New Year, New Me: 5 coffee resolutions for 2026

1. Weigh your coffee

Eyeballing your coffee is all well and good… no actually, it isn’t. Whether you’re an espresso or pourover drinker, measuring your dose is the key to consistent brewing and the scoop that comes with your coffee machine just won't cut it. If you weigh in the same dose every time it’s much easier to make adjustments to your recipe when things aren’t tasting quite right.

You don’t even need the fancy scales! A simple set of kitchen scales does the job just fine. But if it’s precision you’re after, coffee scales that can both weigh to a hundredth of a gram and time your brew might be the way to go.

2. Buy whole bean

We’re still banging the drum. Buying whole bean coffee will always mean you get to enjoy it at the peak of its powers. It’s unavoidable that coffee will degrade once roasted, and grinding those beans only accelerates the process of going stale. We buy all our coffee whole bean to keep it fresh for as long as possible, if you do need your coffee beans ground we grind them on the day we post them so you can get the best possible brew.

3. Upgrade your grinder

The best grinder update you can make is going from no grinder to one grinder, but if you already have one, consider upgrading it this year to get  a more consistent grind. Most cheap, commercial grinders will use blades to grind, which indiscriminately whizz your coffee to smithereens and be blunt within a couple of uses. Using a burr grinder, where the beans are crushed between adjustable plates, allows you to make smaller adjustments to perfect your grind size and produces far fewer fine particles that can damage the quality of your brew. Both Wilfa's electric Svart model and zeroHero's hand grinder use burrs to grind your coffee for consistency and precision.

4. Store your coffee properly

There’s no point in having all the kit if you’re not keeping your coffee fresh. From the second the coffee is roasted, the freshness timer starts. Oxygen, moisture, light and heat are coffee’s enemies, so we always recommend storing it in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight and ideally in an airtight container like Fellow's Atmos Canister.

5. Use filtered water

We might lose a few people here, but one of the simplest things you can do to improve the taste of your coffee is to install a water filter for your espresso machine or use filtered water for your hand brewing. We thought it was a myth, but with 98% of your final cup being water, it’s hard to overstate its impact. The content of your water has a massive impact on extraction and flavour, so the flavour of your coffee is a postcode lottery!

Improving your water quality can not only unlock a clarity you didn’t know your coffee had, your coffee machine and kettle will thank you too.