Tag: mistakes

Context

• Early morning, second cup of the day.
• Sparkling water with apple cider vinegar and electrolytes prep the pallette.

Plan

Easy Immersion with a 16 g dose and ~256 g target water, repeating prior August brews while testing two variables: frozen beans and simulated RDT.

Technique notes

• Grounds weighed before pre-warming the Switch (noticed late).
• Grounds transferred to the unicorn espresso cup to preserve the measured dose.
• Some fines likely entered the filter during pre-warm, tinting the rinse.
• Realization mid-process: pre-warm pour was not clockwise, contrary to usual habit.
• Kettle heat-management experiment: pre-warm water poured into the gooseneck kettle to retain heat, reducing available brew water.
• Patagonia mug washed between cups to reduce residual oils.
• Dose correction sequence: grounds clung to unicorn mug (~15.9 g), retained grounds in grinder catchment, over-adjusted to ~16.2 g, excess removed back to 16.0 g.
• Chronic variability acknowledged RDT introduces moisture, which gets weighed with the grounds, adding an indestinct amount of extra mass.

Brew notes (timed)

• Scale not properly zeroed at pour start.
• At ~40 s, apparent reading of ~5 g caused confusion.
• Improvised pour of ~60 g without knowing true cumulative total.
• Total brew water unknown.
• Drawdown complete at 3:40.
• Precision effectively abandoned mid-brew, attempt made to allow the immersion to continue without agitation, nonetheless.

Observations

• Dry aroma (grounds): spicy, slightly bitter; improved clarity vs prior brews, still not expressing advertised sweetness or fruit.
• Visual: recurring milky-looking film during pour, consistent with prior August cups; bed coloration appeared uneven, possibly related.
• First sip: clearly bitter, more than preferred.
• Second sip: fleeting soapy note with the coffee still present underneath.
• Third sip: fuller body; aftertaste indistinct, muddy rather than expressive.
• Language note: spurl — a personal tasting word for the combined sensation of sour, slightly turning cream and bitter coffee; not clean acidity, not rot; a thin, sharp, spoilage-adjacent edge riding on bitterness.
• Lid-off sipping subtly shifted how the coffee entered the mouth.
• With cream: cream slightly sour/beginning to turn; added funk compounded bitterness into spurl.
• Overall: plain, muddy, unremarkable; not bad, but dulled.

Reflection

This cup is a study in irony. No multitasking or distraction; attention held and still more mistakes than in a while. It suggests attention alone is not enough. Presence without rhythm can still fragment. The bitterness likely came from a stack of small imprecisions rather than any single variable. The coffee does not punish those slips; it simply becomes ordinary. That ordinariness is instructive. If there are no bad cuts now and then, what do good cuts mean? Presence can hold even with a botched, muddy cup, letting it remind what steadiness feels like when it returns.

[ cup2 · cream · mistakes ]