For a decade, I’ve made coffee by the pourover method. For those first nine years, I managed to make a few good cups of coffee. Without a scale, without an understanding of water to coffee ratios, without an assessment of the grounds’ coarseness, and without a measure of the water’s temperature, I’d use my judgement to make a cup of coffee.
Sometimes it tasted life coffee, other times like tea, and staggeringly, I was satisfied with these results. I was content to live on the whims of randomness, excited when I happened to brew a good cup.
Last summer, my wife and I got serious and moved to North Carolina for a dream. We had an aim, identified the target, and took our shot. Now in Asheville, we’re building our life together around that target.
In the months after our move, I began grinding our beans to a prescribed coarseness. I bought a scale. I started weighing coffee by the gram. I only poured 200 degree water onto our grounds. And I never dared deviate from the 16:1 water-to-coffee ratio.
Sure enough, every day I drink a damn good cup of coffee. Why? Because I do not want to drink shitty coffee any longer. And because life’s too short to end up with tea when you really want a medium-roast Rwandan with notes of sugar cane and honeydew.
To livin’ life we love (and want),
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
(P.S. If my first book, 32 Lessons from 8 Years Lost in Medicine, receives 50 Amazon reviews, Amazon will start recommending the book in its algorithm. (At present, the book has seven reviews, which is up last week’s count of six!). If you have a chance, I’d be grateful for a read and a review. Here’s the link.)
