I walked to the edge of the rabbit hole and slowly backed away.
For many years I ran more off caffeine than sleep and coffee was my primary method of delivery with tea coming in a distant second. Always black. Like the taste of heavy dark roasts but prefer the higher caffeine content of blondes if I’m aiming for caffeine. I know that may sound bad, but like I told one of my superiors many years ago when he asked why I slept so little and drank caffeinated coffee and tea all day, because anything stronger is illegal.
For many years I was strictly quantity. I’d show up at whatever office I was at that day well before anyone else, make a pot of coffee with whatever the office manager for that office happened to buy, and drink the whole pot. Then I’d make another pot for the rest of the office to share, making sure it was freshly ready when they arrived. Of course I’d take my one cup share out of the second pot. Wife hated coffee so drinking it at home was rare.
Then, for some reason I don’t recall I started drinking it less at work and more at home in the evenings. I didn’t want quantity, I was looking for quality: the kind of quality I had experienced at the rare independent coffee shops that mostly sold incredibly smooth and full flavored coffee best drunk straight rather than iced milk with a splash of coffee. So I started grinding the beans in an adjustable ceramic hand grinder; experimenting with various beans, coarseness of grind, French press, percolator, drip coffee maker, Keurig with reusable pod… I was starting to research roasting beans, researching sourcing equipment for small batch use, and I started to see one foot sliding into the rabbit hole so I drew the line at roasting beans myself.
Shortly after, a miracle occurred. Wife decided to see what was so wonderful about this coffee. She started with about half milk, half coffee. Over time, she pared back to zero milk most of the time but still enjoys a splash of milk once in a while. She didn’t understand why we couldn’t just get the cheapest pre-ground coffee she could find. I let her try that and she quickly found out why that’s not advisable.
We continued experimenting to find a process acceptable to both of us. We landed on a drip coffee maker with three scoops (it’s a small scoop, a bit more than a teaspoon) of medium ground Eight O’Clock coffee hand ground in small batches to make 10 cups.
Looked to me like roasting your own beans might be a fun hobby but it also looked like a pretty deep rabbit hole. I wasn’t quite up for diving in full bore.
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