A show of hands: who’s had to learn how to brew coffee since the pandemic started? Home brewing has become the new normal with café visits and office coffee becoming less accessible to all of us. On social media, friends who I never thought were coffee people have gone online shopping for the their own beginner’s brewing kits, spoiling themselves with the occasional fancy kettle or a sampler pack of gesha coffee becoming their new #blessed purchase. Coffee used to be a morning thing to help kickstart your day, with maybe the occasional afternoon pick-up just for good measure. With time being a very different concept now that people have been relegated to working from home, coffee has now turned into a drink for all times.
With more home brewers beginning to explore different coffees, there comes the almost inevitable reality of being overstocked on coffee, so getting to the next bag of coffee will be an adventure waiting to happen. In my day-to-day life, I’ve got 3 brewing times, now that the evening has become an available period for brewing. New home brewers have begun creating their own particular brewing habits and rituals, while existing ones are trying to spice things up in their existing flows. Home-made lattes are becoming a regular fixture with more manual espresso machines finding themselves in new homes, and everyone’s trying to make their latte art game strong. We’re even seeing people looking for green beans to try and learn how to roast at home.
These new coffee habits will continue to change over time, especially since it doesn’t seem like things will be going back to normal any time soon. For one, the pandemic has pushed home brewers to think out of the box to keep working on their brews. As others have taken the time to learn a new hobby, the coffee community has begun this wide-scale expansion of knowledge and enjoyment of the coffee brewing and drinking experience, from a growing number of coffees that are available for us to brew. When things do get to a reasonable sense of normal, it will be an exciting prospect to try out the byproducts of all these new brewing habits.
Words by Ryan Uy @thenameisrye