Exploring coffee

For many people, coffee is a very passionate subject - we fall into that group! The Niche Zero was born out of a passion for engineering and top-quality coffee. When Martin Nicholson, Niche’s founder, came up with the idea of creating a home grinder that could match (and even outshine) the quality of professional café equipment, he entered a world where two passions met: one for precision engineering and one for top-quality coffee.

When you go into a café or coffee shop and order your coffee, you watch as the barista smoothly moves around the bar, puts the portafilter under the grinder, and grinds directly into it - often while doing a couple of other things at the same time. Consequently, it’s only natural that when you make an espresso at home, you want to replicate the same technique. Only… it’s probably not helping you get the best out of your coffee.

Choosing your coffee grinder is one of the main stepping stones to building the perfect home coffee bar. More than getting an espresso machine or discovering beans you love, it’s when you move to using a top-quality grinder that you really feel you’re there.

There’s a taste for every type of coffee drinker - and a lot of what influences that taste comes from the coffee roaster. What makes a good roaster, and who are some of the roasters we recommend? Let's explore how coffee roasting defines our final cup.

Keeping your coffee in premium condition takes nothing more than a few small adjustments to your setup and routine. At Niche Coffee, we’re passionate about making the very best drink – and if you’re going to use the best home grinder to make your coffee, it’s only right that you should take that little extra care to make what goes in the very freshest it can be.

Keeping your equipment in peak condition is essential if you want to get the best out of it every day. The Niche Zero’s near-zero retention design minimises waste and keeps everything running smoothly, but no grinder is entirely self-cleaning. Over time, fine coffee particles and oils will build up, even in the most precise equipment.

Pour-over coffee (also known as filter coffee or drip coffee) is one of the most relaxed ways to make quality coffee at home. Producing a cup that’s bursting with flavour, making filter coffee can be a peaceful and ritualistic way of making a coffee, combining great taste with a little mental health break.

Dialling in your grind is the method of fine-tuning your grind settings to achieve the exact level of granularity desired when turning beans into ground coffee. Getting your grind right makes the difference between a good coffee and a fantastic coffee.

The French press is potentially one of the most recognisable and accessible pieces of coffee equipment in the world. However, it is rarely used to its full potential, often left sat on a shelf as decoration or bundled into the back of a kitchen cabinet.

The method in this article is designed to give consistent, repeatable, delicious brews with great clarity of flavour and reduced turbidity (more. on that in a second). Let’s get brewing.

There are many fine nuances that go into a perfect cup of coffee, but one which we at Niche Coffee are particularly keen to explore is that of grinding. Our Niche Zero and Niche Duo grinders have been developed using the science of good coffee, so it stands to reason that we have a thing or two to say on the subject. If you’ve ever wondered how grind size affects coffee, you’re in the right place.

For many coffee lovers, milk is simply part of the drink, and they don’t even consider drinking a coffee without it – espresso shots and black filter coffee aren’t on the menu. Milk has been paired with coffee for almost as long as coffee has been around, but what does it do to the drink, and why add milk to coffee?

When you have a premium grinder like a Niche Zero, being able to trust that the grind you’re getting is consistent is essential - after all, the quality of your grind is the very start of your coffee making process and affects everything that comes afterwards. The Niche Zero is a high-quality piece of precision equipment, but that does mean it occasionally needs some essential maintenance.