I’m very pleased to announce we’re bringing back a feature section of CoffeeGeek that many have missed: our Feature Guides section.
For 2024 and beyond, the Feature Guides will have two scopes, both of which are designed to educate, inform, and provide you helpful tools for making better coffee and espresso, no matter your budget, entry point, or experience.
The new Feature Guide section will be the home to a series of compendium articles, each focusing on very specific coffee and espresso subjects. Planned for 2024 are the Espresso Compendium, the Siphon Coffee Masterclass, the Pour Over Compendium, and the Beginner Espresso Guide.
We will also be doing a series of Best of Lists, covering subjects including espresso machines, beginner gear, multipurpose grinders (as well as espresso, single dose, and manual grinders), auto drip coffee makers, pour over devices, and a wide variety of coffee accessories.
Best of LIsts
The internet is veritably flooded with “Best of XYZ Type of Product in 2024” lists. They are known frequently as “click bait” and for good reason: the vast majority of these are AI generated and serve one purpose: to get you clicking an affiliate link to generate the list publisher some pennies. Most of these lists aren’t based on actual real world testing or evaluations. Instead, they are automatically generated (even Amazon has tools for this) to generate income. They also get auto-updated by AI bots every few weeks to keep the SEO levels up.
The goal with CoffeeGeek’s Best Of Feature Guides is going to be very different: the primary and driving purpose for our lists is to provide you with honest, tried, true and tested advice on finding the best gear out there. That means we will only list products we’ve tested, used, or owned. Thankfully, we test a lot of equipment!
In fact, our first Feature Guide published is the Best Budget Espresso Machines for 2024; we offer ten choices – all fully tested or owned by CoffeeGeek writers and staff – that will get you into the espresso hobby with some excellent gear. This is the prototype for our future Best Of lists, and it really doesn’t matter if the product generates click income for us or not – if it’s the best of the bunch, we’ll list it.
Compendium Guides
I’m super excited about these Feature Guides we have planned. We already have a lot of the content authored, some written and added to during the past 10+ years. It’s just a matter of putting it together in a cohesive, easy to read, easy to navigate format, which we’re still working out (the Compendium Guides will look different from the buying guides).
The first will be the Espresso Compendium, which will be a one stop Guide covering things like drink builds, theory, a glossary, a beginner’s guide, and more. The real beauty of these guides is that they will be constantly updated and refreshed, giving you a version history, notes on new additions (so you don’t have to read the whole thing over again to find new content) and of course, new content from time to time.
Next will be the Milk Guide, which on the old version of the CoffeeGeek website was one of our most read Guides. That guide quite literally changed how baristas worldwide steam and froth milk: we introduced the concept of two staged frothing (stretching the milk) and heating, in order to maintain maximum lactose sweetness in the milk foam. Today, that’s standard practice for a skilled barista; in 2003 when we first published the guide, not many knew about this.
Of course, a lot has changed and evolved in how milk works with coffee, including the proliferation of plant based “milks”, something that was nascent when we first published that guide. Our new Milk Guide will be fully updated to reflect the new realities of coffee and “milks”.
Then comes my serious pet project: the Siphon Coffee Masterclass. I’m not sure why, but siphon coffee never became “sexy” for the various social media influencers out there, but I love the brewing method. I’ve spent years researching the history, collecting dozens and dozens of antique vacpot makers (my oldest is from 1920), and refining the techniques. In 1998, the first true coffee thing I ever posted online was about the Rancilio Silvia, but siphon coffee makers were the second subject I embraced. I had a hobby coffee website that predates CoffeeGeek, and an entire section on siphon coffee makers (also known as vacpots). I also had the first ever “Vacpot FAQ” posted online.
Our collective knowledge of siphon coffee makers has grown immensely since that time. The Siphon Coffee Masterclass we’ll publish this year will reflect a lot of that shared knowledge and experience. It’s something I’m very much looking forward to sharing with you.
Our Feature Guide History
Already I’ve mentioned a few historical points in our guide history on CoffeeGeek. That’s because content rich, deep dive guides were always part of this website.
Back in 2001 when we started the CoffeeGeek website, one of the primary parts was a “Detailed Guide” section, designed to provide a heavy amount of coffee information and education on very specific topics. We enlisted the help of various coffee experts, and in the case of two guides, employed scientists at the University of British Columbia, to provide our readers with accurate and informative information about coffee and espresso.
Two standouts early on were the aforementioned Milk Guide (here it is archived), and our Cupping Coffee Guide. The former was written with the aid of two national barista champions, food scientists at Island Farms Dairy, and chemical analysis scientists at UBC. The latter was written with the aid of two of the best known coffee evaluators of the early 2000s – George Howell and Geoff Watts.
Guides, like our old Detailed Reviews, became a bit of a monster because of the impossibly high standard established with the early research projects. For example: we worked on an Espresso Guide for well over five years, soliciting information and contributions from World Barista Champions, experts at La Marzocco, Rancilio and Synesso, but ended up never publishing it because it became a project that grew too big and daunting.
Eventually, we did publish an Espresso Machine Buying Guide and an Espresso Drinks Compendium, but I never did publish our full blown Espresso Guide or Siphon Coffee Masterclass. I hope to make both of these a reality in 2024. Stay tuned!
Mark has certified as a Canadian, USA, and World Barista Championship Judge in both sensory and technical fields, as well as working as an instructor in coffee and espresso training. He started CoffeeGeek in 2001.
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
