Will Mastering Coffee Ruin My Love for It?

In this episode, I'm getting real about the year-long coffee mastery challenge I'm about to embark on. While I'm excited about the journey ahead, I'm taking a moment to reflect on five potential pitfalls that worry me as I dive deeper into this pursuit. I talk about becoming a coffee accessory chaser, getting trapped by recipe obsession, losing patience with the 12-month timeline, burning out from the intensity, and perhaps most concerning—whether this deep focus might actually ruin my relationship with coffee altogether.

I share a personal story from my college days when I became completely obsessed with cars, building turbos and modifying my 240SX, only to eventually lose all passion for it. That experience haunts me as I consider this coffee challenge. I'm being honest with you about the real possibility that this drive for mastery could transform coffee from something I love into just another beverage. By listening to this episode, you'll gain insight into the psychological challenges of deep skill development and hear an honest conversation about the trade-offs between mastery and maintaining genuine passion for what we love.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:36 Fear #1: Becoming a Coffee Accessory Chaser
• 4:20 Fear #2: The Recipe Prisoner Trap
• 6:19 Fear #3: Losing Patience Over 12 Months
• 7:32 Fear #4: Burnout from Intensity
• 9:23 The Ag Product Comment: Perspective Check
• 10:19 Fear #5: My Palate is Constantly Changing
• 13:14 The Biggest Fear: Losing My Love for Coffee
• 14:21 Story Time: When Cars Became Just Transportation
• 16:23 Will Coffee Become Just a Beverage?

Transcript

[00:00:39] Throughout this challenge, I was thinking that this is going to be a good journey. This is going to be a lot of fun, especially in the beginning. I'm hyped, I'm ready, I'm ready to master coffee. But I'm not going to lie to you, I've thought about this a little bit because I've kind of gone down this rabbit hole before with other various things in my life.

[00:01:13] And there could be things that I may not like about myself and the coffee drinker that I may become because of this whole challenge. So I do have some talking points, and I do just want to talk to you about them. So here we go.

[00:01:43] The coffee accessory chaser. I went through it quite a bit last year when I was getting coffee maker after coffee maker. I could blame it for the site, I could blame it for content, I can blame it for anything I want to. But at the end of the day, it's my fault, it's my own doing. I'm the one who paid and purchased those devices. I'm the one who tested them. I'm the one who was hyped in the beginning and then slowly started to get a little angst with some of the gear, as I've talked about and will continue to talk about throughout this time.

[00:02:27] But this one's a little different. I think for the most part, I got the gear situation handled. I think so. But one thing that I've noticed with this whole thing and just analyzing it a little bit more is that there's plenty of accessories out there for coffee. For one, filters. Filters is an accessory. Is it needed? Yes, I think most of the time it is. But it's one of those things where it's like, okay, what's next? What's next? What's next? For instance, I just bought some fast filters.

[00:03:05] So with buying those fast filters, they have other accessories that you can buy in order to increase the flow rate and all that that we're going to be testing, right? What else is there? What about water chemistry? What other kind of products do I have to get for that? What other aids or whatnot do I have to buy in order to enhance my coffee? I think about that all the time. And I don't want this to be that type of channel. I want to just be able to provide information that's helpful to you, that you could use in your day to day things, right? So that's one thing that I don't want to really get down to. But if I need to, I will. But I will try to check myself. And if you think I'm going a little crazy, check me too. I'm not above anything, right?

[00:04:09] So let's move on to number two. The recipe prisoner. I think for the most part, I don't really give out recipes like that. I like recipes, they're easy, they're replicable. They are something that we can do each and every time. It gives us a gauge, it gives us a way to see we're performing something right. But there are some recipes that just work, tried and true recipes. I want to try those, I want to try my own recipes. But I don't want to be bogged down by chasing this ultimate mythical recipe.

[00:04:52] Some recipes work just because they are what they are. And I think by us diving into grind size, water chemistry, even filters, and more importantly, actual coffee, I think that's going to give us an understanding of probably being able to just use what we have as much as we can in knowing that the recipe is not so much the ultimate factor. I do hope that I am able to get sweetness and acidity all together, depending on the coffee, of course, through a couple of recipes, not like 10 or 15 different ones. But we'll see. At the end of the day, we're just putting everything out there. And I want to be able to provide you information that is going to be of help. And hopefully, we come to the conclusion that any recipe works. But we have to see.

[00:05:56] But again, I don't want to go too far into that rabbit hole. But I guess that's this whole experiment of just going really deep into the rabbit hole, so to speak, okay?

[00:06:15] I think the next one's going to be not patient enough. 12 months is a long time. 12 months is a short time. And as we go through this and kind of see the experience that we're going to go through, realizing that each and every day that I talk about this or do something towards it, it's going to get us closer to our goal. I would like to be in the journey part of this more than the final end product. We're going to get there, I think. But realizing that being patient with this whole thing is going to serve me right and to see all the things that I'm trying to do. And this more than likely, this is not going to be the only thing that I do towards this channel, this whatever this may be in this way for you.

[00:07:25] So I just don't want to feel like I'm rushing this, that I am not taking this seriously, because ultimately, I think this is going to help out a lot of people. So we'll see.

[00:07:39] And I think that takes me back to the next step, which is our next talking point: being burnt out because of the intensity, the struggles, the things that I'm going to go through throughout this whole process as much as I can. I know I can be burnt out in this rapidly, quickly. And some of the things that I will do is I will probably just see if I can just step away. You probably won't really notice it because of the way that I actually record, film, and do all these. But I'll try to be more present when I actually do, put things out there in the comments and all the things that you know how to reach me and all that.

[00:08:33] But I'm going to be honest and objective and trying to figure things out the way they are, and I need to figure out different coping mechanisms, things to solve my burnt out-ness, so to speak, if that makes any sense. Because at the end of the day, I'm human. And sometimes I can get too intense with the things that I do, the goals that I have, and when I go really deep into things, I tend to eventually burn out. So I have to see how much I can pace myself in all of this.

[00:09:17] Just the other day when I put out my first or second talk about this mastery thing, somebody came out here, he's a commenter, he always comments, I love his insights, so different than a lot of things that people are talking about. But it was like, it's an ag product. It changes throughout the year. Just make the coffee and move on. That's what he said. And I thought about that. There's a lot of truth to it. Coffee is like any other ag product. It changes seasonally, it changes all the time. There are so many factors that go into coffee that are beyond your control.

[00:10:27] And one of the biggest things that I've realized, at least for myself, is that it's one of those things where my palate is changing. My palate is not the same. My palate tends to lean one way over the other for reasons that I have explained or things that I don't even understand why it is what it is. And I think that's the part that kind of scares me, is that no matter how much I try to push myself on something so complex, something that changes all the time, it's like that rainbow that you can never really get to.

[00:11:20] But I want to chase it anyway. I want to make more things than just what I've been doing. I want to understand coffee to the point where I get it. Probably I should do it over a lifetime, probably a year too ambitious. Probably even doing this whole thing doesn't even make sense. But I just want to put myself in that situation where I see it through, even if it is just making a cup of coffee and enjoying it the best way that I can. That's kind of like where I'm at right now.

[00:12:04] So it does make sense. It's just coffee. You're just drinking coffee. So it's just coffee. But let's try it out anyway. But do realize that there are other things in life that are going on happening or whatever. But at the end of the day, I'm just trying to control the things that I care about that I actually can put a pulse on. And that's kind of like where I'm at right now. So still a good comment and it's something that I'm going to keep in the back of my head. And I'll probably get more comments either like that or whatnot. But it's all good because at the end of the day, I want to know if I'm crazy. I want to know if I'm thinking about this logically. If I'm not, I'm not. But you know, that's kind of like the way, the things that I'm trying to do in order to really try to understand coffee. Because at the end of the day, I'm talking about coffee. I love coffee. And it's something that we come here for coffee. So, yeah, I don't know.

[00:13:21] So the last one. I think this is the most important one, something that when I was trying out the notes of thinking about what to talk about and everything is that the drive, the intensity, the amount of care and attention to detail that I will have with this, how much I'm going to be focused on this whole thing. I wonder if this will change my whole relationship with coffee.

[00:14:03] I do think about the good things of how this can change my relationship with coffee. But truthfully, we're talking about the bad things, the things that we probably don't really think about when we go too really deep into the rabbit hole of things. I did this when I was in college, I'll give you a quick story, and we'll kind of conclude from there.

[00:14:27] In college, I was big into cars. Love cars. I had a 240SX. If you know, you know, K24. I went ahead and took that up, put a turbo on it. I even had some friends that had some 240s. We had some sports car club and all that stuff. I did anything and everything. I delved deep into it. I researched turbos. I put a turbo in the car. I got different parts around town, around America. I did some autocross. I don't think I did any road racing in it. Probably would have broke the car. Who knows? But I delved deep into that whole world. I was fixated. That's the only thing that I could think about. Cars, cars, cars, cars, cars. In the span of five years, I did everything to that car. I even sold it. Somebody blew up the engine. Went ahead and got a Miata. I got another BMW, whatever it was.

[00:15:38] And after that time, a car was just a car. It was an instrument. It got me from A to B, point A to point B. Didn't do anything for me. It didn't excite me anymore. And I wonder if that will happen with coffee. I wonder if it'll just be a beverage that I just drink or not think about or care about. I wonder if I will continue on in my coffee roasting business because of the angst and the turmoil that I may get from this whole challenge of mastery because of how focused and driven and how I usually get intense when I have that tunnel vision of things.

[00:16:30] I wonder how my relationship with coffee will ultimately change for the bad. And that scares me. That really does scare me. And as I sit here and think about and ponder about all the great things that's going to happen, I do think about that. I do think about how this passion, this hobby, this love, this business, this thing that I love to talk to people about, talk to you about, will just be nothing because of how much I focus and get that myopic view on things. I do think about that.

[00:17:16] So I don't know how to remedy that if that makes any sense. I don't know how to combat that. I mainly just let you know that I'm going to take a pause here and there because I don't want my love for coffee to be suffered because of trying to master it. Again, that sounds kind of crazy and bizarre as I keep thinking about this each and every day now. Master it. I don't want that to be of no use to me.

[00:17:55] So, yeah, this is me, Oke at Everyday Beans, talking about things that I like about coffee, things I don't like about coffee, and things what I like about coffee. I don't know the unknown of this and we're going to see. So that's what I got for you. Let me know what you think. If you have any questions, comments, anything, it doesn't matter. I'm here. Talk to you later. Bye.