.png)
Everyday Beans Podcast - Mostly About Coffee and Other Stuff
It's about coffee, food, life and what other randomness I feel that'll be helpful to the common coffee drinker or to anyone who likes to be entertained by a stranger, briefly.
Everyday Beans Podcast - Mostly About Coffee and Other Stuff
New Coffee Gear: Embrace the Awkwardness
In this episode, I share my recent experience with the Hario Mugen dripper and why feeling awkward with new brewing devices is actually a good thing. I tell the story of unboxing this unique brewer that's designed for single-pour brewing, and how I initially struggled with terrible-tasting coffee that left me frustrated and confused. The MOOGIN's design without ridges creates a completely different brewing experience compared to the familiar Hario V60, holding coffee in the bed much longer and requiring a completely different approach.
I discuss how this initial discomfort and frustration led to growth and understanding as I experimented with different recipes and grind sizes. Through persistence and embracing the awkwardness, I eventually discovered what makes this brewer special - its ability to develop unique flavors through its distinctive design and drawdown characteristics. Listeners will learn why pushing through brewing discomfort is essential for coffee growth, how to approach new devices with patience, and why the journey from frustration to mastery is valuable both in coffee and in life. I also share insights about spending quality time with brewing equipment to truly understand its potential.
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
[00:00:00] We're live right now. I hope you're doing well. I'm doing great. Let's get into the topic today. Today's Monday, June 16th, 2025.
[00:00:15] Like I said earlier, I hope you're doing really well. It's kind of an interesting one today, and I'm gonna give you the title. I have some talking points, then we're gonna go from there, okay?
[00:00:26] The title of this one is "Why Brewing with a New Device Always Feels Awkward and Why That's Good." Let me tell you a little story.
[00:00:35] Just a couple weeks ago, I opened up a new package. You know how we love opening up new packages. We do unboxing - actually did an unboxing. I don't know when it's gonna go out, probably went out already. I don't know when it's gonna go out, but I do an unboxing of this product. I've actually done this a couple times, so in this case it was a Hario MOOGIN.
[00:00:58] It looks like a Hario V60 just with a narrow base. And I wondered how to use it. I don't like reading directions - I think most of us don't like to - and I started to read the directions. The recipe still didn't make any sense to me.
[00:01:16] But I tried it anyway. And as I expected, the coffee tasted like crap. But that's okay because at the end of the day, you're in your house, you're in your playground, you're doing the things that you need to do in order to bring the best out of the coffee when you're drinking it, right?
[00:01:34] So I did a recipe on video. To me, it was an epic fail. I was wondering why Hario made a device like this because if you don't know already, the MOOGIN is very interesting in a way where it's designed to do one pour.
[00:01:52] And I've done that many times with the Hario V60 before to mimic a Mr. Coffee machine and to just try different things out. It didn't really work out that well. It was finicky, the coffees were extremely under-extracted. I was trying to figure out why it was doing the things that it was doing.
[00:02:14] So I sat there and pondered, and I started to think of recipes that I can do or things that I have done in the past. And there was a lot of discomfort happening because it wasn't so much of a typical type of brewer. It was a brewer that was designed for one specific reason. Yeah, I can probably do three or four pulses on it and stuff like that, but I think since it didn't have any ridges, it kind of did something differently to the coffee. It kind of held the coffee inside the bed a lot longer, a lot different than what we're used to with the Hario V60.
[00:02:44] And now of course with these aero brewers, air drippers, the drill drippers, these fast brewers, these fast filters and all that stuff. So I was wondering what the hell is going on here? Why am I having such a hard time understanding this brewer?
[00:03:32] And I think part of it is having that discomfort. Was I frustrated at first? Oh yeah, I was extremely frustrated. I was wondering why it wasn't working the way that it did before or similar to a brewer that I customarily use.
[00:03:40] So I started to think why that was the case, and as the discomfort set in and as I kept on trying different recipes, trying different grind sizes, things started to come above board. I started to understand this dripper a little bit more. I started to figure it out.
[00:04:01] And I think that's the cool thing about all of this is that eventually, we're gonna figure things out, right? I think growth through awkwardness is inevitable. It's going to happen. And as we keep pushing ourselves, as we do in life in other situations, we're gonna find a sweet spot in all of this, either with my recipe or with somebody else's recipe, but I think more critically and more importantly, your own recipe for your own palate, for your own reasoning.
[00:04:18] And that's all we're really trying to do here as we introduce different things in our arsenal when we're making coffee. We're just trying to get past the discomfort, but I will advise you this: take your time. Just go through that discomfort. Because if you don't go through that whole discomfort, then I don't think you're gonna eventually see the joy in all of this, you know?
[00:04:55] And I'm glad that I'm actually doing these brewer quick unboxings. It's meaning spending a month or two actually with the device, understanding its quirks, probably not every day, probably every other day here and there because I have so many different devices. And then later on letting you know what I like and what I don't like about a particular brewer, and also giving you a little bit more background of the types of coffees that I look forward to brewing on this particular device and the reasons why.
[00:05:37] Because when you have those long-term times with a device, you start to understand it even more so. We get better with the challenge, we understand the brewers even more. And in this case, I'll give you a little sneak peek: I believe that the Hario MOOGIN in this case is a sweet brewer because of the way it develops the coffees and its uniqueness in its design and the way that it draws down even with that one pulse of brewing.
[00:06:08] I don't know if I would have ever really gotten there with the brewer if I didn't keep testing and trying to understand it even more so than what I'm actually used to doing, right? So in this case, that's what I believe that it teaches you. It teaches you that that discomfort, that part of where you feel extremely frustrated when you're actually brewing a cup of coffee, that's only for a short time. That's not gonna be for the majority of time that you do use the brewers.
[00:06:48] Don't get me wrong - with a different coffee, with a different way of kind of looking at things, you may get frustrated with that particular brewer for whatever reason. You're gonna go through that still no matter what happens with any brewer that you use. I think with time, we can pinpoint a recipe, we can pinpoint some of the situations and problems a lot quicker because we've had that time inside of that brewer to just figure things out as we go through our journey with coffee.
[00:07:19] So I believe that's the cool thing about being in discomfort, being uncomfortable, especially when we have a new coffee, have a new brewer, have probably even different water chemistry than we're used to. Because I think that's the biggest thing - if we keep putting ourselves in these situations, we're gonna be in a better light as we figure out a lot of things when it comes to coffee making.
[00:07:38] And I don't know if you go through that a lot or realize that that's really what we're dealing with here. We're dealing with something that we're not used to, and that's all discomfort is. So I don't want to keep rambling about this, but I think you do get the point, get the understanding of why it's perfectly okay for us to feel uncomfortable when it comes to coffee brewing and coffee in general. Because if we don't try, we don't experience, then we won't grow.
[00:08:23] And at the end of the day, we don't want that to really spill over into other things that we're doing in our lives. We don't want to not go through difficult hard times. Because at the end of the day, coffee brewing is supposed to be fun. We shouldn't take it too seriously, even though I do. I know you probably do too.
[00:08:39] But I think the cool thing about making coffee each and every day, with whatever constraints that we do have, with whatever challenges that we are facing, we go through it. We can conquer it. In the beginning we're gonna be frustrated, but as we go through that journey of figuring it out, we're just gonna get better. And that's really all it's about.
[00:09:07] So this is me, okay? Just rambling for a couple minutes here and there, trying to give you an understanding that it's perfectly okay to feel discomfort when you actually make your cup of coffee, when you're trying a new thing. Because that's a good thing. You're just figuring it out. Eventually, you will be a master of it.
[00:09:32] But try not to buy 15 to 20 devices like me just to have content. Thank God they're cheap, but whatever - that's the story for another day. This is Oaks Everyday Bean signing off. I'll talk to you later. Bye.