Start with something forgiving. Complexity is easier to appreciate once you can brew consistently.
What to buy first
A washed Central or South American, medium roasted — Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Brazil.
These are sweet, balanced, chocolatey and nutty, with moderate acidity. They are also easy to extract, so ordinary mistakes still give a drinkable cup.
What to check
A roast date within the last three weeks. This matters more than anything else on the bag.
Whole beans. Ground coffee is stale within days, and no technique recovers it.
What to avoid at first
Very light Ethiopian or Kenyan. Superb, and unforgiving — dense, hard to extract, sour if anything is off. Come back to these.
Very dark roasts. They taste of roast rather than coffee, and they teach you nothing about extraction.
Anything anaerobic or experimental. Interesting, strange, and a poor calibration reference.
Then move deliberately
Once you can brew the same coffee the same way twice, change one thing: a natural process, or an African origin, or a lighter roast. Changing several at once teaches nothing.
Buy small
250 g bags. You want to be drinking fresh coffee and trying different things, not working through a kilo of something you chose blind.
Last reviewed 8 August 2026