My day was fine but this turned into something else. This is a coffee article now. I’m not kidding, I’m going to re-publish as its own thing, but this was its genesis, with you. I edited that really cool logo animation intro thing, facetimed bae in costa rica, and made coffee, and took the pic above. Cool cool. What follows then, is a manifesto, no, a diatribe both for and against cof- no. A jeremiad of coffee. So sit back, settle in, take a sip, and let’s see what’s up.
I never considered myself a “coffee guy”. I enjoyed it enough, but like many people, I was only in it for its sweet, sweet chemical properties. Then at some point, Vici dug up this old wooden coffee grinder that was in her parents’ house. And like anyone desperate to feel even 1% superior to the idiotic masses, I absolutely had to be the guy who uses the WW2-era wooden german coffee grinder. “What’s that? You buy your beans pre-ground? That’s okay bud, we all make compromises somewhere.” You know, that guy. So with this thing just laying around, I was like “fine, I’ll get some beans and see what happens”. These, my friends, are the first words of a naive fool. A fool who knows not what he says, for if he did, his demeanor would not be so cavalier. No. If he did, he wouldn’t be saying it at all.
This next part isn’t a joke: after getting beans and buying a french press, then buying a chemex, then buying a moka pot, it took me… Damn it I’ll just say it, it took me almost a year to make a cup of coffee as good as the one from the stupid mud-machine at the local bakery that the bread-maids clean out once a month. It is unbelievable how deep you can get into just about anything. After a week of only trash-bitter or vinegar-sour coffee from the french press, I found this guy named James Hoffman on youtube (you may know of him, but if not, this NYTimes article about him is sick). He has the most popular French press technique video on the internet. Wanna know what he says to do? Never press. That’s his secret, just straight up don’t use the press. Do you know what a French press is when there is no press? It’s a goddamn glass. No no, I’m being too harsh. This makes sense, totally. That’s why we buy things, right? Last week when I got a new vacuum, I specifically asked for the one that doesn’t cuum. That massage gun I saw on sale in the department store? I asked if they had one that doesn’t massage. “No no, it’s my fault, this is your second language and I’m not being clear enough. See this thing? I want this but no massaging. Just gun. You have gun? Sell me gun?” Bail was set at 200 euros.
This is the coffee world. Water to bean ratios, types of water, types of beans, types of roasts of types of beans, water temperature, brew time, brew technique, grind size, whether someone has menstruated in the same room in the previous 18 hours. It never ends. We got people spending 30 bucks on a french press and throwing the press out, brewing in their chemex upside down into an Egyptian rock-and-sand filter so that chemically pure, coffee-tasting water comes out. When you make a good cup of coffee for yourself, from whole bean to brown water, this meme isn’t even a meme anymore:
This is why your “coffee-friends” look so strung out. It’s not the caffeine. It’s the goddamn Vietnam war of hobbies and interests. When you see a chemex on someone’s shelf and they excitedly chirp out “anyone want coffee?” like a sad-looking but giddy chihuahua, your duty is to put a hand on their shoulder and say “Yes. I would like that. And I care about you very, very much.” Because they, too, started as fools, and now misguidedly believe their efforts may have even the remotest impact on how they are perceived.
They craziest part, though? The straight up enjoyment of it all. You seriously do become a little scientist in this low-stakes game of trial and error. I learned that the water in my city is what we call “hard water”, and that the higher calcium in the water reacts with the coffee to produce a more bitter and dull taste, even if every other variable is accounted for. I learned that courser grinds work better in moka pots even though they’re advertised as espresso-replacement devices. Each morning was a tiny experiment in concocting my lil perfect potion. If I fail? Well, I’m definitely going to want coffee again at some point, and most likely there will be a tomorrow.
Which takes us back to this old wooden box. I have a process now, and when I change beans, I can mostly hit the cup I want in a few tries by tinkering with this or that. And now, coffee is no longer just coffee, there’s depth of appreciation there when you gon in this deep. I mean, sometimes it’s still just coffee; sometimes that’s all you want it to be. But now there are options and layers, and an awesome little ritual and process that nets you a nice dopamine hit when you accomplish your first goal of the day. Some war vet somewhere is yelling at people to wake up at 4am and make their bed so they can cross one thing off their to-do list and get in the mindset of success. No offense to that guy and his selfless contributions to our country, but, does he even make coffee?
And just so I can say that once in my life, I’ve written one of those online recipes where you have to get through an unfathomable slog of personal anecdotes before you actually get to the recipe itself, here is my chemex “recipe”, in painstaking detail.
- Run tap water into Brita Marella filtering device with Brita Maxtra filter cartridge.
- Measure 20 grams of coffee beans by putting the old plastic cup from your halloween party you now call your “coffee-buddy cup” onto a gram scale, taring it out to zero, and pouring your beans in from the airtight jar you transferred the beans into from their original packaging.
- Once measured, transfer beans from Coffee Buddy Cup into Third Reich Grinder on its manually medium setting (you guess it’s medium, but to be honest, you don’t even know if it has settings; you just loosened a weird looking metal cross inside it once and the beans came out courser), and hand-crank until forearms are cramping and you wonder how you’ve let your fitness get this bad.
- Pour water from Brita filter into measuring cup until it reaches 400ml, 50 more ml than what is typically recommended for 20 grams of beans, but to be honest yet again, if anyone ever says anything about it to you, it will be their last breath haha.
- Pour 400ml of filtered water into cheap kettle you suspect may be ruining all your hard work on a daily basis.
- Spoon grounds from Aryan Grinder into chemex filter, slowly and with intention, like you’re in a Studio Ghibli film or in an ancient society making a foreign specialty. This is why we’re here. Everything is okay in life.
- Take kettle off the boil and pour in circles over grounds until all are just soaked and bubbling up with co2 coffee gas. Wait 30 seconds but decide 15 seconds in that it’s been long enough, and continue pouring until kettle is empty.
- Return Gestapo Grinder to its shelf, along with the measuring cup and water filter.
- When coffee has completed its brewing, remove metal filter with coffee grounds and rinse immediately.
- Stick nose deep into chemex and inhale like a willing gimp hooked up to a dominatrix fart-suit. It doesn’t get better than this.
- Swirl coffee in chemex and marvel at its reddish hue that you never see in the commercial stuff. Pour into Tinkerbell mug. Blow on it. Sip it.
- Notice that this time, it tastes about 5% better than the commercial stuff when it’s black, which is like, not bad. Then pour milk until that difference in taste is virtually unnoticeable.
See you tomorrow.
Nick
Nick Denardi 