The answer got discontinued

Hey,

The brewer I'd tell you to buy first got discontinued. I don't even think you can buy this particular brewer right now. I checked again this week. Still gone.

It's a Bonavita immersion dripper. Is it a Hario V60? No, it's not. It's a porcelain cone with a valve at the bottom, and it does immersion, where the coffee soaks before it drains, and it does pour over, and basically any recipe you throw at it. And I like it a lot.

Now, here's the thing. The reason I want to talk about this one, even though you can't buy it, is because there's other ones that are like it. If you can get something similar, a Hario Switch, a Clever Dripper, that'll be right for you in many different ways. So the recommendation didn't really die. But it did make me slow down and ask the question underneath the recommendation: why do we get something like this? What is our intent in coffee? Why do we think it's important to get the right type of gear in the first place?

A couple weeks ago I told you I own four microphones I don't need, and that letter was about starting with the objective. This letter is about what that actually looks like with a brewer in your hands. Because it's one thing to nod at the idea. It's another thing to turn the thing over and look.

Let me walk you through mine, the way I would if you were standing in my kitchen.

Look at the ridges. Understand that they probably have some type of effect on the coffee. They hold the paper off the wall so the water has somewhere to go. Look at the filter. Can you use fast filters with this brewer? Can you use regular filters? Is it a light roasted coffee brewer or dark or medium, whatever people may say about coffee brewers? Think about that. Think about the way that you actually drink coffee.

Look at this nozzle right here. You see how small this nozzle is? This hole is very small. How does that affect the taste and the drawdown of the coffee? Water leaves slower. Contact time stretches. And honestly, that's one thing I did like about this one. Compared to the Hario Switch and brewers like that, that very small hole let the coffee extract a little bit longer. Those are some of the things we have to think about beyond just it looking cool.

Then turn it around. Look at how well built it actually is. Because remember, you're gonna be using this all the time. So imagine you going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I've had this for many years. I haven't used it every day, but it gives you the peace of mind that it's not going to break. Look at the pieces on it. There's a lot of metal screws. This is probably the only brewer I have with metal screws, where you can take the whole thing apart, to clean it, I guess, to do whatever you need to.

Check the filters. Check the nozzle. See what's on the market for this actual brewer as it comes to filters. And I'll be honest with you, the filters were the part I didn't care for. It takes a trapezoidal type of filter, and I'm not too big of a fan of those. That's a real thing to know before you buy, because you're signing up for that filter every single morning.

Then there's the weight of it. This brewer is actually pretty heavy. But the flip side is it can hold a lot more than the Hario Switch and brewers in that class. So it's a trade. Heavier in the hand, more coffee in the cone. Neither one is right or wrong. It depends on how you brew and how much you brew.

And with all that said, this brewer is awesome because you can do immersion brew, you can do pour over, all different types of recipes that you want to.

None of that came off the product page. The box tells you the capacity and the material, and if they're feeling generous, "makes a clean, balanced cup," which every brewer ever sold has claimed. The rest you find out by looking.

Because that's really where we're getting at.

You can see back here, there's a Mr. Coffee machine. You can use a simple device like that. You put the coffee in and you move on with your merry-go-way. But probably you want something more. Or somebody's telling you that you need this particular gear for whatever reason.

And again, it still comes back to this. It still comes back to this beverage right here. Can you make a decent cup of coffee with your coffee brewer? What is your objective? What's the reason why you're really doing this?

Because we can't lose sight in this. I lose sight in coffee quite a bit. I love coffee gear. I love gear in general. And once you start getting into this game of coffee making, or whatever your vice may be, you start to understand the importance of gear, of accessories and all that good stuff. And as we get closer to understanding these particular gears, I think we get even closer to understanding the person that we are. Why we like what we like. Why we brew the coffee the way we brew the coffee.

So try not to go too much into the rabbit hole of finding the perfect right gear. Probably the right gear is right in front of us.

Because at times I lose sight into it, to the point where I have to come back to just trying to drink this cup of coffee for what it is. I'm just trying to enjoy it. And if I can get that same experience from this brewer, from an espresso machine, from a Hario V60, from a French press, from a moka pot, it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, we're just trying to make that cup of coffee. We have to understand our gear, because once we let the gear get out of our way, it's all about enjoying the coffee, right?

That's the way I look at it. I'm gonna try to do that as much as I can.

But what about you? What kind of things do you go through when you're selecting your coffee gear? Are you still buying new gear? Why do you do that? Is it just to see if there's gonna be a different taste profile with this particular gear? Or you just wanna get it, which is perfectly fine too. Remember, this is your journey. This is just me kinda talking.

Hit reply and tell me. I read every reply.

Talk soon,

Oaks, the Coffee Guy