Everyday Beans Podcast - Mostly About Coffee and Other Stuff

Coffee Nerds Unite: The Joy of Obsessive Brewing

• Oaks, the coffee guy • Season 1 • Episode 174

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In this episode, I dive deep into what it truly means to be a "coffee nerd" after being inspired by a comment on one of my YouTube videos about brewing coffee at 160 degrees. I explore how coffee nerds are people who are fascinated by the details, who geek out over the process, and who constantly seek to understand why things work the way they do. I share my personal journey of being someone who's always enjoyed learning and discovery, explaining how I apply this mindset to my coffee exploration.

I discuss how being a coffee nerd means embracing the challenges that come with brewing the perfect cup, appreciating how variables change daily, and finding joy in the continuous pursuit of improvement. Listeners will learn about the different ways people engage with coffee culture, whether as geeks, nerds, snobs, purists, or casual drinkers, and how these passionate explorations ultimately benefit the entire coffee community through shared knowledge and discoveries.

For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com

For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans

[00:00] We're recording. We're live right now. Today is Wednesday, March 19th, 2025, 5:51 in the morning. We're doing pretty good. I actually got up early this morning, which is good. I'm glad I got up this morning.

[00:25] Yeah, so I hope all is well with you. I'm doing pretty good right now. We're just gonna see what we can learn from each other. Interesting stuff, right?

[00:43] I was gonna do this over the weekend, but I've been inspired by a post from my YouTube channel. I did a video a long time ago, but it posted a couple of days ago, and it was in regards to brewing coffee at 160 degrees. I was pretty proud of that post. I think I did another one at 150. That one probably comes out in the next couple of weeks.

[01:10] The thing about it was this person, this gentleman, he left something and he says, "that was really cool from a fellow coffee nerd." And that kind of got me going into what I wanted to talk about today. It just inspired me to just talk early.

[01:32] What is a coffee nerd? It's interesting, because I was gonna look everything up and kind of be technically right, but let's just go off the cuff and explain what I think a coffee nerd is.

[01:48] I think a coffee nerd is somebody, or a nerd in general, is somebody who fascinates, who geeks out, who wants to find why things work, wants to understand why things work. And they would do anything in their power, in their imaginations, in their creativity, in their way of seeing what that is.

[02:17] I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's kind of like what I think a coffee nerd is. A geek. I've always been a nerd, truthfully.

[02:48] I liked school. Well, okay, let me take that back. I was good in school and high school. I was terrible in school and college. But when I got out of school, that's when the real learning, the real understanding of what I can do in life started to happen.

[03:10] And I picked up everything. I think I talked about this before, but I picked up podcasting, I picked up reading, I picked up art, I picked up photography, I picked up writing. You don't know how I wrote a book, too. But that's besides the point.

[03:30] So I geeked out, I went deep into the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what things are or were, because that's in the past tense. And it was really cool. And I still love it to this day. I try to tell my kids that, which, you know, they're young.

[04:05] And you try to tell them to be better because of the crap that you've gone through and all that good stuff, right? But it's pretty cool to be in a place to where learning is fun. Learning is something I look forward to.

[04:20] Learning how to figure out things that are right in front of me or get better at, get frustrated, and to keep going down that rabbit hole of discovery, right? But you're gonna figure it out.

[04:35] And a coffee nerd is somebody who is all about coffee, right? This person wants to know why things work, why it does work or doesn't work, or figuring things out. Again, I didn't wanna look at the definition because it'll be easier for me to kind of say what it is.

[05:05] But it's all good. It's a coffee nerd. It's just somebody who loves coffee and wants to know more about it. I think that's as simple of a definition as I can come up with.

[05:20] So I kinda failed, I guess, because I kept rambling about all this greatness about what a nerd is and all that good stuff, but we're gonna look it up.

[05:45] Okay, nerd. Nerd is a noun that can refer to someone who is socially awkward or an expert in a particular subject. I think I like that better. This is from AI.

[06:00] A person who is unstylish, unattractive, or socially awkward. Okay, I mean, sure, but okay. A person who's devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits. A person who's an expert in one particular thing, like computer, grammar, Star Wars movies.

[06:25] We're gonna go to Wikipedia, okay? A person who is seen as overly intellectual, obsessive, introverted, or lacking social skills. Such a person may spend an inordinate amount of time of unpopular, little-known, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly technical, abstract, or relating to niche topics such as science, fiction, or fantasy, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities.

[06:58] Somebody who's an expert. Such a person may spend inordinate amounts of time. This is unpopular, but let's just say un-things. And in this case, it's coffee. I think about coffee all the time. I'm sure you think about coffee all the time.

[07:20] Some people do, some people don't. But it gets me going, it gets me thinking about things. It gets me in the point or place to where I just wanna make it better. And I think that's the drive of all this really, is like, is that we just wanna make it better.

[07:40] It's fascinating, it's an interesting drink. It's one of those things where you're like, you just want to see if it can actually get better. It can get better, and that's the cool thing about it, right?

[07:55] I think sometimes when we do these things or go down these rabbit holes or try to understand why we like things, sometimes we don't have a reason why we like it. I just gave you a reason why I like it. You probably like it for the same reason or for a different reason. And I think I like the challenge of it.

[08:17] This is one YouTube guy that I listen to religiously. His channel is Squat Every Day. And I actually squat every day too. It was a bit inspired by him. I think he's been squatting for five years. I've been squatting for four years every day. But his channel is more like a philosophy type of channel.

[08:40] And the way he describes the reason why he squats every day is because it's not easy for him, for his body, makeup and everything. And he can lift crazy, heavy weight.

[08:53] And I think that's the thing that keeps me going back to coffee. It's like, okay, it's not easy. It's challenging. It's something new, something different. It's different every day.

[09:08] I can make a recipe this time and then tomorrow I'll try something different and the beans have changed or somebody's pissed me off throughout a day or something like that and I changed the recipe and my taste buds are not right because I didn't eat oatmeal or something like that. And now I'm pondering thinking about like, what did I do wrong?

[09:30] And that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's frustrating in the moment. It's one of those things to where you wanna continue to get better, you wanna give people facts and things that they could take with them and understand even more.

[09:45] But a coffee nerd is somebody that's just obsessive with the challenge of making coffee tasty most of the time. And that's pretty cool. I think it is.

[10:05] Some people may think that being obsessive in something or anything is not a good thing but I think it helps everybody else out in general. I think that's the beauty of it all.

[10:37] But again, like I said, I think it helps out other people too because now all they would have to do is look up this recipe from this nerd, this coffee nerd or this person who's like geeking out and just all about trying to help out themselves first but it's also helping out other people and it works for them. That's pretty cool.

[10:53] I think that's kind of more so the situation that we're in. And there's so many different ways to kind of look at this coffee thing. We can be geeks, nerds, we can be snobs, we can be purists, we can be everyday coffee drinkers that just wanna get that cup and move on.

[11:15] We can be whatever we wanna be in this whole world. And I think that's pretty cool. We can label ourselves, we can not want to label ourselves, we can get focused on espresso or care about pour over more than anything.

[11:35] We can care about Moka pot, we can care about our weekend gadgets that we use. The world is ours, right? And whatever we wanna think about or do, those are the things that we obsess about and get better at because we have that tunnel vision of focus and care and wonder and things to get better at.

[12:00] And things that we know that if we change this one variable it's gonna make the coffee this way. We know that if we use this lighter roast that it's gonna do this or do that or whatever. We really start to understand our craft even more so and it's one of those things where we are in the moment.

[12:16] We are focused, we're determined. That's what a coffee nerd is. Somebody who doesn't quit, somebody who wants it just to taste better and it's not so much even for other people, it's more so like something that we just wanna do for ourselves and just get to the point to where we are who we are because this is the thing that we care about.

[12:45] So that's what I got for you. Let me know what you think. If you are a fellow coffee nerd, let's talk about it. What are you obsessed about? What do you care about? Are you an espresso person? Pour over? Or do you just like going to cafes and people watching and kicking out that way?

[13:15] We're all different but the same, right? Well, this is Okey at Everyday Bean signing off and I'll talk to you later. Bye.