Letting Go: Mr. Coffee and Me

In this episode, I get honest about something that might look out of place on my coffee bar — a Mr. Coffee machine sitting right there next to my Olympia Cremina, Moccamaster, dual grinders, and kettles. Someone recently asked me if I actually use it, and that question stuck with me. So I dig into exactly why it's there, what I actually did with it yesterday, and what it means to me as someone who spends a lot of time chasing precision in the cup.

What I've come to realize is that the Mr. Coffee machine isn't a compromise — it's a permission slip. I talk about how I brewed with it just yesterday, used tap water, didn't measure a thing (except going slightly finer on the grind), and still came away with a genuinely good cup I could taste the fruit in. The episode explores the idea that sometimes the most liberating thing you can do as a serious coffee brewer is let go of control entirely. By listening, you'll learn why even a deep knowledge of extraction, water temperature, and grind profiles doesn't have to mean you're always locked into precision mode, and how stepping back from obsessive control can actually remind you why you loved coffee in the first place.

Transcript

[0:00] When I think of the Mr. Coffee machine, I think about permission, not precision. It's not even close to having precision whatsoever.

[0:10] The water is inconsistent. The shower head is something to probably cringe about. And it just does what it does.

[0:24] But it allows me the permission to take my hands off the wheel, to not be in control. Total opposite of a manual pour over machine, specialty coffee, recipes, refractometers, all the stuff that we do. It gives me that permission to do whatever I want, not measure anything.

[0:52] Push the button, see what comes out, drink your cup of coffee, and move on with your day. That's the liberating part about the Mr. Coffee machine.

[1:03] Somebody asked me a couple weeks ago, as I was showing my coffee bar — do you actually use the Mr. Coffee machine?

[1:17] When he said that, I started to think, because it does look pretty odd on my coffee bar if you're watching this. I have two kettles, I have two grinders, I have other hand grinders off to the side. I got a refractometer, I got a couple of boosters, four or five different types of papers. There's things underneath the cubby too, that I use from time to time. I got it pretty dialed in. And just looking at the machine, it does look kind of odd.

[2:02] Like, what am I doing with that? Well, for one, that's mostly my wife's machine. I did get a Moccamaster for myself, but I got it also with the intent of her actually using it. She didn't want any bit of it, nothing at all with that particular coffee maker. Which is perfectly fine.

[2:31] As I sit here and think about why I actually have the Mr. Coffee machine and what it means, it means that there's little to no expectations from it. For instance, just yesterday, I went ahead and made a cup of coffee from it.

[2:50] The only thing I did that somebody wouldn't probably do with the Mr. Coffee machine is I went a little bit finer than what you're supposed to. Put a couple of scoops in there. Enough water for myself and my wife. And I pushed the button. I did add a paper filter to it too. And I just waited.

[3:19] Waited impatiently, actually. The brew took a lot longer than what I thought. It just did its own thing.

[3:30] Oh yeah, I put tap water in there too. Which I'm sure that's what people do with the Mr. Coffee machine or any type of automatic drip machine.

[3:41] As the cups were finished, turned off the machine, poured a decent sized cup for myself, did the same thing for my wife. Hers, I added creamer. Sweet cream — if you know, you know. And we're watching our TV show. I took my first sip. Wasn't bad at all. It was really good. It had taste, it had flavor. I could taste the fruity notes of it. It was good to me.

[4:22] I didn't really measure anything out. I treated it as everybody else would, whoever has a Mr. Coffee machine or something similar. I didn't go down this whole specialty rabbit hole of trying to understand this machine or to make it more of my own by measuring every little thing.

[4:42] I used to. When I started using it more. But then as the days and the weeks and even a year went by, I just stopped caring about that. It didn't really make it that much better.

[4:57] Sometimes I think about that. We have scales. We measure everything out. I already know what a 1-to-15 ratio is going to really do for me. I know if I tweak this and tweak that, lower down the temperature, that brings out different things. I know that. It's a lot of fun.

[5:24] But something about this automatic drip machine strips me of who I am in this coffee world. It's very liberating. It can do a good job on its own with a couple of tweaks. It works out pretty well.

[5:50] When I think about it and actually use it, I'm really happy with the way it does its thing. Temperatures are all over the place — 170, 185, 200, back to 180. I tried putting hot water in it to keep the water more consistent. That did help.

[6:22] But again, just like the Moka pot or the Moccamaster, I want to fiddle with it. It's an automatic drip machine for a reason. There are a lot of things in life that we take control over, that we need to do in order to feel alive.

[6:52] You kind of get that with the Mr. Coffee machine. Because for the most part, after you put whatever you do in the coffee machine, it's just waiting. And you're just hoping that whatever it comes out with, whatever it produces, is actually tasty. Seven out of ten times, it is. That's the liberating part about all of this.

[7:22] It's one of those things where I just think about why I'm doing all this stuff, why it matters. And I think the Mr. Coffee machine gives me that reminder — just hold back, Oki. What you're doing with coffee is cool. It's actually quite impressive, that you figure things out and you're trying to figure out more. As you do that, it's just going on a journey.

[7:58] But that Mr. Coffee machine, the way it is, the way it operates, the way it makes me feel from time to time — happy, or sad, or mad because it worked or it didn't — that's the liberating part about all of this. That's the thing that nobody really talks about when they're talking about coffee in general.

[8:24] We have no choice but to get it right. When we measure down to the tenth of a gram. When we know that if the kettle is too low on water, that water is going to be cooler than we want it, and we know how that's going to affect the taste, the extraction, all that stuff.

[8:50] We know that we can geek out. We know that if we use a six on the K Ultra, for the most part, it's going to work out really well for the coffees that we're using. Maybe go a little bit finer for a lightly roasted coffee. We know those intricate details. We spend two to three weeks actually brewing that bag we get from a roaster. Sometimes we let it rest three to four weeks or even longer.

[9:26] We're doing that because we know that's going to be the peak time to actually enjoy that coffee. We're looking for that perfect cup of coffee. We're chasing that rainbow. We get it a lot of times. Sometimes we get frustrated.

[9:47] But the Mr. Coffee machine just gets out of the way. Does not care. Doesn't care about you. Doesn't care about me. It just brews a cup of coffee, and that's it.

[10:04] So yeah, it looks weird looking at it right now on the coffee bar. With the Olympia Cremina. The Moccamaster. Two kettles. The two grinders. And it's right there, smack in the middle.

[10:30] I understand why people look at the coffee bar and wonder why it's there. At first I left it there because it allows me to test the coffee, to see what it's all about, to see how other people were really drinking their coffee with the coffee that I have. It was like that at first.

[10:54] But then after a while it started to become a distant memory, something I didn't really think about. And then from time to time, when I had that time to just sit there and accidentally make a cup of coffee from the Mr. Coffee machine, I was happy. I was shocked.

[11:19] And then I realized that even though there's not that much precision involved, I have to go back to my knowledge, the things I do have with specialty coffee. I spent a long time with the Mr. Coffee machine. I tweaked it, I played around with it, I tried to manipulate it, I tried to make it more than what it was.

[11:47] But then I started to realize that's the machine it is. No matter what I do to it, it's going to do the thing it needs to do. And when I stopped fighting that, it started to talk to me. I know how that sounds kind of crazy, but truthfully that's really what it's done. It's allowed me to be who I am, to respect the machine for what it is, to take the faults that it has, but for the most part still let it do its thing.

[12:22] And like I said, just that finer grind, the knowledge that I do have, realizing that there's no bloom, trying to go with the flow of the inconsistent temperature swings — still make a great cup.

[12:41] I think that's the liberating part about all of this. And it's pretty cool. So that's why I have the Mr. Coffee machine on my bar back there. It's kind of like a token, a reminder.

[12:58] But it also lets me know that it's okay to let go, let loose, let it be what it is. Because six, seven, eight times out of ten, the coffee is going to work. And if it doesn't, at least you got a chance to drink some coffee.

[13:23] Let me know what you think. Do you have something in your arsenal that you don't really use, or if you do use it and you're kind of embarrassed about talking about it — or you're not. Let's talk about it. Talk to you later.