The brewer I talked shit about

Hey,

See, I'd long given up on the AeroPress. It stopped making my coffees magical. A typical AeroPress coffee was muted but strong, and more importantly, it lacked personality. The Hario V60 and the other filtered pour-over devices were highlighting greatness in coffee for me. No matter the roast degree. No matter the origin. Just by that alone, that's hard to compete with.

So every time I picked up the AeroPress after my breakup with it, it showed me that I made the right decision to be done with the pretentious French Press hack. Because it is a hack. It claimed to be an espresso-like brewer with the mode of operations of an espresso machine, but it lacked the body and true intensity of what coffee usually exhibits as an espresso shot. To me, it doesn't even come close to rivaling the Moka Pot in the texture, body, and clarity of what coffee can be. And the idea, or logic, of telling the coffee world that it's like the French Press, but better? Besides the hint of pressure and it looking cool to look at, how exactly is it better than the French Press?

I tried to fall in love with the AeroPress. The reviews, the brewing competitions, the stuff people were raving about. But it stopped doing it for me. I've had one or two cups off it that were simply magical. But two out of a lot isn't a great track record. And don't get me started on the regular method, the inverted method, using different temps. And what a waste of a paper filter it uses. With the regular method, if you wait long enough, depending on your grind size, it's a glorified pour-over with how much it leaks through. Results were somewhat better with the inverted method, but you always wonder if, not being careful, you'd accidentally knock the whole science experiment over.

Fail with the AeroPress

But then I challenged myself to revisit the AeroPress. See if it still holds a special place in my coffee universe.

Don't get me wrong. I used to call myself a failure. Not because I was a loser. But on the side of trying things out, getting frustrated, learning, slowly growing, and slightly getting better. There's a Japanese word, kaizen, that I didn't even know I was doing. It was a true joy to be in that failure world of discovery and wonder. So I challenged myself to go back to that place of being. To simply put it: fail with the AeroPress.

So I gave it a go. I did a recipe. The coffee tasted bad. It tasted great on the V60. Damn. I changed the grind size. It still tasted like crap. Did inverted. Somewhat better, but the coffee had this muted, muddy taste. If you've tasted something like that, you know what I'm talking about. In other words, still bad.

Dark roast didn't do anything for me on the AeroPress. I was developing a brew method that made me use the device better, but the coffee was still blah. Fine and dandy (I don't really use that word, lol) for a coffee with creamer. But it still wasn't my jam. Medium roasted coffees tasted like dark roasted coffees. I was 0 for whatever. I experimented. I failed. I got more frustrated, and all of those past feelings came back. Absolutely nothing was working. I didn't like this side of failure.

But I dug a little deeper. I kept on trying things.

Then the light roast

Then I thought that I should try a light roasted coffee. I had nothing to lose. And quite frankly, I don't even know why I say that, because as you can see, I'm honest: I had, for the longest, not been liking light roasted coffees. They tasted like a green tomato most of the time and didn't have much unique personality. Very one dimensional, if you asked me. But I gave it a go, and almost instantly, the coffee was tasty. It was speaking to me. And even that came through the metal filter.

It didn't matter which method I used. There were some degrees of difference. But still awesome. I was shocked at what I was tasting. Light roasted coffee started to taste good to me again.

It's crazy how the world works. So you're telling me, at least for me, that I found a newfound appreciation for light roasted coffee from a coffee brewer, the AeroPress, that I had also fallen out of love with? That is some crazy stuff.

I told you a compressed version of this story a few weeks back, in the letter about the three kinds of failure. This is the breakup itself. If you want the original rant, it's on the channel.

Where it lives now

And here's the honest part. Even after figuring the AeroPress out, after understanding it a lot more, it's still one of the items I don't go back to much. I don't use it as much.

But when I do, it gives me that sense of understanding. That sense of excitement. And maybe that's the situation this device is for. More of an "oh, I haven't used this in a long time, let me see what it does to the coffee this time" type of situation.

I think that has a place in your arsenal, so to speak. Sometimes it's okay to not use something daily. Sometimes that 20% is exactly what we need.

Because this coffee thing is kinda weird. Some seasons you don't want too much gear at all. You want just the right amount, the small handful that gets out of the way and lets you make your cup. And then other times you look at the shelf and go, oh, I haven't used this in a while. Let's see how this excites me. Same person, same shelf, two completely different moods. And I don't think either one is wrong.

I think that's a maturity thing, honestly. Or maybe just something you come to later. Early on, everything wants to be daily. Every new piece of gear is auditioning for the morning routine, and if it doesn't make the rotation, it feels like a mistake. It took me a while to see that some gear isn't supposed to make the rotation. It's supposed to sit there until the day you need what only it does.

That probably makes the AeroPress a lot more fun for me. If I used it every day, I probably wouldn't appreciate it as much as I do when I do use it.

I look forward to the experiences I will create with the two. Thank you, failure. You are undefeated in the lessons you keep giving me.

Oaks, the Coffee Guy