Why You Don't Know Your Coffee Equipment

I recently bought some new camera gear, and as I was playing around with it, figuring out how it works and what it can do, it got me thinking about coffee equipment. I talk about how we often buy coffee gear—whether it's a Hario V60, an Origami Dripper, or whatever catches our eye—but we don't really take the time to understand it. We watch videos, read reviews, follow recipes, but we're depending on other people's experiences instead of developing our own. I share my thoughts on the Origami Dripper specifically, breaking down why it's shaped the way it is, how the concaves create maximum airflow, and how you can use different filters to completely change your brewing experience.

In this episode, you'll learn why mastering one brewer is more valuable than collecting a dozen different devices. I encourage you to stay with one piece of equipment long enough to truly understand what it can do for you—experimenting with different filters, water temperatures, grind sizes, and brew methods until you discover what YOU actually like, not what someone else tells you should taste good. At the end of the day, it's about your palate, your preferences, and your coffee journey. Master your gear, master your craft, and you'll make consistently great coffee that's perfect for you.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:02 The Problem With Depending on Others' Experience
• 2:04 Gear Is Just a Tool: Understanding What You're Using
• 3:04 The Origami Dripper: A Case Study in Coffee Gear
• 3:59 Understanding Shape, Filters, and Airflow
• 5:05 Why Playing With Your Gear Matters More Than Recipes
• 6:07 Experimenting: Temperature, Grind Size, and Filters
• 7:02 Master One Brewer: Stay With It Long Enough
• 7:58 Different Filters, Different Results: Cone vs Flat Bed
• 9:02 It's About Your Experience and Your Palate
• 10:06 The Danger of Too Much Gear (My Own Confession)
• 11:03 Consistency Comes From Deep Understanding
• 12:00 Forget the "Perfect Recipe" - Find What YOU Like
• 13:05 Question Every Recipe You Follow

Transcript

[00:00:01] I recently got new camera gear.

[00:00:06] I've seen it online.

[00:00:10] I've been curious about it for a while.

[00:00:13] So I pulled the trigger.

[00:00:18] There's been a couple videos that I've seen with people actually using it.

[00:00:28] I didn't really think too much of it until I got it home.

[00:00:32] There's a manual to it. I know it's nice. I know it tells you exactly what to do with it.

[00:00:38] But I just started to play with it. I started to move the legs around.

[00:00:46] Understand the things you can do with it.

[00:00:51] And the limitations.

[00:00:55] And then it got me thinking about coffee gear.

[00:00:59] How we buy coffee gear all the time.

[00:01:02] There isn't a problem with buying coffee gear. I think the problem lies in when we depend on others for our understanding of what we're trying to do. Sure, they may have more experience. I may have more experience. I'm the crazy person, or other people are the crazy people who buy these gears so you don't have to rush out and make an impulse buy and probably make a wrong decision. I get that. That does make sense, right?

[00:01:43] You've worked to spend, to enjoy, to play.

[00:01:50] So you want to make sure you get the right thing.

[00:01:54] And then somebody's telling you these are things that they're tasting in a cup.

[00:02:01] These are the different recipes that they're using in order to enjoy their cup of coffee.

[00:02:09] And then you buy it, and then you go about trying to understand it for yourself.

[00:02:16] I'm no different here.

[00:02:18] And as I was playing around with the new camera gear that I just purchased,

[00:02:25] it got me thinking about coffee gear. Gear is gear, right? Gear is just something that we use in order to get better at the thing that we're trying to do. And in our case, it's coffee. It's brewing.

[00:02:39] It's either brewing on the Moka Master or Hario V60 or something like this that's right in front of me.

[00:02:48] This right here is an Origami Dripper.

[00:02:52] Interesting, right?

[00:02:55] So I got it about a month ago.

[00:02:59] And I'm mesmerized by how crazy looking it looks.

[00:03:03] It does look like a piece of art,

[00:03:07] but it does a really good job, as many other coffee gears, pour over devices, whatever it may be. It does a good job.

[00:03:16] But the biggest thing that we have to take into consideration is ourselves, our palates, what we like in coffee, what we don't like in coffee. And then we also have to realize that we're just here to play.

[00:03:32] We want to make a really good cup of coffee consistently most of the time, right? Depending on the coffee beans and all that good stuff. But at the end of the day or the morning, whenever you decide to play,

[00:03:48] we have to understand this thing.

[00:03:52] We have to understand why it's shaped this way.

[00:03:57] We have to understand what we can do with it. We have to understand the limitations or all the things that we can do with it. For instance, this is a fast filter, a Quebec paper, right?

[00:04:14] You can use these on these.

[00:04:21] And then you think about it and you look at the shape of the way it concaves differently to where it holds the filter, where it gives it, essentially—you probably don't know this, you probably do know this—maximum airflow.

[00:04:41] So this brewer is going to be relatively fast just because of the way it's shaped. But you don't know that yet because you haven't played around with it. And that's all we're doing. We're just trying to play around. We're just trying to see what this is all about.

[00:04:56] Because again,

[00:04:58] we don't know our coffee gear.

[00:05:02] We don't know what we're doing.

[00:05:04] It doesn't matter if I gave you a two to three pulse method in a center and out of center,

[00:05:11] grind it this way, do that way.

[00:05:13] It doesn't matter. We have to understand the why we're doing things and why it makes sense to us in particular.

[00:05:23] Because at the end of the day, we are the only ones in this arena making coffee.

[00:05:29] Yeah, from time to time you may be in a cafe, you may be talking to people and all that stuff. But I will say about 80 to 90 percent of the time, we are making coffees for ourselves.

[00:05:43] And we want to get it right. And the only real way to be consistent with the craft is to understand what you're doing.

[00:05:54] So look at those concaves. Use this piece of paper to make your coffee.

[00:06:01] Taste it.

[00:06:03] How is that recipe for you?

[00:06:07] Keep going. Change the temperature of the water.

[00:06:11] See if that makes it better.

[00:06:14] Pies a little flat. Change the grind size. It doesn't really matter what you do, as long as you stay there long enough to understand exactly what is happening to your palate, how it's changing, how it's being made better because of what you're drinking. Maybe you don't like that coffee and that's perfectly fine.

[00:06:38] Find and seek the coffees that you do like. Ask yourself, is this something that I will like a lot to do, a lot to drink?

[00:06:48] Or just try it anyway. Get a small bag.

[00:06:52] Explore. Go on that journey with that particular coffee.

[00:06:58] But master this.

[00:07:00] Only this.

[00:07:02] Use it for a week. Use it for two weeks.

[00:07:06] Challenge yourself even more to use it for a month.

[00:07:10] Use Hario slow filters.

[00:07:14] You may like a slower brew, a slower drawdown. So you realize that you may not need another dripper because you can mimic and play around with the drawdown by manipulating, playing around with the paper.

[00:07:31] This is a cone shape. The beauty of this brewer right here is that you can use cone shape—of course I just said that—you can use cone shaped filters, but you can also use flat bed filters.

[00:07:45] All the best of both worlds. So use a Kalita Wave, which is a slower filter.

[00:07:53] But when you look at it, you'll notice too in a Kalita Wave filter that the bed size is actually a lot smaller compared to like an April Brewer filter.

[00:08:06] Or get the Origami filters. See how they work with the paper. See how they work with the coffee. See how they work with temperatures and extractions. If you don't have a TDS meter, that's perfectly fine. You have your palate, you have your mouth, you have your experience, you have your history.

[00:08:24] Think about it all.

[00:08:26] Weigh a piece of paper. See if that matters.

[00:08:31] Get a cloth filter. See if you like that type of application.

[00:08:38] At the end of the day, we have all these things that we can do and change in order to understand this even more. This particular device or a Hario V60, it doesn't really matter. Use what you have that's in front of you. Look at that hole.

[00:08:52] Look how big this hole is. Does that matter as much as we think it does?

[00:08:59] Is our brew going to take about the same amount of time?

[00:09:03] That doesn't even really matter. What does it taste like? What is your experience drinking this particular coffee?

[00:09:10] That's really what we're getting at here. It's cool to get new stuff, play around with it, and then sadly put it on the cupboard.

[00:09:25] Again, you don't have to have a journal, but stay in it long enough to where you are understanding exactly what this thing can do for you. How magical your coffees can be. Or not. You may not be jelling with it. Who knows? I don't know. Maybe it's that particular coffee. Maybe you are more of a dark roast person, but everybody's telling you to drink lightly roasted coffees and aerobics and that funky natural that doesn't really work with you.

[00:10:01] Find it. Find your coffee. Use this brewer. Use any brewer. But just stay there long enough to where you understand everything that you can do with it.

[00:10:16] Because that's part of the whole journey, part of this whole thing, is that yeah, we may get frustrated. I know I get frustrated from time to time, and I wonder about how I can make my coffee better.

[00:10:31] But to my detriment, I have 15 different brewers.

[00:10:35] I have four or five different grinders.

[00:10:38] I'm always changing things up. As I talk about a lot of times in weightlifting, which I do a lot, is that keep the same routine for a while. See how that operates with the body. See how that works for you.

[00:10:53] Same thing here. There's no difference. It's just something that we like to do every day, that we must do every day, that we want to do every day. Something that we know that we keep doing every day, we're going to get really, really good at it.

[00:11:10] But at the end of the day too, we have to open up our eyes, see what we're dealing with, see what it's all about.

[00:11:50] What a perfect ultimate recipe is, it doesn't matter. Whoever else you're talking to, listening to, being influenced by, tells you this is the way that you should go when you're actually drinking your cup of coffee.

[00:12:05] It's about you.

[00:12:09] Maybe you do like a one pour type of brew.

[00:12:13] And you like to grind the shit out of it in order to bring out the most sweetness.

[00:12:19] I'm just saying that you may not even taste sweetness in your coffee. You may be an acidity kick type of person.

[00:12:29] Maybe you like your coffee tea-like.

[00:12:33] It doesn't matter what I say.

[00:12:36] It comes back to you. That's it. You.

[00:12:42] And when you understand that, when you are deep into the craft, when you're deep into the mastery and perfection and trying to understand exactly what this thing can do for you.

[00:12:56] That's all that matters.

[00:12:58] I can give you a recipe to the three pulses.

[00:13:02] 35 second bloom.

[00:13:06] And then a 205 degree

[00:13:10] temperature.

[00:13:14] Why did I say that?

[00:13:17] Question that if you're going to take a recipe.

[00:13:22] What does that person like? Is it similar to what I like?

[00:13:26] And it doesn't matter because at the end of the day, it's about you.

[00:13:32] You may like that 10, 15 second pulse.

[00:13:37] Or bloom.

[00:13:39] And like a six, seven pulse coffee. It doesn't matter. It matters what you like.

[00:13:48] Master this and you'll be totally fine.

[00:13:53] So I got for you:

[00:13:55] Master your coffee brewer. Master your craft.

[00:14:03] I think you'll be a lot better off.

[00:14:06] Talk to you later. Bye.