This is why I have a hard time with hobbyist forums/communities. I get the idea of wanting to hone your end result or what have you, but it always seems to veer off into obsession while getting results which are debatably any better than keeping it simple.
I weigh my coffee/water to keep the brew ratio the same, and that is fine-tuned enough for me.
I weigh my coffee/water to keep the brew ratio the same
Yeah, I developed my current routine by weighing, but because I use literally the same containers every morning I can eyeball the amount of beans or water in those containers and know that I’m basically at the ratio I used to measure. Maybe tomorrow I’ll eyeball it, and then measure, to confirm I’m still calibrated at the right level.
I find some beans to be a bit denser than others, so I don’t try to guess that, but I can hit the desired water target range pretty easily by eyeball these days.
The hardest part of my setup was finding a grinder setting that works for 90+ percent of the coffee I enjoy. I order something new every time, so it gives me a good baseline, and if I want to tweak it, 2 clicks up or down gets me where I want without much fuss.
Lol musician forum are always great for that. There ends up being a lot of work to convince people to just buy this one more new thing and you will have the sound you have always dreamed of. This either leads to people selling their last gear purchase to either buy the same thing in a new package or to rebuy what they sold off to buy their current gear, but now at an inflated vintage gear price. Or you get everyone buying the same thing and now you sound like every other tone chaser in your quest to find originality.
That’s why I love cooking communities. A lot of things really do just boil down to technique, and a substantial amount of the equipment necessary is commodity grade where almost any brand performs the same.
Good point! Even if you make something and it doesn’t turn out in a way you like, you at least have an idea of how you can change what you did that time to get something more like what you do want.
I don’t have a problem with people who are willing to do things in a complex way or experiment around. But hobbies are often an excuse for consumerism and elitism and that’s kind of gross.
Like coffee is a great example: someone will talk about a $20 pour over or French press with pre ground coffee from a local roaster, which is a setup that will give you vastly superior coffee to most people and chain options like starbucks or dunkin. They’ll get roasted (lol) because they’re not grinding at home (at minimum $1-200 for a decent grinder). And then when you dive into those people you’ll see they have some wild ass setup with like an $8000 espresso machine, $3000 grinder, the $200 coffee scale that coffee nerds have a boner for because a $10-30 scale with almost the same exact feature set is lame and coffee nerds are just audiophiles in a different hat. They have that same desperation in trying to justify their excessive consumerism that has led to their kitchen counter holding a handful of appliances dedicated to a single task that have cost them the value of a very solid used car.
But like the person that double blind tests various preparation methods? That experiments with data recording to better understand what happens during various brewing methods? That tries unconventional approaches to extraction? That person is cool
Heck ya, some solid experimenting to me is way cooler than someone dropping massive cash on something. That’s kiiiinda interesting sometimes to see what’s new and experimental, but I’ll never spend that on it, so there’s limited use to me. But the fart sniffing stuff of overpriced scales and stuff like that, I can live without that type of content completely.
I agree with you that hobbies often enshittify. However, coffee has a special place in my heart because you can make really, really tasty coffee with simple tools.
My setup is a plastic cone, a set of filter papers, a plastic kettle, a thermometer, a dispersion screen, and a scale.
As to grinding coffee, you’re right that a grinder is expensive. There’s no way around that. However, you can do what my partner and I did for months: our local coffee shop ground our coffee each week.
Why am I saying all of this?
In part because I agree with you. I actually approach coffee deliberately with an 80/20 mindset: I’ll get 80% of the coffee goodness for 20% of the effort. I do this because I don’t want to get sucked into the deep end.
And I think you could get a lot of coffee goodness for very little effort. Coffee ratios are a great way to start. You take just a few steps so that you can play around with temperature, grind size, and pouring technique. In my mind, that’s the 20% that gets me 80% of coffee goodness.
Of course, it’s possible that you like your current setup and that’s great! I believe the best coffee is the coffee that you like.
Oh, I’m not saying all of it is hooey, just after the things you mention, there are rapidly diminishing returns.
I started with just an Aeropress and experimenting with different grocery store coffees. Then I got a Barratza Encore for my birthday. I switched to the OXO dripper pour over and prefer that cleaner taste, and my wife prefers the Aeropress still. She doesn’t notice the difference between grocery coffee and fresh ground, so she usually gets a flavored coffee, and I get a different single origin from Trade every couple weeks.
I probably spend the most of my friend group on coffee, at least home coffee, but I think it’s better than any coffee I get out, and I think the value ratio is still well in my favor for what I get. A coworker seemed interested in my setup and bought it all, but she seemed to like it when I did the work, and even that level of hands on was too much fuss, and her and her husband went back to using a French press without measuring anything.
I find the setup a bit much to do in the morning when I wake up and am all groggy, so I’ve gone to making it before I go to bed into canning jars, and I vacuum seal it so we can either warm it up or have “iced coffee” in the morning, and we think it tastes as good as fresh.
I’m glad you all have experimented and found what works for you all!
Your evening-morning setup sounds great! I do something similar, brewing all the coffee I’ll drink throughout the day in a single batch. That way I control my caffeine intake and I have tasty coffee no matter where I go!
I read that as (19)30s documentary at first and was slightly confused until I clicked it! 😁
Spot on though! Especially about the made up lingo and the rituals to maximize his “throat velocity!”
Again, I won’t shame you if you do all that stuff and really enjoy it, but you should be self aware enough to know your level of fanaticism isn’t the norm.
This is why I have a hard time with hobbyist forums/communities. I get the idea of wanting to hone your end result or what have you, but it always seems to veer off into obsession while getting results which are debatably any better than keeping it simple.
I weigh my coffee/water to keep the brew ratio the same, and that is fine-tuned enough for me.
Yeah, I developed my current routine by weighing, but because I use literally the same containers every morning I can eyeball the amount of beans or water in those containers and know that I’m basically at the ratio I used to measure. Maybe tomorrow I’ll eyeball it, and then measure, to confirm I’m still calibrated at the right level.
I find some beans to be a bit denser than others, so I don’t try to guess that, but I can hit the desired water target range pretty easily by eyeball these days.
The hardest part of my setup was finding a grinder setting that works for 90+ percent of the coffee I enjoy. I order something new every time, so it gives me a good baseline, and if I want to tweak it, 2 clicks up or down gets me where I want without much fuss.
I feel like that type of place is really prone to worship a particular brand/substituting any knowledge or skill for consumerism.
Lol musician forum are always great for that. There ends up being a lot of work to convince people to just buy this one more new thing and you will have the sound you have always dreamed of. This either leads to people selling their last gear purchase to either buy the same thing in a new package or to rebuy what they sold off to buy their current gear, but now at an inflated vintage gear price. Or you get everyone buying the same thing and now you sound like every other tone chaser in your quest to find originality.
That’s why I love cooking communities. A lot of things really do just boil down to technique, and a substantial amount of the equipment necessary is commodity grade where almost any brand performs the same.
Good point! Even if you make something and it doesn’t turn out in a way you like, you at least have an idea of how you can change what you did that time to get something more like what you do want.
I don’t have a problem with people who are willing to do things in a complex way or experiment around. But hobbies are often an excuse for consumerism and elitism and that’s kind of gross.
Like coffee is a great example: someone will talk about a $20 pour over or French press with pre ground coffee from a local roaster, which is a setup that will give you vastly superior coffee to most people and chain options like starbucks or dunkin. They’ll get roasted (lol) because they’re not grinding at home (at minimum $1-200 for a decent grinder). And then when you dive into those people you’ll see they have some wild ass setup with like an $8000 espresso machine, $3000 grinder, the $200 coffee scale that coffee nerds have a boner for because a $10-30 scale with almost the same exact feature set is lame and coffee nerds are just audiophiles in a different hat. They have that same desperation in trying to justify their excessive consumerism that has led to their kitchen counter holding a handful of appliances dedicated to a single task that have cost them the value of a very solid used car.
But like the person that double blind tests various preparation methods? That experiments with data recording to better understand what happens during various brewing methods? That tries unconventional approaches to extraction? That person is cool
Heck ya, some solid experimenting to me is way cooler than someone dropping massive cash on something. That’s kiiiinda interesting sometimes to see what’s new and experimental, but I’ll never spend that on it, so there’s limited use to me. But the fart sniffing stuff of overpriced scales and stuff like that, I can live without that type of content completely.
I agree with you that hobbies often enshittify. However, coffee has a special place in my heart because you can make really, really tasty coffee with simple tools.
My setup is a plastic cone, a set of filter papers, a plastic kettle, a thermometer, a dispersion screen, and a scale.
As to grinding coffee, you’re right that a grinder is expensive. There’s no way around that. However, you can do what my partner and I did for months: our local coffee shop ground our coffee each week.
Why am I saying all of this?
In part because I agree with you. I actually approach coffee deliberately with an 80/20 mindset: I’ll get 80% of the coffee goodness for 20% of the effort. I do this because I don’t want to get sucked into the deep end.
And I think you could get a lot of coffee goodness for very little effort. Coffee ratios are a great way to start. You take just a few steps so that you can play around with temperature, grind size, and pouring technique. In my mind, that’s the 20% that gets me 80% of coffee goodness.
Of course, it’s possible that you like your current setup and that’s great! I believe the best coffee is the coffee that you like.
Oh, I’m not saying all of it is hooey, just after the things you mention, there are rapidly diminishing returns.
I started with just an Aeropress and experimenting with different grocery store coffees. Then I got a Barratza Encore for my birthday. I switched to the OXO dripper pour over and prefer that cleaner taste, and my wife prefers the Aeropress still. She doesn’t notice the difference between grocery coffee and fresh ground, so she usually gets a flavored coffee, and I get a different single origin from Trade every couple weeks.
I probably spend the most of my friend group on coffee, at least home coffee, but I think it’s better than any coffee I get out, and I think the value ratio is still well in my favor for what I get. A coworker seemed interested in my setup and bought it all, but she seemed to like it when I did the work, and even that level of hands on was too much fuss, and her and her husband went back to using a French press without measuring anything.
I find the setup a bit much to do in the morning when I wake up and am all groggy, so I’ve gone to making it before I go to bed into canning jars, and I vacuum seal it so we can either warm it up or have “iced coffee” in the morning, and we think it tastes as good as fresh.
I’m glad you all have experimented and found what works for you all!
Your evening-morning setup sounds great! I do something similar, brewing all the coffee I’ll drink throughout the day in a single batch. That way I control my caffeine intake and I have tasty coffee no matter where I go!
You will enjoy this 30s documentary.
I read that as (19)30s documentary at first and was slightly confused until I clicked it! 😁
Spot on though! Especially about the made up lingo and the rituals to maximize his “throat velocity!”
Again, I won’t shame you if you do all that stuff and really enjoy it, but you should be self aware enough to know your level of fanaticism isn’t the norm.