Are You Brewing or Just Measuring?

In this episode, I dive deep into the paradox of precision in coffee brewing and question whether my obsession with exactness has actually robbed me of the joy I once felt. I reflect on my journey from the simplicity of the French press—just ground coffee, water, and time—to the world of scales, refractometers, temperature-controlled kettles, and my Timemore Sculptor 78SS grinder. I talk about how precision tools like scales and kettles transformed my brewing from experimentation into science, allowing me to replicate good cups and eliminate bad ones. But somewhere along the way, I realized I stopped trusting my palate and started trusting the numbers instead. If the extraction wasn't "perfect" according to the tools, I questioned myself, the coffee, or the brewer—never the possibility that precision might be getting in the way of presence.

I explore this tension between being an engineer who cares about repeatability and being a coffee lover who just wants to enjoy the moment. While I acknowledge I'll never abandon my tools completely, I'm challenging myself to loosen up, to remember that my palate and taste are what matter most. By listening to this episode, you'll gain insight into how precision can both enhance and complicate your coffee experience, and you'll learn why being present with your brew—smelling the beans, feeling the steam, truly tasting the coffee—might be more valuable than any refractometer reading. You'll walk away questioning whether you need that next precision tool or whether you already have everything you need: good coffee, a few reliable tools, and your own unique palate.

Transcript

[00:00:03] We all know what that means.

[00:00:08] We may not think about it all the time or on a daily basis, but it's in our lives no matter what.

[00:00:19] We think about how much gas we have in the car to get to the location that we need to. We think about cups and measures when we're cooking.

[00:00:32] We have ingredients, we have recipes, we have all that stuff at our disposal.

[00:00:40] But I've been thinking about this lately, ever since I've talked about my grinder, the Timemore Sculptor 78SS. It's the long name.

[00:00:53] I like how exact and precise that it can be. I like that you can play around with different variables like grinder speed, which I didn't think was much of anything, but I am noticing the difference, even though it may be as subtle as can be.

[00:01:14] Then I started thinking about when I started really truly getting into this coffee thing. I started with the French press.

[00:01:27] The thing about the French press to me, even though it does start the obsession if you want to go there, is that it's extremely simple.

[00:01:41] Ground coffee, water, and time. That's it. That's all we have.

[00:01:51] There's not even any notches on this particular French press. Most French presses don't really have notches. Some of them do, some of them don't.

[00:02:04] But to think about it, this was the gateway. For me, sometimes my cups would be good, sometimes they wouldn't.

[00:02:17] I never really questioned it as much as I am now, but it was what it was. It is what it is.

[00:02:29] As we keep going down this rabbit hole, precision started to be the main dog. The main character, so to speak.

[00:02:44] Because what ended up happening, at least for me, is that I'll get that buzz, that high, that coffee kick, that amazingness that came from the coffee.

[00:02:56] Then the next day, I would try to do the same thing, and I wouldn't get there.

[00:03:05] Some of the variables changed. Something about it didn't feel right.

[00:03:11] I didn't jot down the recipe, or I thought that I did everything exactly the same as I did before.

[00:03:21] So then it was time for me to move on, to keep growing.

[00:03:29] So I grabbed the Hario V60. Not this one in particular, but the Hario V60.

[00:03:45] You put it on a cup or another vessel. You put some water on top of it.

[00:03:56] And then you'll see these different techniques of blooming, no blooming, stir, no stir.

[00:04:07] And then you'll make a cup out of it, and you're like, "Hmm, that was interesting. That was different."

[00:04:18] And then you'll start to wonder, I can't keep repeating the exact same thing that I've been doing or was doing with the French press.

[00:04:35] So then something like this came into play. A scale.

[00:04:45] And I thought about it, me being an engineer, this is what I needed.

[00:04:51] This is exactly the thing that I needed to put the coffee maker on top, get my water ready, turn it on. I know exactly how many grams of coffee that I was going to play around with.

[00:05:14] And then I had an idea of how much water I was going to use in order to make my beverage.

[00:05:23] Then I start jotting it down, and then I start thinking and start really getting to the point where experimentation became science.

[00:05:35] It became something that I can replicate or not when it was shitty. Of course the whole dance and the grind starts all over again, no pun intended.

[00:05:47] It starts all over again when you get a new bag of coffee. So you have to do the same thing again, kind of see what it's all about.

[00:06:03] And then we're fighting and just trying to make sure that we get things right.

[00:06:09] And then we start playing around with grinders. It has notches and dials and all that stuff to change the coarseness or the fineness of the actual coffee.

[00:06:27] But it probably really started with the actual kettle. How 190 degrees Fahrenheit tasted completely different when you're at 205 for that exact same coffee and everything being the same.

[00:06:47] And I think that's where it was fun. It was exciting because now I can repeat all the stuff that I wanted to repeat. I can essentially wash out all the other things that didn't work for me.

[00:07:04] I started to realize that I like paper filters over metal filters.

[00:07:13] I started to realize that I was more of a medium and dark roasted person. Not so much of a lightly roasted person.

[00:07:24] I started to explore and geek out and try to understand extraction even more. I started reading books. I went down this rabbit hole where it was amazing. And don't get me wrong, I love it a lot. I'm still going through it so much now. Playing around trying to master water, master coffee, master the brewer, understand everything about it.

[00:07:50] And of course the coffee too. Because the dynamic of what the coffee is actually doing or tasting like and how you can manipulate and change it.

[00:08:01] That's really exciting. We have all these tools in our toolbox. I have my refractometer over there to tell me exactly how my coffee is being extracted.

[00:08:14] We have brewers. We have different gadgets. We have Kruve sieves. We have all this stuff in the name of precision in order to get it right.

[00:08:25] I'm just thinking. Did I go too far deep into the rabbit hole?

[00:08:34] Is being exact taking the joy out of it?

[00:08:39] Because the thing that I really had with me that I trusted more than anything was my palate. Was my taste.

[00:08:53] Was my uniqueness in the way that I look at food and beverages and all that stuff.

[00:09:01] That's what I had for me.

[00:09:04] And as I sit here and try to think about this a little bit more, I stopped trusting the palate.

[00:09:13] I quietly, slowly trusted everything else.

[00:09:22] So if it wasn't extracted this way, then something was wrong with me. Something was wrong with that coffee. Something was wrong with that brewer.

[00:09:37] Because I measured everything out perfectly.

[00:09:43] It's interesting how we can lose track of things quite a bit.

[00:09:48] Don't get me wrong, I'm never going back. I'm already here.

[00:09:54] But I guess what I'm saying is that I can loosen up the bolt just a little bit. Just enough to where I'm not so anal about every variable that's out there.

[00:10:09] How if I did it this way and I did it that way and I used this water and I swirled this way and I did... No. I mean, yes.

[00:10:19] That's the thing that I'm fighting with quite a bit when it comes to this whole thing.

[00:10:25] Because I'm an engineer. I care about the numbers.

[00:10:31] I want to be able to repeat a good tasting coffee.

[00:10:38] But I also want to push myself to see if I can get this coffee to be different to an extent.

[00:10:47] So I don't really know where I'm at with this. I don't know where you're at with this.

[00:10:53] Those are some of the things that I think about quite a bit as I geek out over there with new grinders, with new precision tools, with all the things that we play around with.

[00:11:05] And it really just comes back to that mouth, to that tongue, to that taste, to that understanding. What you're doing and just being in the moment of actually just drinking the coffee. That's it.

[00:11:21] I have to remember that.

[00:11:26] I don't know where the balance is for me. I don't know where the balance is for you. Are you deep into the rabbit hole? Do you have a refractometer?

[00:11:37] You probably don't need one. To have these tools out there that you can geek out and understand coffee even more. Understand what you like, what you don't like. And that particular coffee at that time.

[00:11:51] Maybe you're probably in the best spot. A lot better than me.

[00:11:57] To where you don't have all this stuff around you. You may have a grinder or two or three. Have a scale.

[00:12:08] Have a precision kettle, variable kettle. And that's it.

[00:12:19] Probably a couple different papers if you see a difference or not. You know?

[00:12:27] But more importantly you have your mouth. You have your tongue. You have that experience of tasting good coffee.

[00:12:39] You really do have it already.

[00:12:45] And that's the cool thing about this. A lot of times people see other people with this or that. And you're like, "Man, I wish I had that."

[00:12:56] Truthfully, you're probably in a better position than anybody. Than everybody.

[00:13:04] You don't have all this stuff to get in your way. You don't have these tools to trick your mind to make you feel that you're going down the right path.

[00:13:21] You have that bag of coffee. You have a couple of tools. And you have your palate. That's it.

[00:13:33] You have a couple of go-to recipes. And you're happy most of the time.

[00:13:42] If you get that coffee right, you write down that recipe. You write down the things that you did in order to get there.

[00:13:51] But also remember this. As I sit here trying to really understand myself as I talk about you and how lucky I feel that you are the way that you look at things. Is that as we write down our recipes, figure out this technique and all that stuff. Do remember the journey, the time that it took you to actually prepare and to be in the moment with that coffee.

[00:14:26] Think about your technique, but just be there. Smell the beans, whole beans, and then grind it up. Smell it again.

[00:14:37] Start the whole sensory process. Just really just be in the moment.

[00:14:42] I'm really more so talking about myself, but if you've lost the way to an extent, just be present with that brew, with that cup.

[00:14:57] And as you sit there and you see the steam coming out, and right before you actually take your cup of coffee, your sip of coffee, take all the senses in, and just realize that you're alive right now and that you're about to experience something great or shit. Something amazing.

[00:15:27] And then when you take that sip, and you put it on your palate, and you're just there, just present. Where precision, where tools, go just totally out the way.

[00:15:50] That's where we're at. That's where we want to be most of the time.

[00:15:55] So, I don't know what I'm going to do about that, but I think I got some ideas. If you have any ideas, let me know. Precision.

[00:16:07] Precision is one expensive son of a gun, right?

[00:16:13] But it kind of rules us. We have to wake up and shake our head off and tell it, "Uh-uh, no, no, no, I'm in the control."

[00:16:29] So, talk to you later. Let me know what you think. Bye.