For many of us, coffee is the first thing we turn to in the morning to jump start the day. It’s also the medium that brings us together with family and friends, slows us down to enjoy a few minutes with a book in a favorite chair, and gives us the afternoon energy to keep going.

There’s also an art and entertainment value in the actual process of making coffee. While the end result—a warm mug of black nectar—may be what we desire, we can also learn to enjoy the art and even science behind making a really good cup of coffee.

Here are my favorite ways to make an incredible cup of joe, while also enjoying the process that goes into making that cup.

Grind Beans Before Making Coffee

The best cup of coffee is always achieved by using freshly-roasted coffee beans and grinding the beans just before you brew. There are many ways to grind coffee beans (hammer, stone and chisel or a spice grinder), but you’ll always find that a burr grinder is a baristas top choice for grinding beans.

Beyond just the taste difference, grinding your own beans allows you to be in complete control of the entire coffee-making process. The KitchenAid® Burr Grinder features 15 different grind levels, allowing you to achieve the perfect grind for your preferred coffee-brewing method.

Weight Matters

A scale allows you to achieve the perfect ratio between coffee beans and water, whether you (and your guests) like a lighter brew or a darker brew. A weight measurement keeps your coffee-brewing consistent—every gram counts!

The KitchenAid® Digital Scale Jar Burr Grinder Accessory allows you to weigh your grounds as they come out of the Burr Grinder so you don’t have to worry about weighing out just enough beans ahead of time. This means you can keep coffee beans in the Burr Grinder at all times. You’ll always be ready to make coffee.

In order to determine how many grams of beans are needed to make coffee, consult the KitchenAid manual that comes with your coffee maker.

Once the freshly-roasted coffee beans/grounds are weighed (according to the manual instructions), it’s time to make coffee using your favorite method. There are many ways to make a good cup of joe. Let’s talk about a few of my favorites.

Hands-On Coffee

The KitchenAid® Precision Press Coffee Maker is a simple way to enjoy the hands-on process and control of making coffee.

The Precision Press Coffee Maker doesn’t use a paper filter to separate the coffee grounds from the coffee. Instead, the coffee grounds are steeped in the water, resulting in a tiny amount of grounds in the final coffee. This results in bold, flavorful coffee.

You can also use the Precision Press Coffee Maker to weigh the amount of coffee grounds and water to your ratio preference. The timer also lets me time my brew time perfectly.

Hands-Off, Pour Over Coffee

Most weekday mornings in my home are quite busy. There’s very little time for slowing down when lunches need to be packed, breakfast needs to be served, and children need to get ready for school.

Even in the busyness, I can still enjoy really good coffee, and even enjoy the art of making it with the KitchenAid® Pour Over Coffee Brewer.

The Pour Over Coffee Brewer allows me to enjoy a cup of coffee that tastes similar to a hands-on, pour over method, but in a fraction of the time due to a one-touch automatic button. And the Pour Over Coffee Brewer makes up to 8 cups of coffee—enough coffee for multiple people. That’s something most traditional pour over methods can’t do.

Artistic Coffee

If you’ve ever been to a fancy coffee shop or spent time perusing coffee videos on YouTube, you’ve probably seen the siphon method used to make coffee. This method is incredibly entertaining to watch.

Siphon coffee brewing is not only a beautiful process to watch (and we eat/drink with our eyes first), but it also produces incredibly smooth-tasting coffee thanks to a traditional, immersion vacuum brewing technique.

The KitchenAid® Siphon Coffee Brewer allows me to get back to using this traditional method with a simplified, automatic approach.

The Siphon Coffee Brewer isn’t a coffee brewer I reach for on a daily basis (that’s where the Precision Press Coffee Maker and/or Pour Over Coffee Brewer come in handy). Rather, it’s a statement coffee maker—one that’s brought out in our home when we want to really enjoy the artistic beauty of making coffee or entertain our guests and serve them a cup of joe at the same time.

Cold Brew

Cold brew is my beverage of choice most afternoons, along with water. Making cold brew is a fascinating process, that calls for steeping coffee grounds in water for about 16 hours (give or take a few hours for taste preferences), and then removing the grounds from the now concentrated coffee.

The KitchenAid® Cold Brew Coffee Maker allows me to make cold brew easily using a stainless steel steeper basket and glass storage container. Once the steeper is removed from the coffee (after the steeping time), the glass storage container is kept in the refrigerator and the coffee is ready to be enjoyed all week long.

How about you? Do you have a favorite method for brewing coffee? What about the method do you love—the flavor, the experience, the beauty of the process?

*The Contributor of this post has been compensated by KitchenAid for this post, but this post represents the Contributor’s own opinion.*