There’s been a healthy trend toward minimalism in a lot of areas lately, and brewing is not exempt. In fact, specialty coffee enthusiasts are probably more welcome than most to simplify our morning routine when many of us are over-worked, over-tired and feel this sometimes most poignantly first thing in the morning. I’m all for the trend and think it should be embraced both within specialty coffee and other aspects of modern life. There’s a fine line however between embracing simplicity and rejecting experimentation. The best cups of coffee will always be reserved for those that tinker and strive to pander to the particular needs of whatever beans they are working with.
This isn’t a piece about how you should be brewing or a plug for my admittedly slightly faffy recipes. Rather I’d like to share some tips stemming out of personal experience for those that are interested in striking a livable balance between simplicity and regular experimentation.
My starting point with specialty coffee was with the Aeropress. While the process can be relatively simple, there is an inherent amount of faffiness to Aeropress brewing. Just look at how many recipes are out there! Awards have been given to those making slight creative modifications to timing, stirring, filtering, and even device orientation. This was the first type of brewing I learned, and I noticed early on that slight changes or little mistakes in timing really did affect the taste of my brews. I became fastidious about my planning and documentation for brew techniques to learn how to adapt different aspects that seemed to change brew outcomes. I actually moved away from Aeropress brewing because I found it to be too unforgiving – too hard for me to dial in consistently. I did, however, maintain my habits of note-taking and adjusting only single variables at a time when trying to adapt brewing techniques. From the beginning, I did this all on my phone, but I moved from a simple note taking app to a brew-timer app. The brew timer app first allows for a library of user-based brew options across a multitude of different brewers. These are all built to be dose adjustable just like any recipe app or website, and you can clone recipes to personalize them to trim away some of the labor of building a recipe from scratch. When it’s time for that bleary-eyed brew, I don’t need to even bother with my memory functions (let that Papez circuit rest just a little longer). Also, I certainly am not in the mood for math, so I just let the app tell me the net weights I am aiming for during each stage of my brew. I simply select the brew I want to use and then timers begin with moving bars I can follow if I’m feeling especially engaged to actually match the exact recommended tempo of my pours. I become submissive and follow the steps and listen for the timer beeps. Here’s the cool thing though. When doing it this way, it really doesn’t matter that much if it’s 4 steps or 12 steps. Before 5 minutes are over, either way, I’ve just marched through what I was told to do and I’m done. It doesn’t matter if it’s a recipe I’ve been doing all week or one I haven’t used in months. I prefer this to any of the timer functions built into fancy scales, and this always travels with me and doesn’t have a learning curve if I get a new scale. Once I’ve had my coffee, if I’m lucky enough to have a couple minutes, I might go back to the recipe and make some small changes in it in preparation for tomorrow’s brew. For me this process makes trying modifications or experimenting with new recipes so much less intimidating and onerous. Another thing that’s worked well for me on a number of levels is doing some planning ahead. I’m not one to come down to my brewing station, rub my hands together and start pondering what the heck I’m going to do this morning. If I’m caught unprepared, I’m headed straight to the automatic espresso machine and just pushing the on button if it gets to that point. Personally, I like to think about what beans I have on hand and what I’m going to try tomorrow just as I’m going to bed. This helps clear my mind and places a focus on pleasant thoughts. It also relaxes me a bit to know that I’ve got a plan going into the next day – even if that plan is nothing more than how I’m making coffee. Finally, mentally reviewing the outlined steps of a coffee brew is frankly pretty dry stuff, and going over this in my head a couple of times is downright soporific.

What do you do to keep things simple but still leave room for growth and experimentation with your brewing? Do you find yourself more and more getting into the weeds or parsing things down?

TLDR; New and/or complex brewing techniques can be exciting and diversify your available arsenal. Keeping things very organized can let you maintain a healthy simplicity but also allow you to branch out and easily try modifications or new recipes.

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