With beans, grinds, bag sizes and delivery frequencies all to choose from, setting up a coffee subscription involves more decisions than it might first appear. Getting each one right makes the difference between a subscription that quietly works in the background and one you end up tweaking or cancelling within a few months. This guide walks through choosing the right coffee subscription for you, step by step.
The quick answer
Choosing the right coffee subscription means matching four things to your own habits: which beans suit your taste, which grind suits your brewing method, how much coffee you actually get through each month, and which delivery frequency and bag size keep you supplied without excess. Working through these in order, rather than guessing, gets you to a genuinely well-matched subscription much faster.
Step 1: Choose Your Beans
Start with flavour. If you're new to speciality coffee or want a reliably smooth, forgiving option, our Amici House Roast, with hazelnut, mango and milk chocolate notes, is a popular starting point. If you already know you enjoy brighter, more distinct flavour profiles, our full buying guide compares all six of our coffees by origin and tasting notes to help you choose.
Step 2: Choose Your Grind
Your grind should match your brewing method rather than being chosen separately from it. Espresso needs a fine grind, cafetière needs a coarse grind, pour-over and filter sit in the middle, and moka pot needs something in between fine and medium, as covered in our grind size guide. If you brew more than one way, whole beans with a home grinder gives you the most flexibility, letting you adjust grind size per method rather than committing to one fixed grind for everything.
Step 3: Work Out How Much You Actually Drink
This step is easy to skip but genuinely important, since it determines both your bag size and delivery frequency. Our guide to how much coffee you need each month walks through the calculation — dose per cup, multiplied by cups per day, multiplied by roughly 30 days — giving you a rough monthly total in grams to work from.
Step 4: Choose Your Bag Size
Amici's coffees are available in 250g and 1kg sizes. As a rough guide, 250g suits lighter or occasional drinkers, while 1kg suits regular daily drinkers or households with more than one coffee drinker. Choosing a bag size that's too large for your usage risks beans sitting around losing freshness before you get through them, while choosing one that's too small means running out more often than you'd like.
Step 5: Choose Your Delivery Frequency
Amici's subscription offers monthly or fortnightly delivery. Fortnightly generally suits regular daily drinkers or larger households, while monthly suits lighter or occasional drinkers, or those pairing a larger bag size with a longer gap between deliveries. Our guide to subscription frequency covers matching frequency to your usage in more depth, including worked examples for different household types.
Step 6: Decide Whether a Subscription Is Right for You at All
If you're an occasional drinker, or you specifically enjoy browsing and choosing something different each time, a one-off purchase may suit you better than a subscription. Our comparison of subscriptions vs one-off purchases covers this decision directly, and our guide to subscription value breaks down the real savings if cost is your main consideration.
Putting It All Together: A Worked Example
Imagine someone having one double espresso a day at home, who's new to speciality coffee and brews only via espresso machine. Step 1 points them towards the House Roast for its forgiving, broadly appealing profile. Step 2 points them towards an espresso grind. Step 3's calculation, roughly 19g a day, works out to about 570g a month. Step 4 suggests a 1kg bag comfortably covers this with some buffer. Step 5 suggests monthly delivery, since 1kg lasts well beyond a single month at this usage rate. The result: a monthly 1kg House Roast subscription, ground for espresso.
A Second Worked Example: A Two-Person Household
Now imagine two people sharing a household, each having two cafetière cups a day. Step 1 might lead them towards trying a couple of different single origins, since cafetière brewing suits a range of flavour profiles well. Step 2 points towards a coarse cafetière grind. Step 3's calculation, at roughly 48g a day between them, comes to around 1.44kg a month. Step 4 suggests 1kg bags, and Step 5 suggests fortnightly delivery to keep pace with this higher usage without running short.
A Third Worked Example: An Occasional Weekend Drinker
Consider someone who only brews coffee on weekends, using a pour-over dripper. Step 1 might lead them towards a brighter, more distinct single origin, since they're drinking less often and want each cup to feel like something worth savouring. Step 2 points towards a medium-coarse pour-over grind. Step 3's calculation, at roughly 160–200g a month, comes to well under a single 250g bag's worth of coffee. Step 4 and 5 point towards a 250g bag on monthly delivery, or even reconsidering whether a subscription is the right fit at all, given how lightly they're using it, rather than fortnightly delivery which would likely lead to excess build-up.
Revisiting Your Choices Over Time
Your first subscription setup doesn't need to be perfect — it's normal to adjust bag size, frequency or even your chosen beans after a month or two of real-world experience. Treat your initial choices as a well-informed starting point rather than a permanent decision, and use whatever flexibility your subscription offers to fine-tune it as you learn more about your actual habits.
Common Mistakes When Setting Up a Subscription
The most common mistake is choosing a bag size or frequency based on guesswork rather than an actual calculation of usage, leading to either running out or over-accumulating. Another is choosing a grind that doesn't match your brewing method, undermining an otherwise well-chosen bean. A third is assuming your first choice of beans has to be permanent, when trying something new occasionally is part of the enjoyment of having a flexible subscription in the first place.
Checklist: Choosing Your Coffee Subscription
Before subscribing, make sure you've considered: which beans genuinely suit your taste; which grind suits your brewing method; your rough monthly usage in grams; whether a 250g or 1kg bag matches that usage; and whether monthly or fortnightly delivery keeps you supplied without excess. Working through each of these in turn, rather than picking arbitrarily, gets you to a subscription that genuinely fits rather than one you'll likely need to overhaul later.
Which Amici Coffee Should You Start With?
If you're still undecided after working through the steps above, our Amici House Roast remains a genuinely safe, popular starting point for a first subscription, thanks to its broadly appealing, forgiving flavour profile that suits most brewing methods.
Start Your Amici Coffee Subscription
Once you've worked through your beans, grind, usage, bag size and frequency, our coffee subscription lets you set everything up to match, with the flexibility to adjust as you go.
Why Choose Amici Coffee?
Amici Coffee is an independent UK coffee business with six carefully selected single origin coffees, each with clear origin and tasting information rather than vague blend descriptions. Beans are roasted in partnership with a certified B Corp speciality coffee roasting partner that holds the highest B Corp score of any coffee roaster we work with — a genuinely world-leading, global leader in ethical coffee roasting. You can order online for delivery, visit our café in person, or set up a subscription so your coffee never runs out.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I choose the right coffee subscription for me?
Work through your preferred beans, the right grind for your brewing method, your rough monthly usage, and the bag size and frequency that match it.
What if I'm not sure which beans I'll like?
Start with a broadly appealing, forgiving option like our House Roast, and use the flexibility of a subscription to try other origins over time.
How do I know which bag size and frequency to choose?
Calculate your rough monthly usage in grams, then match it against 250g or 1kg bags on a monthly or fortnightly schedule.
Can I change my subscription setup after signing up?
Yes. Beans, grind, bag size and frequency can all typically be adjusted as you learn more about your actual usage.
Is a subscription the right choice for everyone?
Not necessarily. Occasional drinkers, or those who prefer choosing something different every time, may be better suited to one-off purchases.
What's the biggest mistake people make when choosing a subscription?
Guessing bag size and frequency rather than calculating actual usage, which often leads to running out or accumulating too much coffee.
The Bottom Line
Choosing the right coffee subscription comes down to matching beans, grind, bag size and frequency to your own genuine habits, rather than picking arbitrarily. Work through each step in order, treat your first setup as a starting point, and adjust as you learn more about how much coffee you actually get through.
Start your Amici coffee subscription, or explore our range of single origin coffees first.
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