Simplicity As a Contronym

As I sit here on the last morning of 2023 with the sun in my face and the birds chirping, echoing throughout the cold winter air, I’m reminded of the simple pleasures in life. As bird sounds tune out the noise of the bustling city life I’m surrounded by in East Nashville, there’s a sense of calm and peace you can absorb just by becoming aware of your surroundings. Yet, achieving this seems nearly unattainable with the dozen or so screens and “smart” accessories that always seem to conquer my attention better than anything else would.

For as long as I can remember, I have been absolutely fascinated by this idea of simplicity. To “tune-in” to your surroundings and appreciate them simply by ignoring those eternally-demanding notifications and devices. To live a life based more around focusing on your feelings in a specific moment than living one of attaining effortless, instant gratification seems much more meaningful and rewarding to me. So, I ask myself, “how can I apply this to the things I do every day to appreciate them more?”.

As I write this in ink, crossing out my mistakes on a grid-style paper pad that’s filled with inventions and numerical data instead of words explaining my feelings, it brings me so much joy when these things that are unintended for their purpose can allow for endless creative exploration.

I know this is a coffee blog, and I’d imagine you have an idea of which direction this article will be headed, but I had to give you some context first!

The Downside of Aiming For Perfection

Like many of you, I have been chasing perfection in the cup. I’ve spent many years of my life teaching myself not only how to brew, but to achieve the best cup of coffee possible (that means so many different things, much more I care to write). To become skilled enough to repeat that “best cup” every time, without a hiccup, and translate those techniques and cup quality to every other coffee I work with is a rare trait to have, and one I can often pride myself on. This ability had led me to create systems I have yet to see exist in this industry, and which I will later talk openly about in the book I am currently writing.

It humors me that I’ve created what I believe to be the best possible versions for brewing the tastiest coffees currently imaginable (tooting my own horn for sure, but they’re really that good in my experience) and yet, I often feel disconnected with where that particular coffee came from. The truth is, I don’t want to have the “perfect” cup every time if it means I’m constantly looking at numbers while analyzing every little thing, often poking myself to do more tests with another new variable…And it never ends!

To sum it up, this idea of maintaining perfection and improving upon it is the equivalent of everything distracting me from this warm morning sun and soaking in the beautiful sounds of the birds chirping outside amidst the chilly winter air. All of the critical tasks of coffee brewing prevent me from experiencing life in the moment – that meditative state of being that I’ve come to find and love from other activities. I want to feel that while I brew.

Tuning-out our surroundings

I’ve always felt connected to activities that forced me to use my senses and the feelings it would give to put me in a meditative-like state. From snowboarding, gliding through unexplored terrain in the backcountry over a fresh layer of soft powder from the night before to longboarding on a cruiser board rolling down a wide, declined street with no cars in sight. The feeling of tuning everything else out to work your body in such a way that glides you from on place to another while you’re taking in the sweet breeze, the quiet sounds of only the wind hitting your ears and the feeling of what’s below you is a truly indescribable feeling. All while subconsciously focusing on not falling down – that’s the difference of brewing coffee, I think we’re too consciously concerned on “not falling”. We’re looking at too many variables during the brewing process that is distracting us from reaching that deeper, more meaningful, highly meditative state of being I’m sure all of us desire.

It’s the same thing with music, a performer will almost always play better live than in the studio being recorded. There’s too much thought on messing up, and staying on track for the recording that everyone will always hear. If you’re playing live, everyone will understand players will mess up from time to time, but on a recording, everyone is meant to perform like a superhuman robot, where messing up in a recording is seen as a crime…And it gets in their head as they’re recording.

I love music, and anything from writing to performing to even mixing a live bands performance through stage speakers for the audience to hear gives me the same emotional, meditative feeling. I’m able to tune everything else out and use my senses in such a way that moves me emotionally.

With coffee, other than roasting, it has been hard for me to fully “tune out” of my surroundings and focus on my senses while I brew. I feel that trying to develop systems that allow me to not think about the many different aspects of coffee brewing, and tune in to what I’m experiencing in the moment will make me happier and more deeply connected with each coffee I’m working with. When I choose to develop systems to brew like this, it needs to feel simple, I need to feel a sense of risk-free exploration, I need to feel free, it needs to feel…Meditative.

Brewing with our senses

For this reason of simplicity, I really do miss drinking from the cupping bowl or cupping brewer, however, that concentration of unfiltered Lipids isn’t the best compliment for people watching their cholesterol and blood pressure. So, as a slight precaution, I’ve been avoiding this method for a day-to-day routine of personal coffee consumption. I still do this often, much more than other brewers and even many professionals, but not for my own relaxing enjoyment, it’s purely for making business decisions.

Luckily, the coffee bed, when used appropriately, can be a great filter for Lipids, oils, and other insoluble material. This is often seen in “filtered” coffee techniques where water is poured over a coffee bed and flowed through a filter. This style of brewing often requires attention to detail and measuring everything from grind size to the weight of coffee grounds, the weights of many individual water pours, the brew time and the flowrate of the coffee slurry as well as the flowrate of the kettle pours, among many other things that need to be accounted for. What I’m trying to do now is create a brew method that can avoid all of these things to then help put me in “meditation mode”.

I am currently developing a brew method that compliments the types of flavors and extractions I love from a combination of my favorite brewing techniques, but while aiming to keep everything very simple. It’s a semi-immersion based, high agitation, manual pump-driven brew method that allows me to brew coffee in such a way that connects me more to the source and requires the undivided attention of my senses to brew coffee! No keeping track of the time, no weighing the dose, or even the water. This method allows me to do something a bit different each time without feeling like I’m messing up. It encourages flavor exploration by giving a different tasting cup, each day, every time! All while staying true to my values of brewing great coffee that showcases the best of what the terroir, the plants genotype, and its producer had intended.

I will talk about this more next year…But don’t worry, its much sooner than you’d think as I’m writing this on December 31st!

A little bit about a simple, tiny espresso machine

What inspired me to write this article and what I’ve been very inspired by lately is the Olympia Cremina espresso machine. It is, without a doubt, one of the simplest of espresso machines ever made, and yet it not only makes stunning espresso, people also heavily enjoy using it, as its cult following will attest to! Being built to last “a small eternity”, this machine is a minimalist’s dream. The Olympia Cremina is a direct lever machine, meaning there is no spring. When you lift up the piston (aka lever) the water floods the group head, which is really just a massive chunk of brass. The big brass group head is meant to cool the incredibly hot water coming from the boiler before it is then dispersed over the coffee puck. Since there are no PID (temperature regulating systems) controls or heated transfer systems, it’s up to that chunk of brass to cool down that water effectively, and man does it do a great job…often too great! Since many people don’t want to brew their espresso with way colder than 200-degree water, they are using techniques to heat up the metal before starting their espresso extraction. You can flush water out of the machine, but of course you end up losing that water, so some people use a “loop-heating” system by lifting the piston just a little bit, only enough to flood the chamber and heat that brass group head with hot water and without dispensing the water out into the drip tray. Then, you press it down and that little bit of water will go back into the very hot boiler. You then do this a few times to then heat the group head up to your desired temperature. Many people will stick a thermal strip on their group head to get within a wide range (nowhere near perfect) for the appropriate water temp they desire.

On the flip side, they also need to cool the brass group head down between uses since it can easily get way too hot. They do this by either waiting and letting it cool over time, or by using “heat sinks” to suck the heat away from the group head. There are attachments you can buy like thick metal blocks that fit in the machine like a portafilter that then absorb the heat from the group head. Other people take a cool, wet rag and place it on the group head to cool it down.

As you can now tell, using this machine is an incredibly labor-intensive experience. The coffee you’ll make will often taste a bit different each time because of the “intended” inconsistencies of the machine. It’s a fantastic way to brew coffee for those that want to tune out of their surroundings and have an incredibly truist approach to making espresso. No loud pumps, no easy one-press brew button, no consistent pump pressure, and especially no automated functions like shot timers, volumetric yields, and instant ready-to-brew capabilities. It takes time, intention, touch, sight & sound to make one of the tastiest espressos most will ever brew in their homes.

Hilariously, this machine has a few components that work together to make an espresso shot that is very hard to channel and have more defects than even the most popular and expensive commercial espresso machines. That’s something the company was completely unaware of when it was designed in 1967, and still, something most companies don’t even think about now. I could go into detail here about what and why that is, but I’ll save that for another day.

This is the perfect machine for a specific person in a specific place, but put this in a busy commercial environment and quality is thrown so far out the window you won’t ever see it again. This is a machine for a person that is often able to tune things out for an experience, and that’s why it interests me so much – you have to brew in a highly-reactive state that keeps even the most experienced of brewers on their toes, all while encouraging change of any particular variable at any given time. Brewing like this fascinates me.

The greatest simplicity often comes as a by-product of welcoming persistent complexity

I want to brew coffee using my sense of smell, touch, and sight. I want to smell the loss or degradation of volatile aroma compounds to know when to draw down that semi-immersion brew I mentioned earlier, rather than use time as the all deciding factor. I don’t even want to use time. I want to actually feel the coffee bed under water with a simple agitation stick. Not only to agitate the grounds but also to level the bed without spinning the brewer or use an unresponsive WDT tool to do so. I don’t want to count spins or use a controlled WDT process, I want to feel what I’m doing and do it a bit differently every time simply because I want to immerse myself more in the process. I want to pour by sight rather than by grams on a scale, or to dose beans with a volumetric scoop intended for a loosely specific dose (like the Torch House scoop from Kurasu hand carved by woodworking artisans in Japan) rather than weighing by beans on a scale before grinding. To know by sight for how much the beans weight could be with fair accuracy takes time to build that experience, I want to attain that while also reassuring myself if its slightly off, it’s absolutely ok and could even benefit the taste in my cup!

I want to enjoy a wide variety of coffee brewing experiences and personally, this is how I currently like brewing coffee sometimes. I don’t want to brew like this all of the time, just when I feel like I want to connect with my coffee more.

One of my roasting mentors taught me the importance of roasting with your senses, to literally count Rate of Rise using the bean probe temperature and the time clock on the roaster (no instant data). Ideally, not using much data at all to roast but to rely on sight, smell, sound, and sometimes even touch to feel the green at times to help determine the roast profile…. And you know what? Roasting like that on that specific machine is more repeatable than many roasters, and more importantly, it’s incredibly fun! It helps you tune in to your senses and become accepting of changes just like that minimalist Olympia Cremina espresso machine helps a skilled operator do.

Knowing that the roaster will heat differently depending on the weather, or the beans may have to be roasted differently because of the current situation is not a skill that’s easily learned, especially here in Nashville with constantly changing weather. Here’s a gem: Adapting the roast profile to the current moment is the key takeaway here as to why roasting like this is more consistent than a whole lot of roasters who don’t like to change their profiles. Roasting like this takes one hell of a lot of experience to build up to that amount of knowledge it takes to dictate your actions.

I know a lot of great roasters who won’t think twice about changing particular variables, yet I’ve witnessed so many positive changes by doing so. Like developing a brewing process to focus more on your senses in the moment, this is just a different way of roasting that gives way to the same goal.

Food For Thought

A Contronym, as the title of the title of this article, “SIMPLICITY AS A CONTRONYM” suggests, is a word with two meanings that are opposite of each other.

I like to think that simplicity in coffee often comes as a by-product of welcoming persistent complexity. The ones who are most experienced often create the simplest techniques.

I hope we can learn to throw out data and use our senses to start enjoying coffee more when we desire a deeper connection with the beverage.

Sometimes, we need to take in a sun warming our face and birds serenading our ears.

We may have tuned them out, but they’ve always been there.

Listen, feel, smell, see, taste - be aware.

Tune in to the moment.

& happy brewing.

-Connor