Coffee is alchemy. A hobby that combines art, science, and just the right amount of voodoo. Brewing coffee is practicing one of the most specialized, delicate, and experimental cooking recipes in history.
Coffee comes from growing fruit, drying beans, roasting them, and then extracting the flavors (and caffeine) we want. Good coffee is about balancing the compounds that we extract to suit our personal tastes. Too sour? Too bitter? Need to add milk to make it palatable? Probably bad extraction.
The most impactful factor in extraction is the grind. It affects how water will interact with, and dissolve, coffee. Most of a coffee budget should pay for a grinder, which will give more control and consistency over the grinding process. It’s also important to grind fresh, since exposed surface area will interact with air and lose important flavor compounds over time.
I use hand grinders, and would recommend this to anyone open to doing just a minute of manual work. For the same price, the money that would have been spent on electronics goes to higher quality components.
Using a burr hand grinder up to $50 is an easy way to get started making coffee that tastes better than the chain down the block.
My universal recommendation for a brewer is an Aeropress. If concentrated coffee is your thing, stovetop makers like a Bialetti might be a better choice. A pourover is great for those that want the simplest way to get a “normal cup of joe” that tastes great.
Buying quality beans and a grinder up to $100 is where you start matching a specialty cafe in coffee quality. You probably won’t need any other new equipment, other than a kitchen scale.
You can also start exploring espresso - a certain way of brewing that makes very concentrated coffee. The grinder reduces beans to near-powder to expose more surface area and uses high pressures to quickly force water through the coffee to extract it.
Since this is such a temperamental process, espresso likely demands a grinder budget over $100 and much more learning. You’ll also need an espresso machine to pressurize and push water. Using pressurized baskets can be a good halfway step if you’re interested.
James Hoffman’s content is opinionated, scientific, entertaining, and well produced. It’s a great place to start for learning about anything related to coffee. The Coffee Chronicler, The Wired Gourmet, Sprometheus, Lance Hedrick, and Hoon’s Coffee are great for more guidance, deep dives, and niche topics.