The Coffee Survival Guide — Free PDF Download

A free 46-page guide to brewing café-quality coffee at home — fresh beans, the tools that actually matter, and step-by-step methods for drip, French press, moka pot, pour-over, cold brew and AeroPress.

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Where this guide came from

In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic reached Canada, cafés across the country closed almost overnight. We spend our days teaching people to make great coffee, so we started writing: a new chapter every few days for people suddenly making coffee at home, and a running reminder to keep supporting local cafés. This edition gathers the whole series in one place for the first time. A few passages reflect that moment in time; the fundamentals haven't changed.

What's inside

  • Introduction — Why your local café needs you
  • Chapter 1 — Unplugging from coffee advertising
  • Chapter 2 — Wake up and get coffee fresh
  • Chapter 3 — Tools and your first home brews (drip and French press)
  • Chapter 4 — The moka pot, or stovetop espresso
  • Chapter 5 — Pour-over coffee
  • Chapter 6 — Cold brew coffee
  • Chapter 7 — Dalgona coffee
  • Chapter 8 — Safer iced coffee: the Japanese method
  • Chapter 9 — Time, temperature, grind and agitation
  • Chapter 10 — The AeroPress
  • Chapter 11 — The Frappuccino
  • Chapter 12 — Professional equipment obsessions
  • Chapter 13 — Reopening a coffee shop: a checklist
  • Bonus essays — Toughest on food industry people · How the post-pandemic coffee shop is different

Ready to go further?

The guide is the starting point. In our labs you work on a real espresso machine with an instructor beside you, in classes of no more than six students.

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