Everyday Beans Podcast - Mostly About Coffee and Other Stuff

Coffee Revelations: The Clarity Project Update

• Oaks, the coffee guy • Season 1 • Episode 171

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In this episode, I dive into my ongoing "clarity" coffee journey and share what I've learned so far in 2025. I discuss my experiments with different roast levels, particularly my challenge with light roasts and Nordic-style coffees. While I'm still not a huge fan of light roasts, I explain how I'm planning to experiment with slightly longer development times to see if I can extract more sweetness while maintaining a light profile.

I explore the complexities of acidity in coffee, water quality's impact on flavor, and my realization that it's perfectly fine not to enjoy every coffee—even popular ones. Throughout the episode, I reflect on my personal preferences for medium and dark roasts that provide balance in the cup, my stubborn approach to brewing parameters, and my philosophical questions about this journey. Listeners will gain insights into the nuances of coffee tasting, the value of personal preferences in coffee exploration, and how to find their own path in the sometimes overwhelming world of specialty coffee.

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[00:00] We're doing pretty good right now. Today is Monday, March 10th, 2025. I hope that you're doing pretty good right now.

[00:18] What are we going to be talking about today? We're talking about where the clarity journey is as of right now. It's March, not a quarter of the year, but I thought it would be a good idea just to talk about where things are right now as they sit with me as I'm talking about coffee.

[00:35] My new little mini project, self-discovery that I'm going on, it's going fine. There's a lot of things that I've learned about coffees. That's what little conquests or journeys or things that you do to kind of just do things differently as you go through your coffee journey.

[00:55] I guess for me, the biggest thing is I think I'm going to be defining what clarity really is throughout this whole experiment or experiments or things that I'm doing. I know for sure I still don't care too much for light roast. I do understand them a lot more.

[01:15] I did a challenge, a two-week challenge. It was difficult, but it was good because it gave me a sense of growth, understanding, and things that I am trying to understand more and more about coffee in general.

[01:30] In this case, I would say in the developed enough light roasted coffees, Nordic type of European coffees, they are not sweet. I am going to roast it again, different ones, probably one or two, probably a little bit longer than the 30-45 second developmental time and see if I can coax, get sweetness out of the coffees. I think I will, and it'll still be a relatively light roast. So that will be an interesting thing that I'll do in the next couple of days or weeks.

[02:10] I am understanding acidity a little bit more, how it can be extremely complex, meaning that at least for me, it's hard to decipher exactly what I'm tasting. It changes as I keep drinking it, and the flavors and all that stuff, they don't really change as much as a medium and a dark roast do when it comes to as the coffee cools and the complexity changes. You'll get a different coffee as it cools.

[02:40] Other people may disagree with me when I say that, but this is coming from my palate, which is perfectly fine. I think that's the thing people have to realize - as much as we try to make things exact or definitive in coffee, it's not. It's more so my take on it. I'm not saying that what I say is gospel, but I think there will be people who probably feel the same way as I do, and I'm just more so giving my opinion about what I'm actually tasting in a cup of coffee.

[03:15] I think the other thing is that we don't have to like all coffees. I think back in January, late January, I had this Ethiopian that I tried again that I froze. Since I got new gear and understanding coffee brewing even more so, I didn't really care for it before, and it was even more evident as I kept on drinking it and trying it that we don't have to like everything.

[03:40] Probably doing a couple recipes, not like 15, will let us know that if we don't like it, we don't like it. It's perfectly fine even if it's a cool coffee that everybody's loving and raving. You don't have to like it, like all the coffees that I roasted and sell.

[04:00] I understand now, third wave water makes a big difference. It still does. It kind of puts you in a place to where this is probably what your coffee can taste like, what it can be. But something about it kind of gives me a perception of like, is there something better?

[04:20] I may try when I go to the SCA thing in Houston in the next month to see if I can find either more third wave water or things like that in order to enhance my taste and my experience with coffee and how it will see if it makes it better even more so.

[04:40] Again, it's one of those things to where it is a magical pill, but it's just part of the thing. It's part of the coffee chain. It's part of what makes coffee what it is sometimes. It kind of sucks that you know you have to do quite a bit to get just a little bit better than what you're tasting.

[05:00] I did experiment yesterday and it was pretty cool. I enjoyed it, and I used the percolator. I really liked the percolator, but the thing about doing the percolator and this challenge of three different coffees and all that stuff is that I didn't want to waste my water just for a quick taste, so I used tap water. Haven't used tap water in a very long time in order to make a cup of coffee, and it was fine, it worked.

[05:30] Sometimes I wonder how much of a rabbit hole I have gone into and if I'm just talking about stuff that is just too far out. Those are some of the things that I think about quite a bit when I do these things and put myself out there. Am I full of myself or is this real? I think about that constantly as I go through this whole thing.

[06:00] Just trying to do all this stuff to kind of see it for what it is and see if I can give you back something to where you can probably think about, ponder, probably even try, or just simply be entertained by a fool who's kind of just doing whatever he wants.

[06:20] I do love medium roast. I do love dark roast. I do like a balance in a cup of coffee. I do like that a lot of times when I do drink coffee, I just like the journey and story that lets me go on every morning.

[06:35] I'm wondering about gadgets and how they play a part in everything and how for the most part all we would need is a Hario V60. I think about that quite a bit. I think about if what I'm trying to do really matters. I think about if I'm wasting my time or if all this is just gives me something to do.

[07:00] It's weird. I look forward to this. I look forward to just talking and experimenting and understanding coffee even more so and understanding people. I know I say this quite a bit to the point where I'm a misanthrope or I don't really care for people. I do care for people.

[07:20] What I'm saying here right now is that it's cool to get different opinions than mine. It's cool to see what people care about and why they care about it. It's cool to see if people see it from my point of view or if I can see it from their point of view.

[07:35] I think the outlet of social media, podcasting, YouTube, writing, and all that good stuff gives me that point of view or that perspective of like, "Oh, I'm not alone here." I keep going, and I think that's the biggest hurdle or thing that I kind of get at, especially when I have these times and moments to where I'm just talking and just thinking and just kind of going back of just understanding myself even more so, seeing if what I'm talking about is valid to the world.

[08:10] So clarity. It's going and it's doing this thing, and it's getting me to the point to where I understand that I just gotta keep going. I have to keep the drive and the hunger and the thoughts and the mysteries and all that stuff that we think about constantly as we think and go through this life together, independently of each other.

[08:35] I think about how I can push myself even more so and understanding what clarity is. I don't know or feel that I'll get that much more from it, especially when it comes to gear acquisitions and using them.

[08:50] I truly think that now my old Fellow Ode grinder works great. It does what it needs to. It let me know with lighter roast that even as a pour over, I have to go down all the way down to the one. I can go down to four, which is kind of choking the system a little bit, making the roast a little bit longer, extracting a lot, but it's not creating any type of bitterness in a cup of coffee.

[09:15] I'm realizing that the standard burrs work really well, at least for now. I don't need to go down that rabbit hole of changing the burrs to the SSP burrs and all that good stuff. Just kind of using your gear for what it is and understanding it even more so.

[09:30] I don't think going finer makes things better all the time. I think if you're able to go coarse and taste the essence and the deliciousness of a coffee, that's where you really want to be. But it's also letting me know that it's okay to go fine on the grind and see where it goes with that journey.

[09:50] Another thing that I realized in this whole thing is that I'm a stubborn bastard. I am fixed in my ways. What I mean by that is that I don't like to change things. I like to manipulate the situation now that I understand the parameters of brewing and my favorite in order to get the cup of coffee that I want.

[10:10] I have two hand grinders, a King Grinder K2 which I use for pourers, and have a King Grinder K6 which I use for my espresso. I just found the perfect grind size. I don't know where they are; it doesn't really matter, but they're not changed. I don't change the grind size.

[10:30] The way that I manipulate the coffee is I either put more coffee in the vessel or I put more water, and that's it. It works out pretty well that way. I know most people will think, "Why are you doing that?" Because I want to, and I don't want to keep changing the grind size just because of the hell of it. I'm stubborn that way.

[10:55] I know that I can manipulate the coffees other ways in order to get the best out of it because I'm just lazy, and I'm just trying to be focused as much as I can when it comes to tasting what I taste. I'm a stubborn bastard. I don't like changing things. Think about it - you just kind of manipulate coffees in different ways that you have learned and tested and tried, and it works out the way that you didn't think that it was possible.

[11:25] I don't know if it's just me being stubborn, lazy, like constraints, like challenges, but that's kind of like what I do, at least for those two grinders, and it's been working out pretty well. I don't know if I'm gonna get a dedicated espresso grinder. The hand grinder does a really good job.

[11:45] I am tasting coffee a little bit more, and I'll see how that really works as I go down that rabbit hole of seeing what coffee is in these different lights of day. I want to get back to medium roast. I'm wondering about balance a little bit more. I want to start eating fruit in front of you and give you the reasons why that matters.

[12:05] I think we can learn a lot from doing things in a way to where it does make sense to us. This clarity thing is going in a direction, but it's interesting that now I am in a place of I don't know really where it's going. I don't know if we're still talking about clarity. I wonder if I am just BSing and just wasting time, but it's been fun, it's been cool.

[12:30] You give yourself a random challenge or something that you care about, it's one of those things to where you're like, "This is what makes it fun, this is what spices it up, this is what gives it this chance and the opportunity to have the legs of longevity of a real true journey." We'll see what the next one is, but it's been a lot of fun. We'll just see how and where it goes.

[13:00] I'm probably leaving a couple things off, but it's been a lot of fun, and there's things that I've already learned. I'm looking forward to keep pushing myself and trying these coffees and understanding them and giving this information back to you so you can have a chance of piquing your curiosity.

[13:20] I don't know if you feel the same way sometimes when you're talking about coffee, and you want to be in a place where you just want to try something new, just want to see if that path is for you.

[13:35] This is a two and a half, three month talk about clarity, where it's going, what I've learned so far, and I hope that I continue to rediscover the unknowns, if that makes any sense, because it doesn't, because I don't know what I don't know.

[13:50] Things that I did in the past that I realized that I've done, like the whole extraction and how you can beat the living crap out of light roast and not get much bitterness - just kind of crazy and far out there. I think you'll get a little bit bitterness as you roast it a little bit more, but that's when I think the sweetness will come.

[14:10] Interesting stuff. We'll see how all this goes, and we'll talk more. This is me, Okey at Everyday Beans, signing out. Talk to you later, bye.