Under-Extracted But Still Delicious

I recently had one of those eye-opening coffee moments that completely shifted my perspective on brewing. I was testing out my Mugen dripper with a decaf I had roasted a couple weeks prior, grinding it fine to get the extraction I wanted. The coffee tasted absolutely amazing – I was enjoying every sip from hot to cold, thinking to myself that this might be the perfect brew. I spent about 15 minutes just savoring it and contemplating life, as we coffee people do.

But then I checked my TDS meter an hour later, and it showed a severely under-extracted coffee at only 17% extraction. This got me thinking about how much I've started depending on instruments to validate my coffee experience, and whether that's helping or hindering my journey. I realized that if I didn't have these gadgets, I would have walked away completely satisfied with that "imperfect" coffee. By listening to this episode, you'll learn why trusting your palate is more important than chasing perfect numbers, and how to find balance between using brewing tools and following your own taste preferences. You'll discover that sometimes the best coffee experiences come from trusting yourself, even when the instruments tell you otherwise.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:30 The Perfect Coffee Experience
• 3:00 The TDS Meter Reality Check
• 5:00 Dependency on Coffee Instruments
• 7:00 The Importance of Personal Coffee Experience
• 9:00 Lessons from Coffee Championships
• 11:00 Final Thoughts on Trusting Your Journey

Transcript

[00:00:00] We're live right now. Today is Tuesday, June 10th. We're gonna get into it.

[00:00:18] I got this story that talks about everything we're gonna be talking about today. I believe it was a couple days ago, it was on Sunday. It's been a while since I've actually brewed this decaf that I have. It's been a couple weeks since I've actually roasted it, so it's ready to rock and roll.

[00:00:37] I went ahead and wanted to try a different brewer, so I did the Mugen. This is a cool dripper. I will be talking about this more later in the next couple of weeks. It's really cool. I like it. It's a one-pour brewer. You have to go really fine on the grinds to get extraction out of it. I will say that this is mimicking more sweet coffees or letting coffees, at least for me, be perceived as sweet.

[00:01:13] So I ground it pretty fine and went ahead and took a little drip of it so I can check the TDS meter. I just sat there and drank the coffee.

[00:01:26] It tasted pretty good to me. No issues whatsoever. I enjoyed it. I think it's been about 10, 15 minutes drinking it, contemplating life. You know, as we coffee people do - we think about coffee and think about life and how all that stuff translates together, right?

[00:01:50] In the back of my mind, I'm like, I think this coffee is brewed actually perfectly. I'll check the TDS later. Eventually I did, but like I said, the coffee was extremely tasty. I was enjoying every sip of it from hot to cold, and it was really cool.

[00:02:21] Then I went on with my day. I started doing other things. I started to see if there was anything else for me to do before I went to sleep for that day. But probably an hour after taking that drop to put it in the TDS meter, I got the reading, pushed the button, turned it on, pushed the button again to activate it to give me a reading of TDS.

[00:02:42] I was like, whoa, wow. It is really severely under-extracted supposedly. It's about a 17% extraction rating. I looked at my app, geeking out, and I thought about it. I'm like, hmm, interesting.

[00:03:02] So if I didn't have any of these instruments, these helpers and all that stuff, I would be on this coffee journey alone, which is perfectly fine. You're probably on your coffee journey alone, meaning that the only thing that you have in order for you to trust and taste coffee is your palate, your experience, and that's perfectly fine.

[00:03:26] But as I sat there just thinking about how I was enjoying this under-extracted coffee - objectively according to the device, subjectively it tasted just fine. I was getting some sweetness out of the coffee, even though it was like a medium to light roast, which is almost impossible, but you get a better idea of it being that kind of way once it goes towards the medium spectrum.

[00:03:54] But I guess what I'm saying here is that what I started to do was I started to wonder - okay, yeah, I can see how this coffee was not that good, that it has some issues, that I was wondering if I need to be better about objectively understanding if something is under, over, or perfectly extracted.

[00:04:18] But I gave myself a break because at the end of the day, I'm really good about guessing. I'm really good about knowing and understanding my coffees, and at times, a coffee can be tasty when under-extracted, with you knowing or not knowing. But I guess the point that I'm getting at really is that I heavily depend on instruments lately, especially to get me through understanding what I'm drinking.

[00:04:52] And I have to remember that that's not really what life is about. It's cool, though, that I paid all this money for this stuff in order to get the things that I want out of my coffees. Because I do think the gadgets and everything are magical. They help you, they get you there quickly.

[00:05:10] And a lot of us, even though we're not loners, or we are, we like people, we don't like people, it doesn't really matter. I guess what I'm saying is that there's only so many times where you're gonna be drinking coffee with others. A lot of times, you're drinking coffee by yourself. And you have to trust that whatever you're doing with your coffee is on the right path.

[00:05:42] And I think these tools do help us in order to get there a lot faster. And as we do that and understand things, I think that's where we're gonna get even closer to the things that we're trying to do, right?

[00:05:46] So trust yourself, trust your palate, explore, push your boundaries, try something a little bit finer, try a different technique. It doesn't really matter what that is - you're drinking coffee, different coffee, it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, you are out here on your own. I don't know if I keep emphasizing that enough, but you're truly out here on your own.

[00:06:30] No matter if somebody's telling you that you need to trust yourself, or if you are waking up early in the morning, making your cup of coffee before you actually leave for the day, start your day. Because that coffee was amazing.

[00:06:41] Was it the best coffee I've ever had? Of course not. But the thing about it was that it was talking to me. I sat there and I pondered and I thought about things, I thought about coffee, I thought about life, I thought about all the things that you can think of when you're just enjoying and being in a moment.

[00:06:58] And as soon as I got that reading, my whole perspective changed. And I wondered if that's a good thing. I wonder if it's a bad thing. I wonder if having all this stuff is something that will actually not help me as much as I think it will.

[00:07:20] But I guess what I'm saying here is that if something tastes great to you, just appreciate it. Just see it for what it is. Not worrying about the numbers, not worrying about if somebody else would have brewed it differently, it doesn't matter.

[00:07:32] The only thing that matters is that you enjoyed that coffee. And even if you didn't enjoy that coffee, you probably learned something from it. And as we go through this journey and understand coffees even more, I think that's gonna be these little lessons that we learn in order to keep us going on that path of, I wouldn't say greatness, but curiosity.

[00:07:52] Because that's the biggest thing here. Being curious with the craft, being curious about what we like, what we don't like. And at the end of the day, just trusting ourselves throughout this whole journey. Because that's all we have.

[00:08:09] And even though my coffee to me tasted just fine, and I use a gadget that told me that it was under-extracted, so what? So what, right?

[00:08:24] Sometimes those under-extracted coffees are what we need in our lives. And that's one of the things, that's the thing that I wanted to talk about today. And again, you have the advantage if you're not too geeked out buying a TDS meter, buying a roast degree level to see how the roaster actually roasted the coffees and how you're gonna actually approach the coffees.

[00:08:47] Approach the way that you want to, approach the way that you're customarily doing, approach it differently. What I'm saying here is just try, just see what's out there for you. Just see if you're able to just enjoy the coffee for what it is with the brewing method that you have used. And if we do that, I think we're gonna be on our path even more so.

[00:09:17] Like for instance, I just recently watched a brewer championship. And I was watching it, I was seeing what they're doing. And it's interesting because they practice that routine forever and ever and ever. They may have tweaked here and there to get it just right. But I know they're geeking out in the back room doing the TDS meter, but also just tasting the coffee.

[00:09:48] And I guess what I'm getting at is that no matter how perfect that you think you are, you're just a human drinking the coffee. That's all we are. We're just people drinking coffee, trying to enjoy it for what it is. And we got other things that we wanna do in our lives.

[00:10:05] So geek out, let's have fun. And let's just see what this journey will take us. And as we do that, I think we're gonna be in a better place of taking it seriously, but not going too crazy with this whole thing. But I don't know.

[00:10:35] That's just the way I'm thinking right now. And I hope that this is actually a benefit to you where if you haven't already known this already, trust yourself, trust your palate.

[00:10:45] Trust what you're drinking is something that you are subjectively liking. That you're just liking. And if you don't, tweak it and go from there, regardless if you do have a TDS meter or don't, realize that that coffee's probably under-extracted. It probably coffee's overly bitter just because of the way you poured that coffee.

[00:11:11] Or it could be just perfect. But you may like it on the edges and that's okay from time to time. And it is what it is.

[00:11:18] But have fun, see what it's all about. Because I'll tell you now, sometimes when you have all the gear, when you have all the instruments in order to psychoanalyze everything out of something that's supposed to be fun, it becomes a detriment sometimes.

[00:11:33] And I'm here just right now, just talking to you about this situation. So if you're not down that path of having everything to analyze all of it, that's perfectly fine. Are you missing out? Sure. But if you feel that you're still learning, still pushing yourself, getting to the point where things are what they are because you're enjoying it, that's the only thing that really matters.

[00:12:04] So that's what I got for you. This is Okey at Everyday Bean signing off. I guess really what I'm saying is just enjoy your journey, even if you do know or you don't know about if your coffee's under, over or perfectly extracted.

[00:12:27] Talk to you later, bye.