10 Ways to Brew Coffee (And Why We Won't Let the Percolator Get Disrespected)

There's a lot of ways to get from coffee bean to cup, and most "best brewing methods" lists rank them the same way every time: pour-over and drip near the top for being clean and precise, percolator near the bottom for being old and unpredictable. We're not here to argue the whole list. We're here to argue one entry on it.

But first, the rundown. Here are ten common ways people brew their coffee, and what you're actually signing up for with each one.

1. Drip

The machine on every kitchen counter in America. Water heats up, showers over the grounds, drips through a filter into a pot. Convenient, consistent, no drama. It's the minivan of coffee brewing — not exciting, but it gets everyone where they need to go.

2. Pour-Over

Same basic idea as drip, except you're the machine. Hot water poured slowly and deliberately over grounds in a cone filter, usually in careful circles. Produces a clean, bright cup that shows off a coffee's specific character — which is exactly why it's the darling of the specialty coffee world. It's also the method that punishes you the most for rushing.

3. French Press

Coarse grounds steeped directly in hot water, then pressed down with a mesh plunger. No paper filter means more of the coffee's natural oils stay in the cup, which gives you a heavier, fuller body. Simple to use, a little messy to clean, and forgiving of imprecision in a way pour-over is not.

4. Espresso

Finely ground coffee, forced through by pressure, done in under 30 seconds. Small, strong, and the base for everything from a straight shot to a latte. Takes the right equipment and a learning curve most people underestimate.

5. Moka Pot

The stovetop workhorse of Italian kitchens. Water in the bottom chamber gets pressurized by heat and pushed up through packed grounds into the top chamber. Not technically espresso, but it's close enough in spirit — strong, concentrated, and no electricity required.

6. AeroPress

A compact plunger-style brewer that combines steeping and pressing in one motion. Popular with campers and travelers because it's small, nearly indestructible, and produces a clean cup fast. If pour-over is the meticulous method, AeroPress is the one that gets you 90% of the way there in a fraction of the time.

7. Cold Brew

Coarse grounds steeped in cold water for half a day or more, then strained. No heat involved at all, which means less acidity and a smoother, more mellow cup. Takes patience up front, but once it's made, it keeps in the fridge for days.

8. Single-Serve Pod

Drop in a pod, press a button, done in under a minute. Built entirely around speed and zero cleanup. What you gain in convenience, you generally give up in flavor control and, frankly, in flavor.

9. Turkish/Ibrik

Finely ground coffee simmered directly in water, unfiltered, in a small pot. Thick, strong, and sediment settles at the bottom of the cup rather than getting filtered out. One of the oldest brewing methods still in regular use, and not for anyone who prefers a clean finish.

10. Percolator

And here's the one that gets talked down to on every list like this — usually with some version of "durable, affordable, but the coffee comes out below average."

We're not buying that, and here's why: the fine print on most of those write-ups quietly admits the fix. Run a percolator the "textbook" way — full cycle, ten minutes on the stove — and yeah, you'll get something bitter and over-extracted, because you're recirculating already-brewed coffee back through the grounds well past the point it needed to stop. But every one of those same articles turns around and says the shorter cycle is better. That's not a flaw in the percolator. That's a flaw in following bad instructions.

A percolator run right — coarse grind, watched closely, pulled at the right moment instead of left to run on autopilot — makes a genuinely great cup. Bold, strong, no pretense. It doesn't chase delicate florals or ask you to weigh anything to the gram. It just makes coffee the way coffee got made for a hundred years before anyone worried about "extraction curves."

That's actually the whole reason we're bringing this up. We've got a percolator running a brew-and-hold cycle now, and it turns out a good, strong cup and modern convenience aren't mutually exclusive — you don't have to babysit a stovetop the whole time to get a cup with some backbone to it.

But we didn't need a machine to prove that point. Family already had.

Growing up, mornings meant a stovetop percolator on the burner and a can of CDM — sometimes Community Coffee — cut with chicory, made by an aunt who wasn't interested in anyone's opinion about "below average" brewing methods. That coffee didn't ask permission to be strong. It woke you up and it kept you moving, and there wasn't a single person at that table complaining about acidity or mouthfeel. It worked. That was the whole standard.

That's the spirit behind American Joe Coffee. We're veteran-owned, mobile, and built on the idea that good coffee doesn't need to be fussy to be real. Still Serving isn't about chasing the fanciest method — it's about showing up, doing the job right, and pouring something that means business. Whether you like your coffee bright and delicate from a pour-over, or bold and no-nonsense from a percolator that's been doing its job since your grandmother's kitchen, we've got a cup for it. No matter your preference, no plastic, no shortcuts.

The percolator did fine work for a long time before anyone wrote a ranked list about it. It's still doing fine work now.