Everyday Beans Podcast - Mostly About Coffee and Other Stuff

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com

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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.

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Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com

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For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com

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I know my brew ratio down to the gram, but for the longest time I never thought twice about my water's PPM. In this episode I walk through my own slow, sometimes stubborn journey toward actually understanding my water, why I ignored it for so long, and what changed once I finally picked up a ten dollar TDS meter.

I talk about the difference water chemistry makes compared to gear, brewers, and even the coffee itself, why tap water quietly wrecks more cups than we realize, and how I went from testing my water at 155 to 160 PPM with Third Wave Water down to my current sweet spot around 80 PPM using my own mineral profile mix. You'll hear how I dialed in that number through trial, error, and a lot of unglamorous testing, plus a couple of analogies that explain why water gets ignored in coffee content even though it might be the most important variable of all. If your coffee has been inconsistent and you can't figure out why, this one might be the missing piece.

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