Find Your Coffee Style: Stop Following Others

In this episode, I dive deep into something we don't talk about enough in the coffee world - developing your own unique brewing style. I share my personal journey from being a light roast enthusiast to discovering my true preference for medium to dark roast coffees, and why I believe every coffee lover needs to stop following the crowd and start trusting their own palate. I discuss how my background in barbecue smoking taught me about developing personal style, and how this applies directly to coffee brewing.

I explore why it's crucial to move beyond what coffee gurus and online influencers tell you to like, and instead focus on what actually brings you joy in your cup. From my experience with French press to pour-over methods, from roasting my own beans to exploring different brewing temperatures, I reveal how every coffee drinker can discover their authentic brewing identity. By listening to this episode, you'll learn how to develop confidence in your coffee preferences, understand why your personal style matters more than following trends, and gain the courage to embrace what you truly enjoy rather than what you think you should like.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:30 The Barbecue Analogy
• 5:15 My Coffee Evolution
• 8:30 The Roasting Discovery
• 11:00 Why Your Style Matters

Transcript

[00:00:00] We're live right now. Today is Tuesday, May 27th. I hope you're doing well. I'm doing well. We're just doing our thing right now. And this one, I don't know if we've thought about it enough in coffee. We have our brewers. We have our water chemistry. We're into that. We have our favorite types of coffee and all that stuff. But one thing that I don't think we talk about enough, which I'm guilty of too, is style.

[00:00:42] And what does that mean for you? What does that mean for me? What does that matter? Why does it even matter? And I think that's the biggest thing that we can talk about right now. Style is your unique way of doing things, right? Again, that can mean a lot of different things. And in this case, what do you prefer? What's your preference? Which brewer do you gravitate to? Which coffees do you gravitate to? Do you have a particular temperature that you like? Because once we know or figure that out, everything else is going to be pretty easy. I think so.

[00:01:21] And the reason why I think style is very important is because we can have our gurus online. We can have people talking about our coffees and all that good stuff. But at the end of the day, those people have their own styles. They have their own unique way of looking at things. And it's easy for us to get blindsided by what they're doing and what they like. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. It matters about what we care about.

[00:01:55] Like for the longest, as you guys already know, I don't care for light roast. I did like it before. I never felt that I needed to like light roast. It was just something that I initially gravitated to because my palate was young or whatnot. But as time kept going by, I started to not like it for whatever reason. And now that I'm here just talking and thinking about it through, it's one of those things where you realize that you have a unique way of going about your own self and style and the way that you like to do things in the world. Not every path, not everything is the same for everybody.

[00:02:48] But the thing about it is that we can develop our own style and way of going about doing things from ourselves, from our backgrounds, from the things that we care about, the things that we don't care about, things that we think are silly or doesn't really work or gel with the things that we're trying to do here. So let's go back a little bit more deeper. I'll bring up another thing that I mean by style.

[00:03:17] Again, I've talked about it before, but I'm a big barbecue guy. I like to smoke meat, as they would say. And there's so many different ways to go about making a piece of meat. And when you go about that or thinking about it in a way to where you want to be able to express yourself, you tend to start to develop your own style. For instance, I'll give you one example, then we'll get back to coffee.

[00:03:45] For instance, there's pork ribs. There's different stories. There's different ways of going about it. People like it hot and fast. People like it slow. People like to sauce the ribs. Some people don't. Some people like different spices and all that stuff. Some people just like to eat it naked. Me, in particular, I went through this whole rabbit hole of actually making ribs for the longest. And I tried it so many different ways. And I got to the point where I started to gravitate towards a style and a way of making ribs that was more ideal to my palate, the way I like to see things.

[00:04:28] And for me, I don't like to sauce my ribs. I like to rub them up, let it cook between low and slow sometimes, sometimes hot and fast, and then wrap them, get them soft and tender, and then eat them. And then afterwards, if you want to sauce them up, you can. I never got anything from the whole saucing thing. Yes, it does add a decent amount of flavor, but it also adds a lot of calories. And I'm a big proponent of health for the most part. So to me, adding extra calories didn't make sense to me when it came to ribs, so to speak. So again, that's my style. That's the way I like to do things.

[00:05:15] And then now we're talking about coffee. I'll talk about my personal story. Hopefully you'll be able to share or want to share any of your own personal stories. But like I said, I started with light roast. And as I started with light roast, it got to the point where it just wasn't enough. It was extremely acidic. I wasn't getting really that much coffee taste. And I never really described it as tea initially. But yeah, that's what it was. It was more like tea and not in a good way. And I always joke about it, but I usually drink tea when I'm sick. And you probably do the same thing too.

[00:05:58] But as I kept going down the rabbit hole, I started to move away from the French press. When I moved away from the French press, I moved to a brewer that allowed me to taste the coffee. And I think that's where my style really started to develop. I mean, it started initially with the whole French press and the light roasted coffees. But as I kept going down this rabbit hole or this journey, my own journey, I started to understand what I liked, what I didn't like, the reasons why. Sort of to an extent, because I never really gave myself that opportunity to sit there and ask myself why I like certain things.

[00:06:46] And as I started to continue to experiment, I tried espresso. I went to cafes. I tried to explore things to the point where I was trying to get that itch of that coffee buzz. Not so much of what people say about a coffee buzz, but what you get when you taste something that's just so magical, so delicious. And that's what you really want all the time. And then I started to roast my own coffee.

[00:07:12] And the cool thing about that is that I can roast it so many different ways. You can go really dark, you can go really light, you can go right in the middle, you can push it a little bit more, you can develop your roast with time, with little to the max amount of heat input. You can see how the beans look, you can do all the TDS, you can do all the color metering. And it got to the point where I like the balanced cup. And then I started reading, I started reading all these different books about coffee. Different people talking about coffee, brewing coffee, roasting, and different styles. And I started to notice that people always had styles.

[00:07:58] It was always there. And then that's really what people were teaching you, even me to an extent. I'm teaching my style. I'm teaching you the way that I like coffee. I tell you all the time that I'm not so much of an espresso person. Not because I think it's crap. It's just something that just doesn't gravitate to me as much as pour over does. The clarity, what you get from different coffees, even the same coffee changing one or two variables here and there, how the coffee can be totally different. And that's pretty cool.

[00:08:34] So now I'm here just thinking and wondering why my style matters, and why your style should matter. Because at the end of the day, it's you. It's only you. You're in that coffee lab or your coffee bar or in a place where you're making coffee. For the most part, for yourself, by yourself. Let's say you are making coffee for somebody else. It doesn't matter as much. You probably try to make sure that it's a profile that will be conducive to everybody. But at the end of the day, you're making coffee the way that you know how to make it. You're trying to express yourself to the point where you're like, hey, this is my presentation. This is the way that I truly really enjoy coffee. And that's all we're really trying to do here.

[00:09:27] So that's my way of going about it. That's my journey. My journey has created my style and I'm not done yet. I'm still living. You're still living. We're still experiencing coffee for what it is, right? But it's getting to the point where we have to stop listening to others. It's cool to listen to others to get their point of view. But at the end of the day, it's their point of view. It's their style. They're still telling you whoever you're listening to, that espresso is God. That light roast is king. That medium roast is crap. That dark roast, that's just for the old people.

[00:10:10] Whatever they may say, maybe they like medium roast like me. Maybe they like dark roast. Maybe they can find an interestingness of awesomeness in those other spectrums of coffees. Don't do Italian roast. That's just a way to... French roast and Italian roast. Don't do that. No, that's beyond what you should do. But besides the point, stop listening to people, not even me. Probably just in this kind of spectrum, because at the end of the day, you're your own person.

[00:10:47] You're seeing things for the way that you see it. You're exploring things to the point where you're liking what you're liking. Like, for instance, when I went to the expo in Houston, I remember Scott Rao, who has his own style. He said this years ago how the coffees were just kind of okay at the expo. And in this case, I understood that. At least from my point of view, because there's a lot of lightly roasted coffees that had no character to me. They didn't exhibit excitement to me. Probably a couple of them did like the Cup of Excellence coffees that were roasted a little bit darker, more like a medium, medium light profile. You can taste the essence of what that coffee really is. Those are the ones I gravitated to.

[00:11:45] And it's okay for us to say, I don't like that. And it's okay for you to say that you don't like what you don't like and be totally committed to the things that you do like at this present moment. Because it may change. It may change for whatever reason. But at the end of the day, you're still developing your own style, your own way of going about doing things.

[00:12:12] So with that being said, how do you go about your own style? What does it look like? Does it look like or mimic other people's style? Do you think that you're hiding behind those styles in order for you to interpret coffee the way that you want to? If you are, I think it's best that you go ahead and get out that rut. Because at the end of the day, I don't think that's where you really want to be. You want to be on your own path. It's okay to take all this information in. But at the end of the day, try it out. Experiment. See what you like about it. See what you don't like about it. Talk it out or do a video of yourself to yourself. Letting yourself know that hey, this is what you like. And this is the reason why you like it.

[00:12:53] Go to coffee shops, experience it with people. Explore even more so. See if you're out of touch with the way that you're thinking. But it doesn't even matter if you're out of touch. Because really, what does that mean? Out of touch a lot of times means that you are caring about what other people are saying about the way that you go about doing things. Give yourself that freedom to just be who you are. Develop your own style.

[00:13:27] So I think that's what we should do more often. And I think that's what I'm going to do too. I'm just going to put out there saying hey, I am Oki. I am a person who loves medium to dark roast coffees. I like how expressive they are. I love how balanced they are. I love that you can actually taste the sweetness and acidity and how it melds, gels together and all that stuff. I'm not so much of a fan of light roast. To me, they taste like dishwater and tea. I'm not a fan. But I am trying different things out in order to see if I can get there to understand it even more so for myself.

[00:14:07] I am not so much of an espresso person, but I understand it. I understand it to the point where I can see the awesomeness of it for myself. Something like that. See if you can do something like that. And if you're a pour over person like me, be a pour over person. If you have a particular brewer that you like, shout it to the world. If you like fast filters, let's talk about it. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter again. It's your journey. You're developing your own style. You're developing the things that you like whenever you want to do it.

[00:14:52] So that's all I'm saying right now. See what you think about it. Because your style is there and you're still developing it. And that's all you can do. So this is Oki everyday being signing off. I'll talk to you later. Bye.