Drinky Coffee is the ultimate resource for coffee lovers who want to learn how to make café quality coffee at home.
Oli Baise – Founder and Editor
I grew up around high quality coffee as my parents own a coffee shop, The Coffee Traveller in London, UK.
Throughout my late teens I became involved in all aspects of running the coffee shop, from creating and serving coffee to helping managing the shop’s finances and marketing.
When the pandemic hit, we became flooded with messages from our customers asking for advice on how they can replicate their favourite coffee drinks at home.
These requests inspired me to launch this website where I aim to teach you how to make the best possible coffee at home through honest product reviews and tutorials on coffee making techniques.
How I Review Products
In the vast majority of cases I will buy the products that I am reviewing, and then I will test them for the following features:
Quality of Coffee: I will taste test all the coffees a machine can make and measure how closely the machine follows long established best practices for coffee brewing.
Ease of Use: I’ll take note of how long it takes for me to understand how to use the machine and if there are any aspects of it that are particularly intuitive/unintuitive.
Design and Build Quality: I’ll stress test the machine to check if there are any potential points of failure and take it apart to examine whether its interior is well built. I’ll also look at other reviews of the product online (particularly on Amazon and Reddit) to see if there are any common technical issues with the machine.
Ease of Cleaning: I’ll clean and descale the machine based on its instructions and note how much time and effort this takes.
Functionalities: I’ll run through everything that each machine can do, as well as evaluating how well it executes each of its purported functionalities. I’ll then compare this to other similarly priced machines to see which offers you the highest number of functionalities for your money.
Value for Money: I’ll look at how much each machine costs on its manufacturers and third party retailers website and see how closely this matches the quality of the machine. I’ll also look at the price of similar machines to give any recommendations on how you can get better value for money elsewhere.
If I cannot get my hands on the products then I will research them extensively online before writing about them.
The places where I research products online are:
YouTube: Its hard to fabricate YouTube videos so product demonstrations on there tend to be honest. If I want to get a feel for what a machine is like to use to use, then I will watch videos of people testing it on YouTube.
Reddit: There are several subreddits dedicated to specific types of coffee machine. These include r/nespresso, r/keurig and r/superautomatic. If you have used Reddit for more than two minutes you will know people are very blunt on there, so I can get unfiltered feedback on what these machines are like to use. If I want to find out something specific about a machine I will ask on the most relevant subreddit.
Facebook Groups: I mainly use relevant Facebook groups to poll or interview owners of specific machines.
Speaking to Manufacturers: If I want to find out specific technicalities of machines I will try to contact manufacturers directly. I’ll also sometimes test out customer support teams with made up problems just to see how helpful they are.
Digging Through Instruction Manuals: I get most of the basic, technical information about products from their instruction manuals. This data tends to be more accurate than stuff you find online, even on Amazon listings.
Amazon Reviews: I’ll pour through products’ reviews on Amazon to see if I can find any recurring strong or weak points about the product that users have flagged up.
Please be aware that even if I have tested a product personally, I will still research it extensively online to get a more holistic view of it.
