05:32 bean log 2026-02-03
First brew with purified water
Preparation
- Early morning, pre-dawn. BBC on the radio. A few house discussions about current events.
“Why smell coffee when you can smell fresh coffee grounds?” — 🦄
Listening
Krishna Das’s Flow of Grace
Brew Notes
- First time using purified water rather than tap.
- Boiled ~300 g purified water to account for preheat losses.
- Preheated mug, Switch, and filter thoroughly.
- Poured to 256.5 g by 1’15”.
- Starting with ~300 g left the kettle ~¼ full for the second pour, which worked perfectly for 256.5 g water.
- A thinner, calmer center pour resulted from having the gooseneck at ~¼ full.
- Made it easier to minimize agitation and avoid splashing in immersion portion of brew
- Spent bed: extremely even, no visible channeling.
Timings
- 0:00 — immersion start.
- 1:15 — final pour completed at 256.5 g.
- ~2:30 — switch opened (per Easy Immersion).
- ~3:45 — drawdown visually complete.
Experience
Observations
Lifting the lid of my patagonia mug to sniff to sniff the dark liquid, berries and cinnamon are barely there.
Lid back on for sips 1-3: swirl of flavor; chocolate, yes, with curls of pan-seared dandelion root bitterness.
Acidity versus bitterness, what’s the difference? What is the sensation? There’s more bitterness here for me to speak of than acidity. Supposedly acidity is front of the tongue and bitterness is in the back.
ch’gippity says:
back / throat
(lingering bitterness,
drying sensations)
▲
|
sides ←─── center ───→ sides
(acidity snap, (acidity snap,
salivation) salivation)
|
▼
tip of tongue
(sweetness,
initial impression)
Perhaps the mind’s preparation for the cup matters more than the water’s purity.
It’s perhaps more aromatic than with tap water, is that possible?
When I sip, if I pull up toward the roof of my mouth, I get reminders of off-ramps to other flavors.
Then there’s a dark downward facing arrow as the flavor changes.
The taste here reminds me of mother’s beans, almost like a flavor. Accident?
Good even to the end of the cup.
Learnings
When using purified water, measure 300g, which is just right for a 1:16 256g brew.
Whether it’s a placebo effect or not, purified water does help with the clarity of the tasting.
Intentionally under-filling the gooseneck for the second pour helps reduce agitation.
Using ChatGPT Codex to convert audio notes into a draft post before transitioning to laptop to pull up and apply the draft from the VS Code Codex extension is a painless and swift way into the tasting zone.
Pre-hydrating the body with electrolytes makes it easier to stay immersed in the dark velvet coffee experience without feeling the pull to slurp water.
Nerd Safari
Mocha in “mocha-java” was a port city at the edge of the Red Sea in Yemen where Yemen’s coffee was exported to the rest of the world. Coffee was grown inland in the highlands but took on the name of the port where it was exported.
Via Coffee growing regions of Yemen
[ water/purified · pre-dawn · listening · geography · history · mocha ]
