower is how the operator controls the rate of heating and the foam.

The long-spouted, lidded pot of the Arabian Peninsula, used to brew and then to serve Arabic coffee (qahwa). Unlike a cezve it is not primarily a boiling vessel — in much traditional practice the coffee is brewed in one pot and decanted into the dallah, whose long curved spout and internal shoulder hold back the grounds and spices while pouring a clear stream into small handleless finjan cups. Its shape is as much about the pouring ritual as about the brewing.

A two-chamber stainless steel or brass filter. Ground coffee goes in the upper cup, which has a perforated base, and is pressed down with a plunger disc; hot water poured on top drips through slowly into the lower chamber as a concentrated decoction, typically over ten to twenty minutes. The decoction is not the drink — it is mixed with hot milk and sugar afterwards, which is why the filter is sized in decoction rather than in cups.

A wooden stand that holds a cloth bag (bolsita) open over a cup or jug, so hot water poured over the grounds drips straight through. The stand is the distinguishing part — the cloth is a filter that many countries use, but mounting it on a purpose-built frame at pouring height, rather than holding it by hand or hanging it over a pot, is characteristically Costa Rican.

A two-chamber stovetop pot that brews by gravity rather than pressure. Water heats in the bottom chamber; when it is hot the whole pot is lifted off the heat and turned upside down, and the water falls through a perforated central basket of coffee into what is now the lower chamber, which has the spout. It looks like a moka pot and works nothing like one: no pressure is involved, so extraction is closer to a slow drip than to an espresso.

An unglazed or partially glazed earthenware pot used to boil coffee directly, most familiar as the olla de barro of Mexican café de olla. Clay heats and cools more slowly than metal, which suits a preparation that is simmered with sugar and spices rather than brought quickly to the boil. Whether the clay itself contributes flavour is widely claimed and not well evidenced; what it demonstrably does is hold heat.

Two glass chambers, a tube between them and a filter at the join. Heat under the lower globe turns some of the water to vapour, the expanding vapour pushes the rest up the tube into the upper chamber, and removing the heat cools the lower globe until the contracting air pulls the brewed coffee back down through the filter. The glass is not decorative: the whole point of the design is that the mechanism is visible, which is why it survived in Japanese kissaten long after simpler brewers had displaced it elsewhere. Traditional models use a cloth filter clipped over a plate; metal and paper discs are common alternatives.

A tall, narrow-mouthed pot — usually aluminium, sometimes enamelled — used across Colombia to boil coffee directly with panela or sugar and then pour it off the settled grounds. The narrow mouth and the height are what make it work without a filter: grounds have a long way to settle and the pour comes off the top. It is a boiling vessel rather than a brewer in the modern sense, and nothing about it is proprietary or standardised.

A hand-operated device that generates espresso-level pressure with a lever or piston, with no electricity involved.

A disposable paper filter that removes coffee oils and fine particles, producing a cleaner cup than metal filtration.

A reusable filter of woven cotton or flannel, used across an unusually wide range of traditions — the Malaysian and Singaporean kopi sock, the Costa Rican bolsita, the Brazilian coador de pano, the Japanese nel drip flannel and the cloth strainer used for café Touba. Cloth sits between paper and metal: it holds back most grounds like paper but passes far more of the coffee's oils, which is why cloth-filtered coffee is usually described as fuller-bodied and rounder than the same coffee through paper. It must be kept wet or frozen between uses, because a dried-out cloth goes rancid.

A reusable perforated or woven metal filter that lets oils and some fine particles through, producing a heavier cup than paper.

An opaque, airtight container for roasted coffee, often with a one-way valve to let carbon dioxide out without letting air in.

A canister with a pump or motor that removes most of the air after closing, reducing the oxygen the coffee sits in.

The bag most roasted coffee is sold in, with a small valve that lets carbon dioxide escape without admitting air.

Small sealed tubes holding one dose of beans each, used mainly to freeze coffee in portions that are never thawed twice.

A stiff, heat-resistant brush with an angled head, used to scrub spent coffee from the group and shower screen.

A solid, unperforated basket or rubber disc fitted to the portafilter so the machine can backflush its own group.

An alkaline powder or tablet that dissolves coffee oils and residue. It cleans. It does not descale, and the two must not be confused.

An acidic solution that dissolves mineral scale from inside boilers, elements and water paths. Different from a cleaner in every respect.

A stiff brush, often paired with a puffer or bellows, for clearing retained grounds from burrs and chutes.

A detergent formulated to break down milk proteins and fats in wands, tubes and carafes. A hygiene requirement, not a refinement.

The wide-lipped bowl (dabara) and straight-sided cup (tumbler) that South Indian filter coffee is served in. They are a serving set and a tool at once: pouring the coffee back and forth between them in a long stream mixes the decoction, milk and sugar, cools it to drinking temperature and aerates it into a light foam. The lip lets the drinker hold the dabara without touching the hot metal of the tumbler.

A shallow, long-handled iron or steel pan used to roast green coffee by hand over charcoal, immediately before brewing, in the Ethiopian and Eritrean coffee ceremonies and across the Horn of Africa. It has no lid, no thermometer and no crank: the roast is judged by colour, sound and smell, and the pan is shaken continuously by hand throughout. The long handle exists for two reasons — it keeps the hand out of the coals, and it lets the finished roast be carried around the room so every guest takes in the smoke, which is part of the ceremony rather than a flourish. Because the roast happens minutes before the grind, this pan does more to the finished cup than any other object in the sequence, and it is the reason no two ceremonies produce quite the same coffee.

A deep, wide, round-bowled spoon used to break the crust and slurp coffee during a formal cupping.

A double-walled vacuum-insulated vessel that keeps brewed coffee hot without a hotplate, which is the point.

A dedicated appliance for roasting green coffee at home, in either a fluid-bed or a small drum design.