How to Make Coffee at Home? Popular Coffee Drink Recipes from Xiaohongshu

The Rise of DIY Coffee Culture in 2022

Do you know what the most popular coffee of 2022 was? That's right, it was all the homemade coffee being shared on Xiaohongshu.

In the past, coffee posts on social media were mostly beautifully decorated coffee shops paired with artsy, airy captions. Today, coffee content on social media has split into three camps: homemade coffee sharing, professional coffee knowledge, and coffee shop check-ins. The homemade coffee topic alone has passed 600,000 posts.

After Luckin launched its raw coconut latte, homemade coffee trends surged across social platforms. It began with fairly conventional coffee drinks, then moved into layered fruit coffees and specialty drinks, before the style changed completely.

From lazy iced coffees to creations that are as entertaining as they are photogenic, from Saturn coffee and the "waterfall" iced Americano to the "quicksand" iced Americano, where the coffee is frothed into a fine foam before being poured into the cup, netizens have stretched their creativity in every direction.

Then things got wilder, kicking off a "life-risking" trend. There was an iced Guangdong-style drink, the iced herbal tea that shares coffee's color and bitterness, with heat-clearing granules added during coffee extraction, and a Huoxiang Zhengqi iced Americano. Then came the coffee with fresh produce that circulated a few days ago. Perhaps a little caution is in order.

The rise of homemade coffee has not only driven sales of coffee products, it has also handed coffee shops plenty of traffic strategies. As one shop owner joked to a writer, "Selling a 60-yuan Finca Soledad red label is no easier than selling 60-yuan crowd-pleasers trending on Xiaohongshu and Douyin."

Why Homemade Coffee Is Gaining Popularity

Homemade coffee has drawn in more and more netizens for several reasons. First, the pandemic changed consumption habits, and more people were inclined to order ingredients online and make things themselves at home.

Second, homemade coffee is cheap. For most consumers, whether they can pick out specific flavor notes hardly matters; what matters is having a cup of coffee. Most homemade coffees cost between 5 and 10 yuan, and the taste holds up against what you would buy from a coffee shop. For many workers, nothing beats that kind of coffee freedom.

Third, the DIY crowd has grown up. A friend from Guangdong shared this: "When I used to go to tea houses, I always liked to order a plate of fried mantou, not for the mantou itself, but just to add the accompanying condensed milk to my tea and adjust the sweetness to my taste. Now I enjoy making coffee at home because I can control the ingredients, the amounts, and the flavors completely to my liking."

On top of that, convenient ingredients are everywhere now, from ready-to-drink coffee liquids and freeze-dried coffee that dissolves in cold water to cold brew bags, drip bags, and coffee-shop-style ingredients like raw coconut milk and ice blocks. All of it makes homemade coffee easier than ever.

DIY Coffee Culture and Professional Standards

The popularity of homemade coffee is a positive development. To draw more consumers toward paying attention to and understanding coffee, today's homemade coffee may be a more genuine gateway into coffee culture than the wall-to-wall professional jargon of the past. That said, none of this means professionalism should be abandoned.

Folk culture has its own down-to-earth appeal, but coffee shops should still hold on to their professionalism. Homemade coffee and coffee shop consumption are two entirely different models. People who brew at home will still choose to spend at coffee shops, hoping to taste something different from what they make themselves, to experience a barista's skill, and to deepen their understanding of coffee.

Image source: Various creators on Xiaohongshu

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If you are building homemade drinks around milk, as most of these trending recipes do, a bean with enough body and sweetness is essential. FrontStreet Classic Blend was designed for espresso machines and moka pots, and its strongest point is crema: even a beginner with an ordinary home machine can pull a dense, velvety shot. Its traditional Mamba blend recipe gives a rich, mellow cup that works just as well for a latte, a cappuccino, or a Dirty. If you want to keep costs down while still getting plenty of crema and a full body, FrontStreet Black Cocoa Blend uses 100% Arabica beans and delivers solid quality at a friendly price, which matters when you are making several drinks a day.

For something fruitier and more distinctive, FrontStreet Strawberry Candy blends Arabica beans from different origins to recreate a clear strawberry-gummy sweetness, a good match for the layered fruit coffees and creative iced drinks that dominate social media. If cold brew is more your style, that same bean shines there too: it brings rose petals and a juicy sweetness that stays balanced once you add a splash of milk.