Buy It, Play With It, Then Shelve It

I bought another brewer. I saw people talking about the Pulsar Mini dripper online, felt the pull of missing out on something, and ordered it. It sat in the box for a couple of days while I waited for the right moment to open it. Then I did what I always do. I studied the construction, refused to read the directions, brewed a Honduras I already know well, and tasted it. It tasted like my V60. A little less roundness in the middle, which is typical for me with immersion brews. And then I set it down. In this episode I walk through that whole loop honestly, and I ask the question underneath it. Is that the goal?

What you will learn here is why coffee gear so often ends up as an ornament on the shelf, and what you are actually buying when you buy it. The coffee does not care how you brew it. It is what it is. So the real product is not the flavor unlock the marketing promised, it is the comparison, the noticing, the deconstruction. I make the case that you can get all of that from one brewer you have truly mastered, quirks and weaknesses included. I also make the case that if you want to keep buying, that is fine too, as long as you know why. This is about coffee gear FOMO, mastering a single pour over dripper, and being honest about what a piece of equipment does for you versus what you think it does for you.

Transcript

[00:00] You want it, you buy it, you play with it. Eventually it just sits there. Is that the goal? What are we doing here?

[00:17] It's really two conversations, right? There's one that is gear heavy, and then there's one that is coffee. But when you really think about it, they're more so the same.

[00:44] I just got this brewer, the Pulsar Mini dripper. Came in a couple of days. I was thinking about it, saw it online, people talking about it, seeing if I was missing out on anything. You know, FOMO, right? I look at the box, wait a couple of days so I can find the perfect time to do the unboxing and brew with it.

[01:13] Then it gets here. I look at the construction of it, I see what it's all about. The engineer in me, the geek in me, is like: game on. I want to know more about this device. I want to know how different it is from a Hario V60 and all the other gadgets I have over there.

[01:41] I analyze it, I see the construction of it, and then eventually I get a paper filter, or no filter at all. I put everything together. I try not to read the directions as much as I can. I want to figure it out for myself, get frustrated, get happy, all that good stuff.

[02:03] And then I use it. This is coffee I'm familiar with. Honduras. Orangey type of initial taste, and then it dies down with a chocolate undertone to it. Very one-dimensional, if you ask me, but I'm familiar with this coffee. I know what I'm getting myself into.

[02:28] Wait a couple of minutes, do a plunge. Not really a plunge, this one doesn't do a plunge. It just seeps down, the opposite of the AeroPress.

[02:40] I taste the coffee. It tastes like the V60. A little bit less roundness in the middle, as is typical for me with immersion brews. And I put it down, to the side.

[03:03] And then I start to wonder. I start to deconstruct it a little bit. I start to think about ways I can make my coffee better, or really, how to use this device better.

[03:16] The coffee doesn't care. The coffee has no care at all about how you brew it, extract it, present flavor to it. The coffee's laughing at us, actually, if you think about it. Like, these fools, they want to get this dripper, that dripper, this filter, change around with this water temperature and this water chemistry and all that good stuff.

[03:46] The coffee's like, "I am who I am. You can't change me. I am who I am." You may get little variations of who I am. Maybe I'll pull a party trick out if you do this particular method, and then wait, and then sing kumbaya to it. It may present itself in a different way. Those are more so outliers. But regardless of the fact, the coffee doesn't care. We care, for that very moment.

[04:36] And then eventually, as I stated earlier, it gets put aside. As you can see over here, this brewer that I barely use is an ornament piece on my display board for aesthetics. I'll pick it up from time to time, but it's not a daily go-to. It's not a daily driver. It's not like an Origami dripper, or an April brewer, or the tried and true Hario V60. It's not.

[05:09] So I sit here and wonder and ponder: who has the upper hand here? What are we really doing when it comes to coffee and gear and all that stuff?

[05:21] Truthfully, the way I look at it, at least presently right now, is that it should be about the coffee. But this is a different way to go about enjoying the coffee. It comes back to that whole thing about comparison. Hear me out.

[05:55] As I mentioned earlier, yes, the coffee tastes the way it tastes. But really what we're doing when we brew a cup of coffee, we're trying to change up the dynamics, the physics, how that bean actually extracts with the water, and how at the end we're presented with a delicious cup. A delicious cup.

[06:29] So even though we may be comparing this coffee or that coffee, in the name of the gearheads we're comparing that coffee with this brewer and that brewer, or more brewers.

[06:50] Or we could get to the point where we're just mastering this one brewer. We know the ins and outs of it. We understand the quirks. We understand the drawbacks, the saving graces, the ease of use, the difficulty of use, whatever it may be. But we're experts of that particular device. We know what to do with it, because it allows us to bring something magical out of the coffee.

[07:25] Because at the end of the day, that's really what we're chasing. If you feel that itch, if you feel that you need to buy something else, you're wondering if you can change your coffee, manipulate your coffee. You're trying to make it better than, or different than, what you're customarily used to.

[07:46] That's what we're doing here. When we buy this device, that device, where somebody says you're going to get this sweetness and this nice acidity on this coffee. All of them can really do that.

[08:01] But what I'm saying is that once we're really honest with ourselves about what a piece of gear does for us, or what we think it does for us, that's when we can truly master it. That's when we can just stay in a pocket. Find out its quirks, find out its weaknesses, find out what it's good at, develop our own understanding of it, our own recipe, and explore the shit out of that coffee. Enjoy that coffee. See what that coffee is telling us now.

[08:49] Because really, that's what we're doing when we buy more gear. Trying to see if there's something totally different out there. Which is perfectly fine. I can't talk. I mostly do this for engineering purposes. I'm sure others will probably say views and clicks and all that, but nobody really watches my stuff, so that's fine.

[09:16] What I'm saying is that I'm fascinated by the psyche. The person, the determination to make something, to craft something. They put all this marketing behind it. They take all these pictures. They tell you what you're going to be tasting in a cup of coffee. That's the kind of thing I'm fascinated by. Because at the end of the day, this thing makes coffee.

[09:59] It's not going to be that much more different, this device versus that device. It's really not. But the most important thing is that you understand what you're doing when you buy these things. Why you buy these things. And at the end of the day, what it does to you, in your coffee experience, your journey.

[10:30] I do believe we buy gadgets and gear because of the coffee. As much as it doesn't seem like we do, it's because we're trying to make it better. We're trying to extract that coffee, trying to see if we can bring something else out of that coffee.

[10:53] And once we start to understand it a little bit more, start to use our senses, start to compare this device with that device against that coffee, I think we're going to be in a better place. I think you can do that with one piece of gear. But if you need multiples, for whatever reason, again, it's your pocketbook. It's the one thing we've all been sold with the marketing and the hype.

[11:33] But truthfully, I just want to leave you with this. What are you trying to do with your coffee that's that much more different than the current stuff you have? Are you chasing a different experience? Are you chasing a different flavor? Or are you just bored sometimes and you want to change it up from time to time? Is that it? That's perfectly fine, too.

[12:08] But again: I crave it. I buy it. I play with it. And then I put it down. And then eventually, hopefully, I'll figure out my actual routine. And then I'll come back to it when it makes sense, when I'm trying to do something different and wacky to a coffee.

[12:33] It doesn't really matter which way you go with this. Just as long as you know that this is something you want to do. And quite frankly, ironically speaking, don't let anybody tell you any differently. Anybody. So if you want to buy it, play with it, do your thing, do it. It's your journey.

[13:12] But do ask yourself: why are you doing this? Because you're going to have to start over again. You're going to have to figure out all the quirks. You're going to have to deal with the uneasiness of using the device for the first couple of times. And then eventually you're going to start to understand it, see what it can do for you.

[13:43] But coffee's weird. We think we're doing something totally different here sometimes. But in truth, the coffee is what it is. It's already set in stone, for the most part. Yeah, we can manipulate it. We can change it. We can get some variations here and there, the subtleties and all that.

[14:07] But yeah. Gear. When you really think about it, it's all about the coffee. It comes back down to the coffee. We can't do crap with this besides put water or tea or whatever in it, if we wanted to go that route. It's about the damn coffee. Just make it about the coffee.

[14:31] I'm not trying to tell you what to do. You're going to do what you want to do. But at the end of the day, you love gear. You love coffee. It's all about the coffee, whichever way you want to look at it.

[14:49] This is Oke at Everyday Beans, signing off. I'll talk to you later. Bye.