I don’t have a problem with people who are willing to do things in a complex way or experiment around. But hobbies are often an excuse for consumerism and elitism and that’s kind of gross.
Like coffee is a great example: someone will talk about a $20 pour over or French press with pre ground coffee from a local roaster, which is a setup that will give you vastly superior coffee to most people and chain options like starbucks or dunkin. They’ll get roasted (lol) because they’re not grinding at home (at minimum $1-200 for a decent grinder). And then when you dive into those people you’ll see they have some wild ass setup with like an $8000 espresso machine, $3000 grinder, the $200 coffee scale that coffee nerds have a boner for because a $10-30 scale with almost the same exact feature set is lame and coffee nerds are just audiophiles in a different hat. They have that same desperation in trying to justify their excessive consumerism that has led to their kitchen counter holding a handful of appliances dedicated to a single task that have cost them the value of a very solid used car.
But like the person that double blind tests various preparation methods? That experiments with data recording to better understand what happens during various brewing methods? That tries unconventional approaches to extraction? That person is cool
Heck ya, some solid experimenting to me is way cooler than someone dropping massive cash on something. That’s kiiiinda interesting sometimes to see what’s new and experimental, but I’ll never spend that on it, so there’s limited use to me. But the fart sniffing stuff of overpriced scales and stuff like that, I can live without that type of content completely.
I agree with you that hobbies often enshittify. However, coffee has a special place in my heart because you can make really, really tasty coffee with simple tools.
My setup is a plastic cone, a set of filter papers, a plastic kettle, a thermometer, a dispersion screen, and a scale.
As to grinding coffee, you’re right that a grinder is expensive. There’s no way around that. However, you can do what my partner and I did for months: our local coffee shop ground our coffee each week.
Why am I saying all of this?
In part because I agree with you. I actually approach coffee deliberately with an 80/20 mindset: I’ll get 80% of the coffee goodness for 20% of the effort. I do this because I don’t want to get sucked into the deep end.
And I think you could get a lot of coffee goodness for very little effort. Coffee ratios are a great way to start. You take just a few steps so that you can play around with temperature, grind size, and pouring technique. In my mind, that’s the 20% that gets me 80% of coffee goodness.
Of course, it’s possible that you like your current setup and that’s great! I believe the best coffee is the coffee that you like.
Oh, I’m not saying all of it is hooey, just after the things you mention, there are rapidly diminishing returns.
I started with just an Aeropress and experimenting with different grocery store coffees. Then I got a Barratza Encore for my birthday. I switched to the OXO dripper pour over and prefer that cleaner taste, and my wife prefers the Aeropress still. She doesn’t notice the difference between grocery coffee and fresh ground, so she usually gets a flavored coffee, and I get a different single origin from Trade every couple weeks.
I probably spend the most of my friend group on coffee, at least home coffee, but I think it’s better than any coffee I get out, and I think the value ratio is still well in my favor for what I get. A coworker seemed interested in my setup and bought it all, but she seemed to like it when I did the work, and even that level of hands on was too much fuss, and her and her husband went back to using a French press without measuring anything.
I find the setup a bit much to do in the morning when I wake up and am all groggy, so I’ve gone to making it before I go to bed into canning jars, and I vacuum seal it so we can either warm it up or have “iced coffee” in the morning, and we think it tastes as good as fresh.
I don’t have a problem with people who are willing to do things in a complex way or experiment around. But hobbies are often an excuse for consumerism and elitism and that’s kind of gross.
Like coffee is a great example: someone will talk about a $20 pour over or French press with pre ground coffee from a local roaster, which is a setup that will give you vastly superior coffee to most people and chain options like starbucks or dunkin. They’ll get roasted (lol) because they’re not grinding at home (at minimum $1-200 for a decent grinder). And then when you dive into those people you’ll see they have some wild ass setup with like an $8000 espresso machine, $3000 grinder, the $200 coffee scale that coffee nerds have a boner for because a $10-30 scale with almost the same exact feature set is lame and coffee nerds are just audiophiles in a different hat. They have that same desperation in trying to justify their excessive consumerism that has led to their kitchen counter holding a handful of appliances dedicated to a single task that have cost them the value of a very solid used car.
But like the person that double blind tests various preparation methods? That experiments with data recording to better understand what happens during various brewing methods? That tries unconventional approaches to extraction? That person is cool
Heck ya, some solid experimenting to me is way cooler than someone dropping massive cash on something. That’s kiiiinda interesting sometimes to see what’s new and experimental, but I’ll never spend that on it, so there’s limited use to me. But the fart sniffing stuff of overpriced scales and stuff like that, I can live without that type of content completely.
I agree with you that hobbies often enshittify. However, coffee has a special place in my heart because you can make really, really tasty coffee with simple tools.
My setup is a plastic cone, a set of filter papers, a plastic kettle, a thermometer, a dispersion screen, and a scale.
As to grinding coffee, you’re right that a grinder is expensive. There’s no way around that. However, you can do what my partner and I did for months: our local coffee shop ground our coffee each week.
Why am I saying all of this?
In part because I agree with you. I actually approach coffee deliberately with an 80/20 mindset: I’ll get 80% of the coffee goodness for 20% of the effort. I do this because I don’t want to get sucked into the deep end.
And I think you could get a lot of coffee goodness for very little effort. Coffee ratios are a great way to start. You take just a few steps so that you can play around with temperature, grind size, and pouring technique. In my mind, that’s the 20% that gets me 80% of coffee goodness.
Of course, it’s possible that you like your current setup and that’s great! I believe the best coffee is the coffee that you like.
Oh, I’m not saying all of it is hooey, just after the things you mention, there are rapidly diminishing returns.
I started with just an Aeropress and experimenting with different grocery store coffees. Then I got a Barratza Encore for my birthday. I switched to the OXO dripper pour over and prefer that cleaner taste, and my wife prefers the Aeropress still. She doesn’t notice the difference between grocery coffee and fresh ground, so she usually gets a flavored coffee, and I get a different single origin from Trade every couple weeks.
I probably spend the most of my friend group on coffee, at least home coffee, but I think it’s better than any coffee I get out, and I think the value ratio is still well in my favor for what I get. A coworker seemed interested in my setup and bought it all, but she seemed to like it when I did the work, and even that level of hands on was too much fuss, and her and her husband went back to using a French press without measuring anything.
I find the setup a bit much to do in the morning when I wake up and am all groggy, so I’ve gone to making it before I go to bed into canning jars, and I vacuum seal it so we can either warm it up or have “iced coffee” in the morning, and we think it tastes as good as fresh.