Everyday Beans Podcast - Mostly About Coffee and Other Stuff

Recognizing When Your Coffee Isn't For You

• Oaks, the coffee guy • Season 1 • Episode 166

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In this episode, I dive into a topic that might seem controversial but is really about being honest with ourselves when it comes to our coffee experiences. I explore the three main ways to recognize when your coffee just isn't meeting your standards—what I playfully call "when your coffee is shit."

I share my personal experience with a Sumatran coffee that I tried desperately to enjoy through various brewing methods, temperatures, and techniques, yet it never satisfied my palate. I discuss how Third Wave water can be a "magic potion" that gives your coffee one last chance to show its true potential, and finally, I emphasize the importance of personal taste in our coffee journey. Listeners will learn how to be more objective about their coffee preferences, trust their own palate, and avoid romanticizing coffee to the point of ignoring when a particular brew simply doesn't work for them.

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[00:00] We live! We live! We live right now! Today is February 19th, 2025. And we're doing pretty good right now. I think we are.

[00:15] So, what is this crazy guy, this coffee guy, gonna talk about today? It may be a little controversial, but I don't really think it is. I think it's more about being real with ourselves when we have our cup of coffee.

[00:30] So, here is the question. When do you know your coffee is not good? When do you know your coffee just isn't working? I've actually recently gone through this a couple times. And I just wanna bring up a couple different reasons why your coffee might not be up to your standards. You don't like it for probably the reasons that I'm about to mention right now.

[00:48] So, not too long ago, probably about three weeks ago, I had this one coffee, this Sumatran coffee, and I think it was a medium roast or light roast. I can't remember. It doesn't really matter. And I brewed a cup in my Hario V60. And it didn't taste like anything.

[01:05] And I was wondering why it didn't really taste like anything. And so I went down this rabbit hole of doing different recipes and different temperatures and different grind sizes and different techniques and all that. I tried different brewing devices.

[01:21] No matter what, I spent about 30-45 minutes of just racking my head trying to really understand what this coffee was to me. And it all tasted the same and I wasn't happy with it.

[01:33] And I sat there and I wondered, is it me or is it this coffee? I don't think it was me. And I think I talked about this a little bit, but not all coffees are gonna be for us. And in this case, to me, the coffee was just not good because no matter which way I tried to brew the coffee, it didn't do anything for me, for my taste buds, for my excitement in coffee.

[01:54] It didn't matter at all what I was trying to do with this coffee. It was completely unsatisfying. So that's the first way that you know your coffee isn't working for you. When you've exhausted all the possibilities of brewing this cup of coffee in whichever way it may be. So that's number one.

[02:16] Number two. It may be a little controversial, especially if you're talking to my wife. But if you have this coffee and you put it through its ringers with Third Wave water, okay? And it's still not tasting as spectacular as you would think that it should with this Third Wave water.

[02:34] Third Wave water is this type of magic potion, at least to me and probably to others, is that it gives you just a little bit more understanding of the coffee that you are drinking. What I mean by that is that it gives you this sense of more clarity of what you're tasting in a cup of coffee.

[02:52] And if your coffee tastes just okay and you put it through this Third Wave water or whatever type of concoction that you make in order to enhance the water that you're using, then more than likely your coffee isn't going to improve much.

[03:09] Yeah, I truly do believe that. If your coffee is good with just regular water, then you don't have to really worry about it. But I believe that when you use Third Wave water, it gives your coffee one of those last fighting chances of showing you what it truly really is.

[03:27] It's like when you are talking to a person, I always try to bring up this scenario quite a bit. And what I mean by that is that coffee is like people, personalities. Depending on how many times that you talk to them or whatever, they may give you more so the same or they may open up a little bit more.

[03:45] But in this case, this is like one of your coffee's last chances to really show you what it truly really is. And I believe that if you're using this type of water, as my wife would say, this gives you just a little bit, just enough understanding of what that coffee is. But I think that says a lot about the coffee.

[04:07] Because if it opens up in a way to where you understand it even more so, then you may have a reason to explore it more, try different recipes, and all that good stuff. So that's what I believe that's kind of missing sometimes.

[04:23] Yes, grind size and grinder and all that stuff is extremely important. But a lot of times people can just accidentally make a good cup of coffee and not have any of the special gear, gadgets, accessories that we are accustomed to having.

[04:38] But I do believe that this Third Wave Water or something like it gives you one of the best chances in order to truly really enjoy your coffee more than what you think that that particular coffee can actually taste like.

[04:52] Because at least for me, I'm chasing, if it's just a little bit more clarity, understanding that coffee a little bit more. That's what I want more than anything. And if it's just a little bit more, and I can understand that coffee even more so, and I can enjoy it, that's for me. That's why I'm here. That's what excites me about coffee.

[05:13] Now, the third one, which I think this is really where we're at with all these choices and all this stuff. We were really thinking about why your coffee isn't meeting your expectations.

[05:26] Personal taste. Your taste buds. What you like in coffee. It's truly really the most important reason why your coffee isn't working for you. Truthfully, it's probably not even bad. It just doesn't gel with you.

[05:40] The Sumatran that I tried my part out to really enjoy, it just probably just wasn't my cup of tea. And I know I go through these little things, at least for me, where I assess my taste buds. I taste different fruits and vegetables and all that stuff.

[05:55] And when I do so, I note down what I like about that stuff. Then I do like a combination of them to see how it really tastes together. But sometimes when you get a cup of coffee and it's a light roast, at least for me, or a sour coffee, a highly acidic coffee that doesn't have any sweetness, a coffee that tastes like tomatoes or tea, which I don't care for tea like that.

[06:15] I don't want to taste tea in my coffee or even grapefruit rind as a lingering aftertaste. I don't like that. And that's perfectly fine. And I think those are some of the things that we have to be really honest with ourselves when we're talking about what we like and what we don't like about coffee.

[06:32] Because what you may like about coffee is probably the same thing that I don't like about coffee. And that's perfectly fine. We have to be as objective about this whole journey as much as we can.

[06:44] And what I mean by that is that it's okay for us to not like everything about something. I'll give you this last example before we wrap up.

[06:54] I was a 90s kid, okay? A little dating myself. And when I was growing up, I was a big Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles guy. I'm a Raphael type of person. If you know, you know what I mean.

[07:09] And we got all the video games. We did the little things with three brothers. So all four of us picked our guy turtle or whatever. We just mimicked those characters, not people.

[07:22] And eventually, I think middle school or high school, I can't remember. The Turtles movie came out. I loved it. We saw it many times, started doing the dance with Vanilla Ice and all that, right? And we just started doing different things with it. We just loved it. It was awesome. It was like one of the best movies ever.

[07:42] And then I moved on and lived my life, right? I go to college, do my thing, fell in love with coffee. But then one day I thought that I should probably just see what it's really about again, to see if it really piques my interest again, because I wonder if it was still that movie. It was still that thing, right?

[08:03] And I watched it. I think I watched about 15 minutes of it and I couldn't finish it. I saw it for what it was. It wasn't good. The visuals were not good. It was very dark and grainy. The acting was really poor.

[08:19] And it's like my eyes just opened up to something to where I was really wondering why I went down this rabbit hole of telling myself that something is better than what it was.

[08:31] So what I mean by that is that even though we do love coffee, we like the journey that we're going on, we love most of the things that we are talking about with coffee, we shouldn't romanticize it to an extent to the point to where we're just blind with anything and everything.

[08:47] Coffee is not always great, which is not the case. We're human. We're people. We're going through lives. We're doing different things. We start to develop different taste buds. We may have diseases. We may have whatever that changes the way that we look at things.

[09:04] And when we're really honest with ourselves, we know what we like in anything. And in this case, it's coffee. So if it's not working for you, it's not working. And if you don't like it, that's fine.

[09:16] But do realize the reasons why you don't like it, because I think that's more of a bigger telling story, because now you can chase and find and gravitate to that particular coffee and that way of making that coffee that works for you.

[09:31] So let's not romanticize coffee all the time. And let's just be honest with ourselves as much as we can, because that's where we're at. No matter if I tell you that this coffee is great, it doesn't matter. It does a little bit.

[09:46] But what I mean by that, it gives you that quick head start to actually understanding what that coffee may be and what you're experiencing in it. But one of the biggest things, at least for me, is that you need to know yourself. Trust yourself.

[10:02] And I may give you tips and tricks and tasting notes and all that good stuff, just to get you there a lot faster. But you're the one who's making that cup of coffee. You're the one who's putting it through your mouth and understanding it and trying to decipher what you're tasting. And ultimately deciding if you like it or not for whatever reason. Trust yourself.

[10:24] So, those are the three things that I got for you. First, if you try so many different ways and it's still not working, it's just not for you. Two, Third Wave water can be very helpful. If you don't agree, let me know. But I do think that's probably one of the last saving graces of your coffee.

[10:42] And then the third one, you just don't like it for whatever reason. We can get into the details of probably even the grinder and all that good stuff. But I think most people can probably make a decent cup of coffee from just an okay grinder. But that's a story for another day.

[10:58] So that's what I got for you. This is Okey at Everyday Bean signing off. Talk to you later. Bye.