Always, always, always know how much coffee you are putting into your brewer. Always, always, always measure how much water you'll be brewing with. Even if you're not super picky when it comes to your coffee, you will not be able to improve your at-home coffee experience without a scale. 

Most coffee pots have a much smaller basket than they should. For a full-bodied coffee experience, we aim 1 part coffee to 16-20 parts water. For example 30 grams of coffee to 510 grams of water. If you have a Mr. Coffee or other cheap coffee pots, you will only be able to brew 8 "cups" using a decent coffee:water ratio. Brands like Breville, Oxo, and Bonavita all sell drip brewers that can brew larger amounts of coffee at a strong enough ratio. 

Chemex, V60, Kalita Wave, Origami... These are all names of wonderful drip brewers that you can experiment with. You could spend months learning how to nail down each one. Here are some of the best principles for pour over brewing. 

Always bloom | 1:14-1:18 brew ratio (coffee:water) | Brew between 206-212 degrees for light roasts & 197-205 degrees for darker roasts | Always heat your brewing vessel as much as possible before brewing

Keep it really simple. 1:17-1:22 brew ratio. 

Let it sit for 4-6 minutes, and pour it out. 

It is that simple, and yet, there is so much experimenting you can do with immersion brewing. 60 grams of coarsely ground coffee to 1080 grams of 200 degree water for 5 minutes. That's classic. But you can also experiment with grinder your coffee finer and brewing it for less time. You can pour a bloom (double the weight of the coffee to wet the grounds) and wait for a minute before pouring the rest of the water. Give it a stir after 2 minutes of brewing. If you want a low-risk way to experiment, try out a french press. 

Take some coffee, grind it really fine, compress it in a little basket, and push hot water through that coffee for about 30 seconds. It's that simple, right? 

Brewing coffee as espresso is a black hole. You can purchase the nicest machine, the nicest grinder, a premium coffee and still, you will work the rest of your life on tweaking how you prep the puck, what ratio is right for each origin and processing method, modifying your brew temperature, trying new burrs on your grinder, and the list goes on. 

In general, grind 14-20 grams of coffee (most likely 15-16 grams if you own the standard Breville machines) and adjust the grind size until the coffee brews in 25-30 seconds. Try a 1:2 ratio, and if you're really brave, you can go 1:3. 

In my experience with the Breville Barista Express, the most impactful upgrade I made (at home) was purchasing a WDT tool. It takes extra time to prep your espresso puck, but the water flows through the coffee so much more evenly, it makes a MASSIVE difference in how your coffee tastes.