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Everyday Beans Podcast - Mostly About Coffee and Other Stuff

Oaks, the coffee guy

It's about coffee, food, life and what other randomness I feel that'll be helpful to the common coffee drinker or to anyone who likes to be entertained by a stranger, briefly.

When I have more to say than fits in an episode, it goes in the newsletter. It Smells Better Than it Taste, at itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com

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Avg 16 min
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S1 · E326
Thursday · 16 min
Ground Coffee and the Control We Think We Need
Send us Fan Mail Someone knows I love coffee, so they buy me coffee. And it's ground. That's where this one starts, and it started for real: I sent my Olympia Cremina off to a shop in Seattle to be repaired, and when the machine came back there was a bag of coffee in the box. Already ground. Super dark. I brewed it once and that was about the end of it. I didn't think about it again until now. So I asked the people who comment on the channel and in the community posts what they would do if somebody handed them ground coffee. The answers were hilarious, and they were all the same answer wearing different hats. Meat rub. French press. Smoke. Put it in the garden. One or two said they might try it, if it felt like a challenge. Nobody was psyched. Nobody sounded hopeful about what that coffee could actually be. I butted in and said, at least brew it once. What I keep turning over is why something that small lands that hard, and I think it's because the grind is the first real introduction to control. Well, the second, because you didn't pick the beans either. You didn't pick the roast degree or the country or any of the history the roaster would have told you. Now somebody has decided the grind for you too, and it wasn't ground out of your grinder. Meanwhile every other lever is still sitting right there. Temperature. Swirl, center, outer. Water choice. Which brewer you reach for. We have all of that, and the grind still throws us off. It throws me off. I want whole beans so I can pick from my 19 grinders and pull what I think is best out of that coffee. The coffee itself, for the record, was a Brazilian roasted about a year ago, ground on the EK43 at 8, a medium roast. It didn't matter. I could have told those people it was a Geisha, picked and processed by the best roaster in the world, grown slow at 3,000 meters, and it still wouldn't have mattered. It was tainted from the beginning, because it was ground. So the suggestion is small. If somebody was thinking about you and gave you coffee, just make a cup. It might still be a bad cup. Taste it for what it is. Run a dumb recipe you got off ChatGPT. Try it once, at least. If it's good, awesome. If it's crap, you already expected that, and the meat rub and the garden are still there tomorrow. And I'll be honest about my own version of this, because I'm not standing outside it. I'm on the Moccamaster this week, so I'm not really brewing, I'm loading it and walking away. I still have the grind, I can still change the brewer, and there's still a disconnect. I took some of the control away from myself and it messes with my head. There isn't much in life we get to control start to finish. Making a cup of coffee is one of the few, which is why I don't really call it specialty coffee, I call it a ritual. So I respect everybody who answered. It's your coffee. You don't have to drink what somebody gave you, even if it's good. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E309
Tuesday · 16 min
The Point of Water Is to Stop Thinking About It
Send us Fan Mail Grinder, check. Brewer, check. Water? For years, that was the one box I never actually checked. In this episode I walk through my whole water journey in coffee, tap water, then refrigerated water, then mineral packets, then dropping them when I stopped noticing a difference, then coming back years later with a TDS meter and a better palate. I talk about the moment my cup turned metallic and heavy, what the PPM readings told me, and why diluting a packet past the box directions was my first real fix. The rest of this episode is about the last five percent. I break down the acidic water profile and the sweet water profile I built, why the sweet one dulled my coffee, why the acidic one eventually took over the cup, and how a fifty fifty split finally let the coffee sound like itself. You will learn the simple spring water taste test that gets you most of the way there, why water deserves a fraction of the attention we give grinders and brewers, and how to sequence water, grinder, and brewer so each one gets solved and then goes quiet. The goal is not to master water. It is to finish water so you can go back to the coffee. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E316
November 5 · 17 min
Verify Before You Trust Any Coffee Gear
Send us Fan Mail I get honest in this one about a mistake I made with my own gear, and what it taught me about testing everything in coffee instead of just trusting what I'm told. I walk through the moment I found a hidden calibration setting on my kettle that fixed a temperature swing I had been blaming the kettle for, and why being "right" about what I observed wasn't the same as being right about the cause. From there I get into why every claim about a brewer, whether it's a Hario V60 or a flatbed brewer like the April Brewer, needs to be tested against your own palate instead of taken at face value. I talk through my own head to head testing between conical and flatbed brewers, what I found when I started comparing brewer geometry side by side, and where the line sits between useful testing and paralyzing yourself with over analysis. If you want a real, first person framework for building trust in your own coffee palate instead of borrowing someone else's, this episode will give you one. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E331
November 3 · 13 min
Your Coffee Is Telling You Something. Listen.
Send us Fan Mail Your coffee is telling you something, and most of the time it's only asking about a couple of things. Let's be real: we don't change that much. Temperature, grind size, maybe the brewer if you've got a few. I saw a post on Reddit from someone who loved a coffee at a café and couldn't get it back at home, so I ran my own version with a Kenyan. Day one at 200°F on a V60 was sharp, with a lingering grapefruit taste I don't like. A coarser grind made it juicier. A lower temperature with the grind in between made it jammier and better, and moving it to the Kalita Wave made it better still. I also tell the story of a dark roast where a 45 second to a minute bloom reminded me of a trick I'd known and forgotten, and I walk through the short list I actually work with: brewer, water, filter, temperature, grind. Past that, the bloom timings, the swirls, the Melodrip and the boosters start to cloud it. So what are you tasting, and do you like it? What's your coffee telling you to change? Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E313
October 29 · 15 min
Why You Get Tired of Your Favorite Coffee
Send us Fan Mail I ran out of medium roast, and for two straight weeks I only had dark roast to drink. I've always said medium and dark are my favorite roasts to actually sit down and enjoy, so I figured this would be easy. It wasn't. By the end of week two, every dark roast I owned, a Kenyan, a Nicaraguan, and my own Outcast blend, started tasting exactly the same: sweet, low acidity, no matter what brewer, grinder, or water profile I threw at it. In this episode, I talk through what it actually feels like to get palate-fatigued on a coffee you genuinely love, and why that fatigue isn't a flaw in the coffee. It's just what happens when you spend enough time with anything. I also tell the story of the Costa Rican black honey that first taught me how to actually taste sweetness, chocolate, fruit, layered, distinct sweetness, not just "coffee is sweet" as a throwaway description. You'll learn why I used to hate small bag sizes and changed my mind, why hitting a "breaking point" with a coffee is actually the moment worth chasing rather than avoiding, and a few concrete things to try (grind size, filter speed, water profile) the next time a coffee starts feeling flat to you. If you've ever gotten bored of a coffee you swore you loved, this one's for you. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E322
October 27 · 29 min
That's a Person Roasting Your Coffee
Send us Fan Mail Every batch starts the same. Beans, heat, time. I don't start the same, and the beans were never really the same either. This episode is about the part of coffee we almost never talk about, which is the person doing the roasting. I roast, so I can say this from the inside: a roaster is a human being first, with bills and illnesses and a family, wondering whether this thing is even a real profession, and geeking out over beans anyway. I walk you through what actually happens to a bag before it reaches you. The green sitting in a warehouse for months, losing time. The importer's notes and scores. The protocol and the profile and the charts. And then the ordinary human weather on top of it, which is that some days the machine is dirty, some days there is more chaff than there should be, and some days the person's attitude is shot. I tell you the thing roasters mostly do not say out loud, which is that I have gone too fast on a roast and sold that coffee to people anyway, and I am not unique in that. Then I get into the money, because the money explains a lot of the behaviour. What brisket did to barbecue is happening to coffee right now. Green that was a dollar eighty a pound is close to five. A twenty five dollar bag is not the profit you think it is. And I close on the coffee that taught me all of this, a Colombian from a Seattle roaster that was magic the first time and muted the second, and how long it took me to stop deciding he had failed me. What I want out of this one is small and it is not a pass. Keep your honesty about what is in your cup. Just leave a little room for the person who put it there. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E324
October 22 · 14 min
The Coffee Skill Nobody Tells You About
Send us Fan Mail In this episode I walk through what I consider A Tier coffee skills going into 2026, and the honest answer is that they are less about technique than about permission. Nothing was wrong with the coffee I brewed. I changed it anyway. That single move, changing something on purpose when nothing is broken, is the thing that separates a person who follows a recipe from a person who actually understands their coffee. I start with the dictionary definition of play, decide it is useless, and land somewhere better: play has no real obligation and no real goals, and the rules are yours to set. From there I get specific. Bloom is not a set time or just hot water, and I talk about why I stopped treating 30 seconds as a rule, what cold blooming has done to sweetness in my cups, and why I dropped from a 50 gram bloom to about 30. Then agitation, which is much bigger than the spoon you keep beside the brewer. I explain what a refractometer showed me about my own stirring, and why pour height, raindrop pours and pulse count are all agitation too. You will learn how to read your bloom instead of timing it, how to treat agitation as a lever rather than a habit, and why changing the temperature on a cup that is already excellent teaches you more than fixing a bad one ever will. I also get into what playing basketball on a half court as a kid taught me about all of this, and why pourover gives you more reps than almost any other thing worth being good at. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E333
October 20 · 11 min
Why Is Everyone Obsessed With Going Finer?
Send us Fan Mail Finer has become the go-to answer to everything in coffee lately, especially for light roast, and it bugs me, partly because it's right. A couple of months ago, experimenting with light roasts, every step finer made the coffee more interesting, and I started tasting parts of the acidity I'd never gotten from the coarser grind. Even a dark roast can take a finer grind if you use a faster paper filter. But I'm a medium to dark roast person, and those coffees are often more expressive on the coarser side. Squeeze every bit out of them and they lose their character. Then the OXO Rapid Brewer kept leaking on me until somebody told me to go finer, a 2 on the Fellow Ode, and it barely leaked and the coffee was tasty. So finer works. My problem is when it's the only answer. Go finer and you reach for a faster filter, then a Melodrip or a booster, then hotter water, and after a while different coffees can start tasting the same. I'm trying to understand the logic: is it the tasting notes on the bag, or a bit of a flex, one step closer to espresso? I know why I pull the levers I pull, and I go finer when the brewer needs it or when I'm bored and want to see if it moves the needle. Know why you're using your tools. And tell me: do you crave the fineness of your coffee? Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E332
October 15 · 15 min
I Thought Something Was Wrong With Me
Send us Fan Mail I walked away from my wife's dark roast, and years later I've come to realize why it's my preference now. This one's about the word fight. I started on her dark roast in a Mr. Coffee, went down the origins and roast degrees rabbit hole, landed on light roast and a Hario V60, and geeked out on acidity for years. Then, around four years ago, the coffees started to get flat. I roasted every profile I could think of, tried ratios, blamed my tap water, my filters and my brewer, and wondered if I was falling out of love with coffee. A medium roast opened it back up. Now I'm in a dark roast phase, and what still wakes me up is a washed African or Colombian where the acidity comes in just enough and then it gets sweet again. If a coffee doesn't taste the way it used to, it could be old beans, a roaster who tried a different profile, a bad crop, your water, or a slow paper filter. More than anything, it could be you fighting your own palate, and letting people who aren't in the room tell you how to enjoy coffee. So try a different coffee: a dark roast from the store, a medium roast that's a little more developed. Ask yourself why you like it or don't, and write it down. Your window shifts, the same way steak, Brussels sprouts and brisket have for me. Let your palate talk to you. It won't lie to you. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E265
October 13 · 19 min
Why Can't We Just Brew a Good Cup With a Basic Recipe? This is the Reason Why.
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I tackle a question that every coffee brewer has faced at some point — why doesn't following someone else's recipe actually work? I break down the core reason: recipes are personal. They're built around the creator's palate, their water chemistry, their preferred roast levels, and their brewing habits — none of which are fully disclosed when they hand you a step-by-step guide. I share how I spent a long time blindly following recipes, stripping myself of my own preferences in pursuit of someone else's "perfect cup," and why that approach was setting me up to fail every single time. I draw a comparison to the world of cooking, referencing how understanding foundational flavor principles — rather than memorizing recipes — is what actually empowers you in the kitchen. Coffee is no different. I encourage listeners to stop outsourcing their coffee experience to someone else and start asking the real questions: What water temperature brings out the flavors I enjoy? Does my brewer shape how acidic my cup tastes? What roast profile actually matches my palate? By the end of this episode, you'll walk away understanding why your recipe keeps falling short — and more importantly, what you should be doing instead to brew a cup of coffee that's genuinely yours. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E302
October 8 · 16 min
Why You Can't Be Taught Coffee
Send us Fan Mail In this episode I dig into a distinction I think most coffee content skips right over: the difference between being taught coffee and actually learning it. I can hand you a recipe, but I can't hand you the palate that knows when to break it. I walk through a recent cup, a dark roasted Nicaraguan that kept lingering with a fruity, tannin-heavy finish I personally don't enjoy. My palate told me it was over-extracted before I ever touched a refractometer, and when I ran the TDS for fun it came back right in range. The point isn't the number. The point is that it took me years of brewing to trust what my own mouth was telling me, and no recipe written by someone else's palate was ever going to get me there on its own. I also open up about my own path, the years I spent using my V60 almost blindly, running the same recipe and only nudging the temperature, wondering if the bright, acidic light roasts I kept brewing were what I was "supposed" to like. I talk about going darker against the voices telling me I was doing it wrong, discovering more sweetness, falling for African dark roasts, and learning what flat-bottom drippers, different filters, and different waters actually did to my cup. If you've ever followed a recipe to the letter and felt frustrated that your cup didn't match the promise, this one is for you. You'll learn why getting taught is genuinely useful for speeding up the journey, why it can never be the finish line, and how to start tailoring coffee to your own taste the same way you already doctor a recipe in the kitchen. You can't be taught coffee. You can learn it, and that part is up to you. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E329
October 6 · 16 min
Why Water Chemistry Advice Online Is All Over the Place
Send us Fan Mail I can't hand you my water, and nobody else can either. My tap tested at 273 ppm the other day. Yours might be 150, or 100 if you're lucky, and even then neither of us knows what minerals are actually in it. So when you go looking online for the right water, you get one opinion, then another, then another, and you end up more confused than when you started. What water did they start with? What kind of coffee do they like? Are they trying to sell you something? Here's where I've landed. Pick one voice you trust, understand why they do what they do, and start with the water you already have. A $10 TDS meter will open your eyes. Then let your palate take over, the same way mine pulled me toward more developed coffees while everyone around me was chasing light roasts. I walk through my own path, from tap to Third Wave Water to blending my own sweet and acidic profiles, and why once water's figured out, that's where the work gets fun. Let me know what you think. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E320
October 1 · 19 min
Inside a Brewers Cup Coffee Recipe
Send us Fan Mail I just watched a World Brewers Cup recipe from a competitor named Simon Gauteren, and it sent me down a rabbit hole I had to record. In this episode I break down his brewing recipe step by step: an immersion percolation method that intentionally throws away roughly thirty percent of the finished coffee to chase clarity for the judges. I walk through why competitors go to these lengths, what "playing God" with a coffee actually looks like when you control every variable from roast to grind to water, and what happened when I tried the recipe myself. But this episode is really about something bigger than one recipe. I get into why competition brewing exists in its own world, separate from the coffee you and I make every day, and why I think specialty coffee doesn't need this level of engineering to taste great. I share why I'm drawn to simple, fast pour over instead of long, tedious recipes, what instant gratification has to do with how I brew, and I turn the question back to you: would you actually make this recipe every day, or is it just entertainment? If you've ever wondered what really separates a competition cup from your everyday cup, this one's for you. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E293
September 29 · 16 min
Start Here, Stop Here: The K-Ultra Grinder
Send us Fan Mail I own seven grinders, and in this episode I do something I almost never do: I recommend just one. The 1Zpresso K-Ultra has been in my rotation for the past four or five months, and after putting it through its paces I've landed on a strong opinion. It is not the single best grinder I own on every metric, but it is the most versatile, and for most people that matters more. I walk through why it lets you brew essentially any cup you want, from pour over at around six clicks to French press near six and a half, all the way down to a no-choke espresso shot on my Olympia Cremina. I talk about the build, the magnetic catch can, the 130-click adjustment system, and the external dial that lets you see exactly where you are instead of second-guessing yourself. The bigger idea here is what a grinder this capable actually frees you to do. When you trust that the grinder is not the weak link, you stop obsessing over it and start paying attention to your water, your pouring technique, and your brewer. By listening, you will learn how I think about grinder versatility versus outright clarity, how to read grind settings across brew methods, and why the price stops mattering once a tool quietly gets out of your way. If you are starting out and curious, or you have been chasing gear for years, this is my honest case for the one grinder you could start with and comfortably stop at. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E325
September 24 · 14 min
I Still Don't Like Light Roast. I Keep Coming Back.
Send us Fan Mail I've spent years with light roast drinking it, roasting it myself, taking it as light as I can control and I still haven't decided that I like it. That's the honest starting point of this one. What keeps pulling me back isn't sweetness, even though I'm quietly still hoping to find it. It's the acidity, and specifically whether it has layers: whether it shows up as blackberry and then turns into something like crisp apple and finishes as a Meyer lemon, whether it lingers, whether it changes as the cup cools. That's interesting enough to keep me making cups of something I'm not sure I enjoy. I'm in a strange position to be saying this. I roast coffee. I've run light roast every way I know how my profiles, other people's profiles, fast starts, extended development, nine and ten minute first cracks. So I know what I can pull out of a lightly roasted coffee, and I still often don't love the result. For a long time I read that as a failure of mine. This episode is me deciding it isn't. The part I'd most want you to take is the thing I wrote down before I sat down: the gift of not liking something is that you can finally be honest and objective about why. When a coffee is amazing, it talks to me and I stop asking questions rose-colored glasses. When a coffee doesn't move me, I see it clean. I can name what's happening. That clarity is worth having, and it's why going on a ride with a category you don't love is worth doing at all. It's not about tricking yourself into enjoying it. It's about being straight with yourself, so that when you come back to what you do love, you can say why. And I'm still curious about you. Where does the sweetness arrive for you in a light roast at the tail end, as something chocolatey? Is the acidity the whole reason you're there, or is it the combination? Somebody out there is tasting things in the same cup I'm not tasting, with a recipe that looks simple, and I want to understand that more than I want to understand the coffee. You have to want to go on the ride even with the coffees you didn't choose because what you learn along the way is mostly about yourself. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E246
September 22 · 15 min
It Smells Better Than It Tastes: A Coffee Story
Send us Fan Mail In this deeply personal episode, I share something I've rarely discussed publicly—a book I wrote over a decade ago titled "It Smells Better Than It Tastes." While coffee inspired this work, it's really a metaphor for life itself. I talk about the writing process, how I immersed myself in the character of Mark—a person in their late twenties navigating identity, self-discovery, and choosing to live authentically. The book is somewhat erotic and edgy, designed to make you examine yourself as you read. I explain how coffee became the linchpin that held the story together, much like how it centers my own life. Beyond the book, I explore how coffee serves as my daily ritual for staying grounded and present. I discuss the parallels between brewing coffee and navigating life's challenges—how sometimes things don't turn out as expected, how we troubleshoot and adjust, and how this process teaches us about ourselves. Listeners will learn about using coffee as a tool for mindfulness and self-reflection, understanding that our passions can be catalysts for deeper personal growth. I'm offering a free copy of the book to anyone interested, and I invite you to think about what "it smells better than it tastes" means in your own life and coffee journey. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E308
September 17 · 17 min
5 Coffee Rules That Don't Hold Up
Send us Fan Mail There are a lot of rules in coffee, and after years of brewing and roasting I have quietly stopped trusting a few of them. In this episode I walk through the ones that sit at the bottom of my list: the strict 30 second bloom, the fixation on hitting exactly 30 grams of coffee, the 200 degree Fahrenheit water rule, the advice to buy the most expensive grinder first, and the habit of brewing with whatever recipe came printed in the box with your brewer. None of these are wrong. What I take issue with is the way we treat them, like a line you cannot cross instead of a starting point you are free to move. What I keep coming back to is that coffee is far more forgiving than we give it credit for. I throw beans into a roaster near 400 degrees Fahrenheit, they take 7 to 10 minutes to hit first crack, and then I pour 200 degree water over them. That bean has been through a lot before it ever reaches your cup. Listening to this, you will learn why the bloom matters more as a concept than as a stopwatch number, how to use water temperature as an actual flavor tool instead of a fixed setting, why starting cheap on a grinder can be the smarter move while your palate is still developing, and how to read a manufacturer recipe critically instead of following it blindly. I also share a story from my old photography days about a camera I almost replaced too early, and what maxing out a piece of gear really teaches you. If you want to stop second guessing your brew and start trusting your own palate, this one is for you. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E323
September 15 · 14 min
Three Coffee Skills, and None of Them Are Gear
Send us Fan Mail There are three coffee skills I'd call foundational, and none of them are gear. That's the whole episode. Every list like this pivots to a grinder or a kettle inside thirty seconds, and I wanted to say the other thing out loud: the S Tier is the part you can't buy. The first one is your palate, and developing it is less exotic than it sounds. Drink a lot of coffee. Eat a lot of food. Taste the fruit, smell the flowers, see if what the bag says is actually in the cup for you. Write things down, because you will not remember. The second is reading the cup visually, which is watching the bed and the drawdown and letting them give you a hypothesis before your mouth confirms it. I tell the story of a white honey Ethiopian with the slowest drawdown I've seen in a long time, and how long I spent assuming something was wrong with me or my water before I accepted that it was just the way that coffee is. The third is water awareness, and I mean awareness, not a recipe. Before any of the chemistry, just find out what you're brewing with. A ten dollar TDS meter, then tap against fridge against distilled against spring, and pay attention to what changes. Your cup is more than ninety eight percent water, so it's strange how rarely we look at it. I close on why I think these three together make you a complete coffee person, which is that once you can taste, read and know your water, nobody can hand you a recipe and tell you what your coffee should be. And the most interesting thing I've done in the last month and a half is watch other people arrive at their own answers without any of my help at all. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E310
September 10 · 17 min
What Your Coffee Order Says About You
Send us Fan Mail I don't go to cafes very often, but when I do, I order the same two things almost every time: a black drip coffee and a macchiato. In this episode, I dig into why I stick to those two drinks even though I love coffee and get genuinely excited by every menu I see. I talk about judging cafe coffee against my own brewing at home, why cafe menus are curated and limited on purpose, and what it means when a shop only really shows you who they are through a small handful of drinks. I also turn the question on myself, and on you. What does your regular order actually say about what you want from coffee? I get into the insecurity that comes with ordering at an unfamiliar counter, why I'm drawn to the people and the atmosphere as much as the drink itself, and why I can't seem to turn off the analysis even when I want to just be present. If you've ever wondered why you always order the same thing, or felt a little intimidated walking into a specialty cafe, this episode is for you. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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S1 · E321
September 8 · 17 min
Same Cup, Two Answers, Both of Them True
Send us Fan Mail Nutty and chocolatey. That is what this Brazilian is to me, and I spent a long time quietly assuming that anybody who tasted something else in the same cup had it wrong. I do not think that anymore, and this episode is me working out why. I talk about the years I spent on light roast, why I moved to medium and dark, and why I still roast lightly roasted coffees to see what is in them. I talk about treating a coffee like something to conquer, and about the mornings it wins and I am still thinking about it at dinner. Somewhere in there I stopped hearing a different tasting note as a mistake and started hearing it as information about the person. What you will get out of listening is a different way to hold your own palate. I make the case that your palate is not a piece of equipment somebody handed you with the bag. It is built out of everything you have tasted, everything you gave up on, and the food that was around you growing up, which is why one person reaches for baker's chocolate and I reach for dark chocolate on the same cup, and why my descriptors for acidity came out of eating apples with my son. I get into when calibration genuinely matters, why it is not the same thing as being right, and the morning my wife called a coffee extremely fruity through a cup of creamer, which is the moment that took the last of my certainty away. If you have ever second-guessed yourself out loud because your note did not match the bag, this one is for you. Support the show Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com
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