What the Dino Rib Taught Me About Coffee

In this episode I tell the story of smoking dino beef ribs on a brand new Weber kettle with no thermometer anywhere in sight, and how that one decision completely reframed how I think about brewing coffee. I share why not knowing the temperature actually made me feel good, and how I realized it was not really about the thermometer at all. I had simply started to trust myself more. From there I connect it straight to specialty coffee, where so many of us lean on our scale, our TDS meter, our water temperature, our brew ratio, and our drawdown timing to chase the perfect cup. I talk about how we start out loose and free when we know less, then slowly become rigid and anal about every number as our journey continues.

I also get into how I have been brewing the same lightly roasted Ethiopian white honey at random doses, sometimes 10 grams, sometimes 30, sometimes 12, without obsessing over the measurements, and what happened when the coffee kept tasting essentially the same. By listening to this episode you will learn how to recognize when your brewing has quietly become rigid, why slowing down and paying attention can matter more than chasing numbers, and how to find more freedom and honesty in your coffee ritual without ever throwing your gear away. If you are a home brewer who feels stuck inside your own spreadsheet, this one is for you.

Transcript

[00:00] A new Weber kettle, dino beef ribs, but no thermometer. What the hell was I thinking? But I did it anyway. I smoked that piece of meat and it came out flawlessly. I start telling other people about it and they were like, where's your thermometer? What temp did you do it at? I told them I didn't know. But something about that made me feel really good about the situation.

[00:42] Now that I think about it, it's not that I didn't know. I just started to trust myself a little bit more. We go through that a lot of times, especially in coffee.

[00:58] We've got a scale, we've got water temp, we've got our palates, which is really the most important thing about all of this. As we go throughout our journey, at first we're trying to get it right, but since we don't know a lot, we're less rigid, more free, trying to do the things we want to do with our coffee.

[01:28] But something about the journey, as we keep going down it, we start to psychoanalyze everything. We start to be anal about all of it. We're trying to see if the water chemistry changes this particular coffee. We start to pay attention to drawdown and how that affects the taste or the acidity. We're playing around with different brewers, seeing if we can get anything out of them. Those are the games we play with ourselves.

[02:03] And of course we're measuring, with a TDS meter in my case or a scale in the majority of cases, and we have a ratio that we like. We just keep going down this rabbit hole of not so much wonder, but fixation on numbers and dials and all that stuff in order to get the coffee right.

[02:37] But something about those dino ribs and the new kettle gave me that freeing sensation. I know how to smoke a piece of meat. I've already done the whole thermometer thing. The biggest thing is that I started to pay attention a little bit more. I started to feel the meat. I started to see what was happening to it. I started to pay attention to the color, and that became my driving force. Even though I didn't know the temperature, I was able to dial it in perfectly, play around with different valves, see where the smoke was coming from.

[03:26] Then I started thinking about coffee, seeing where I'm at with that. I don't think I will abandon the measurement devices I have. At least for me, it makes it fun. But when I let go, when I start to just let it be for what it is, I start to realize that the coffee tastes essentially very similar to each other, meaning across the brews that I do.

[04:08] I started to pay attention that I'm more in the moment with all of this. I'm actually seeing it for what it is. I'm experiencing that coffee as though it does change. I'm starting to enjoy the whole ritual of it.

[04:32] Because when you really think about it, one of the clunky things about the coffee ritual is the measurements. It used to start with the smell. You open up your bag and you smell your coffee. But at least for me, I don't do that anymore. I just grab the coffee, put it on the scale, normal ratio, grind it up, pick which dial I'm going to use for the particular coffee, get my filter of choice.

[05:06] I'm going down this rabbit hole of the ritual. I'm thinking, okay, do about 50 grams in for the bloom, wait about 30 to 35 seconds, probably a minute depending on the situation. Sometimes I even forget. Then I do one pour, let it draw down, then do one more pour. I'm either done, or I've decided to do three or four or five, whatever it may be.

[05:35] When you think about that, that's part of the clunkiness of it. It's part of the ritual that I don't really mind. But now that I'm thinking about it, it's part of the things I hold dear, because I'm measuring, I'm really thinking about making this thing perfect. I don't want to mess it up. Again, it's that rigidness I'm talking about.

[06:04] There are so many different variables in coffee, just as there are in cooking. But when you pay attention, slow down, and just do one thing at a time, you start to realize that everything is more or less the same.

[06:23] One way I've gotten there, where I'm not paying so much attention to the numbers, is by brewing the exact same coffee. It's not my favorite. I've talked about it many times. It's an Ethiopian white honey, and in this case a lightly roasted one. It's not what I'd call very acidic, depending on what you do with it. It can linger, it can come in, it can do all the things you think it will do. But then it has that softness, that subtle apple acidity, just a little bit of chocolate notes, not much at all.

[07:07] But it's the exact same coffee. I have about two pounds of it. Sometimes it's 10 grams, sometimes 20, sometimes 30, sometimes 12. It doesn't really matter. After a while of doing the whole process, I stop. The measurement part is still a part of it. Yeah, I still did my bloom, but I was more present. I was paying attention to that coffee. I was actually smelling the coffee.

[07:44] Then, as I sat there after the brew was done, I drank it. I just stayed there with it. When I stayed there with it, it was tasty. It was fine.

[08:03] And then it caught me thinking. Is this the direction I'm going in? Because I still think about those dino ribs. I still think about how awesome they were. Were they the best dino ribs I ever had? They're up there, top five. And that's probably because of my skill, my experience, and me constantly playing, trying to get better at this.

[08:35] It's the same thing in coffee. It's the same thing I think about every time now. As I measure and pour and use this gadget and that gadget, I start to wonder, am I losing the whole essence of just making a cup of coffee? Am I not understanding everything I'm doing? Because that's part of it.

[09:07] So as I sit here with you right now, one thing I want you to take away is this. When you feel that you are rigid in the things you're doing with coffee, slow down, pay attention, and brew that exact same cup constantly. You may start out measuring, but then eventually, hopefully, you'll stop measuring. You start to see it for what it is.

[09:43] Then you'll start to realize, at least in my case, that the tastes and flavors are very similar to each other, measurements or not. Then you start to pay attention to other things in your cup. You take more notice of the smell, the whole process, the whole ritual of actually drinking your cup of coffee.

[10:08] When you do that, I wouldn't necessarily say you've mastered that coffee, or coffee in general. You're more free. You're more honest. It allows you to just see where the knowledge and experience take you in this whole process.

[10:30] For instance, with this Ethiopian coffee, I've been enjoying it, even though it's not my thing. I've realized that the least amount of time I measure, versus measuring, the coffees essentially taste the same. Those are the realizations I love to come to.

[11:01] So will I drop my whole notion of measuring? Nah, never. That's part of my ritual. That's part of the things I like to do in order to understand that coffee. Really, I think the reason we measure is because we want to be able to replicate that magic when it comes out, if it works. But we also want to jot down the things that don't work.

[11:33] I guess what I'm saying is that you realize you're really good at what you're doing. When you measure and constantly measure and think and go about it that way, those are your guardrails up. When you let them down and you let it be, you're just as knowledgeable. You have just as much experience in the whole grand scheme of things.

[12:03] So that's what I learned about the whole dino ribs situation. I'll do it more for my actual cooking and smoking. And I'll start to peel a layer here and there when I'm brewing a cup of coffee, especially when I have a decent amount of it, where I can drop the ego, drop the whole "it needs to be this way, it needs to be that way," and be a little bit less rigid. Just be free. I think that's really what I'm saying here.

[12:42] When we measure, it helps us. It centers us in the right direction, I think. In truth, the kicker about all of this at the end of the day is that even though I'm not measuring, I am measuring. I'm paying attention. I'm looking at different variables. I'm thinking on the spot. I keep bringing up that word, attention, throughout all of this.

[13:17] When we do that, we're just getting better. It's just a different way of looking at coffee, looking at life, looking at things in general. So let me know what you think. Talk to you later. Bye.