Everything you need to make great coffee – and the kit that’s not worth your money

From thermal jugs to the best beans, upgrade your morning brew with our essential coffee kit list – including the things you don’t need. The best coffee machines for your home, according to our expert. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. If your belief in nominative determinism has led you to the Filter expecting coffee content, then – on this occasion at least – you’re in luck.

And if you’re here because you’re not entirely happy with the coffee in your cup now – or wish you could replicate the £4-a-cup magic brewed by your local barista – then you’ve definitely come to the right place. Let me be clear: brewing good coffee doesn’t require magic or outlandishly expensive equipment. OK, fine – expensive equipment can help, in the right hands. But it’s by no means a necessity. With a little knowledge, anyone can make a life-changingly (or at least a morning-changingly) good cup of coffee at home.

Here’s a quick cheat sheet of coffee-brewing essentials and a few tips to help you begin your journey. We’ll start with good-quality coffee beans and a decent grinder, move on to a competent and affordable brewer (or coffee machine if you can afford it) and round off the recommendations with a few pretty but non-essential fripperies. Red Brick. £13 for 350g at Square Mile. This espresso blend from the wonderful Square Mile – a roastery co-founded by James Hoffmann, author of How to Make the Best Coffee at Home – is always on point. The precise blend varies from crop to crop, but it consistently makes a delicious espresso or espresso-based drink in my experience.

Ethiopia Werka Wuri. £10 for 250g at Clifton Coffee Roasters. You’ll find a huge range of seasonal specialities flitting in and out of roasters, but you can’t go wrong with a good house roast such as the Werka Wuri from Bristol’s highly capable Clifton Coffee Roasters. This is a great showcase for the more delicate, floral, tea-like flavours synonymous with lightly roasted Ethiopian coffees, and it makes excellent filter, pour-over and potentially even cafetière brews. It’s well worth trying at least once.

Colombia Tumbaga Decaf. £9 for 250g at Craft House Coffee. Craft House Coffee’s blend of reliably high-quality roasts, intriguing variety and sensible prices has kept me loyal for many years. Among my recent favourites is this Colombian single-origin decaf. It’s bright, subtly fruity, milk-chocolatey joy, perfectly scratching my afternoon itch without the caffeine buzz. The next stage in the process is the grind, the importance of which cannot be overstated. It’s usually better to pair a great grinder with a more affordable coffee maker than the other way around.

If you can’t afford to spend big bucks on a grinder, then the key advice is to buy a burr rather than a blade grinder. Blades simply smash and crack the coffee into pieces, and are terrible at getting a consistent grind, making for a terribly uneven brew. Burr grinders have two spinning, serrated metal surfaces that crush the coffee to a more even consistency, so as long as the burrs are nice and sharp, they’re a better bet for a balanced cup of coffee.

You can pick up a basic electric burr grinder for about £50, but bear in mind that not all will be a step up on a blade grinder – many cheap models use dull “false” burrs, which are little better than a blade. If you want to really up your coffee game, though, then pushing your budget to £100 or above will upgrade the evenness of the grind and, consequently, the quality of coffee that ends up in your cup. If you buy wisely, you’ll end up with a grinder that you can repair and maintain for many years.

Kingrinder K6. £92.99 at eBay. £99 at Amazon. This hand grinder is a great starting point for smaller single servings of everything from pour-over to espresso, with good-quality 48mm burrs and 60 clicks of adjustment for grind size. You can grind up to 35g of coffee at a time, and while the large handle still gives you a bit of an arm workout, it doesn’t take too long. It’s brilliant for camping or on-the-go grinding, too.

Wilfa Svart. £99 at Wilfa. £89 at Horsham Coffee Roaster. It doesn’t grind fine enough for espresso, but the Svart is a regular sub-£100 recommendation for coarser filter, pour-over and cafetière grinds. The design is smart, the burrs are replaceable, and the timer setting delivers a preset amount of coffee with the press of a button. Encore ESP. £159.95 at Baratza. £146.73 at Amazon. The Baratza Encore ESP is a great mains grinder for beginners. The ESP model increases adjustability above the standard Encore, which is crucial for dialling in a perfect espresso grind It’s also perfectly capable of coarser grinds for brilliant pour-over and immersion brews. Spare parts are plentiful, too, so repairability is top drawer.

Once you’ve ticked off the first two steps on the journey to coffee nirvana, you’ll need something to, you know, make coffee with. While I recently tested some of my favourite coffee machines for the Filter, there’s a lot to be said for manual brewers. They’re way cheaper than a half-decent machine and they make better than half-decent coffee with the tiniest bit of effort. Often, they can even be slung in a bag and taken on holiday to guarantee good coffee.