I hit the number and it still tasted like shit

Hey,

We all need challenges in our lives. And in this case, we're talking about coffee.

But here's the thing about this one. I didn't want to succeed at it. A lot of times in my life, I learn a lot more from the failures, the struggles, and all that stuff. So every so often I give myself what I call a failure challenge. Not a bad cup by accident. A bad cup on purpose, with the deck stacked against me, to see what I learn on the way down.

I've had three failures that taught me three completely different things. Same word, three different lessons. That's why this is one letter instead of three.

The failure I chased

The parameters. Water at 150 degrees Fahrenheit, about 65 Celsius, way too cold to pull much out of anything. A light roast, which at that temperature makes it even harder. A fast filter, so the water rushes through. No agitation, which I don't really do anyway. A 1 to 20 ratio. Think about that. 15 grams of coffee, 300 grams of water, wide open, nothing concentrating. Two minutes and 30 seconds, and then pencils down, no matter what. The only saving grace I gave myself was a fine grind.

Why would anyone do this? Sometimes we get bored with coffee. At least me, I do. I do the same ratio, the same pour, the same techniques. We are creatures of habit, right? I am at least. But I'm always curious to see if coffee can still be tasty when I take all the easy stuff away.

So I brewed it. It choked, it choked, but it was still extracting. I nursed it with four or five pulses. At two and a half minutes I stopped it. Pencils down. We completed the challenge. We just didn't know if we passed.

The cup came out at 118 degrees. I usually drink coffee around 150. So, cheers. No real acidity, just a little bit. A little bit of a grape foody type of taste, which if you don't know already, I'm not that big a fan of. And then it just kind of dies. There's not much flavor in the cup at all.

Just from what I was tasting, I didn't even think I hit a TDS of one. My target for the challenge was 1.15 to 1.35. Then the meter cooled down and gave me its reading.

1.36.

Wow. So according to the challenge, I succeeded. I did it. I extracted a coffee that was, on paper, right where it was supposed to be.

And the coffee tastes like shit. It really does.

That's the whole thing right there. If the TDS is right and it doesn't taste good, it doesn't matter. We don't drink our coffee based off numbers. It's what's in our palate. So even though I theoretically beat the challenge, I didn't really beat the challenge, because I don't like this cup of coffee. You know?

You probably don't own a refractometer. You don't really need one. But the same trap comes in other shapes. The recipe that's supposed to be right. The ratio somebody told you to use. Whenever you try a recipe with that new cool coffee, did it actually hit the mark for you? Hitting the number feels like success. The only success is the cup tasting good to you.

And for the record, I still think it's truly possible to make a tasty cup at 150 degrees. I haven't figured out that recipe yet. We're gonna get there.

The failure I couldn't fix

Then there's the other kind. The coffee that, no matter what you do, just says nope.

You've heard about this one from me already. The medium roast Sumatran I spent an afternoon on and never cracked. So I won't retell it. Different recipes, tweaks in technique, water temperature, grind size. Even Third Wave Water couldn't rescue it. I went through a mountain of paper filters that day, counting brews until I lost track. The acidity stayed exactly where it was. No aha moment.

I sat there thinking, what did I do wrong? How did I not unlock its best side? But I'll be honest. I just didn't like it. It didn't excite me. And it pissed me off that I spent so much time trying to make it shine.

Maybe it'll work for someone else, though. If you like a lingering lemon and grapefruit acidity, or subtle toffee notes at 170 degrees, that bag might be your perfect cup. Some folks even enjoy how little the flavor evolves as the coffee cools. It wasn't mine. That coffee and I just weren't meant to be.

That used to feel like losing. It doesn't anymore. It's not working for you, and that's okay. You're allowed to be annoyed and move on. Grab a new bag and hope it sparks the joy you're looking for.

The lesson in that one was permission.

The failure that became a gift

The last one is my favorite, because it snuck up on me.

I had a brewer I'd written off. Fully written off. The cups it made had stopped doing anything for me while everything else on my counter was pulling greatness out of the same beans, so I shelved it, and I felt correct doing it. Every once in a while I'd pick it back up, get the same result, and feel correct all over again.

The failure here wasn't a bad cup. I'd already had all the bad cups. The failure was the challenge I set myself: go back to a closed case with no plan to win it. Just try things and let them not work. And they didn't work. Recipe after recipe, roast after roast, the verdict kept holding.

Until one afternoon it didn't. One combination I had no reason to believe in, a roast level I'd also mostly given up on, and the cup that came out of that shelved brewer was the best thing I'd tasted in weeks. The brewer came back. The roast came back with it. Two closed cases, reopened by one cup.

There's a longer version of this story, and one day I'll give you the full rant, because I talked a lot of trash on the way to that cup. What matters for this letter is the kind of failure it was. Nothing was broken. Nothing needed fixing. The only thing wrong was a verdict I'd stopped questioning.

That cup doesn't happen if you're chasing a win. It only happened because I went in willing to fail, poking around with no agenda, open to whatever showed up.

Knowing which one you're holding

If I'd treated all three the same way, I'd have gotten two of them wrong.

The chased failure needed me to ignore the number. I'd hit my target and the cup was still bad, and the useful move was to trust my mouth over the reading. But if I'd taken that lesson into the Sumatran, I'd have kept brewing forever, because "trust your palate" there just meant "keep going until it tastes good," and it was never going to taste good. The Sumatran needed the opposite move. Stop. Accept the answer.

And if I'd taken that lesson to the shelved brewer, I'd never have picked it up again. I'd already accepted the answer on it. Filed it, moved on, correct by my own logic. Going back to something I'd legitimately written off is the exact thing the Sumatran lesson tells you not to bother with.

So the three of them don't stack into one tidy rule, and I've stopped trying to make them.

A few weeks ago I gave you the tell I use for this: is the cup still changing when I change something? Running it against all three of these is how I found out where it stops working. It sorts the first two cleanly. It gets the shelved brewer completely wrong, because by that test I was right to shelve it, and I'd have missed the best cup of that whole stretch.

So there's a second half to it now. Every so often, go back to something you've already closed the book on. Not because you expect to be wrong. Because being wrong is where the interesting cups live.

The bad cup isn't telling you that you're bad at this. It's telling you something about the coffee, or the variable, or your own palate, if you're willing to stay curious long enough to hear it.

Your turn

Which kind was your last bad cup? The one you brought on yourself, the one that was never going to work, or the one that turned into something?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

Oaks, the Coffee Guy