Let me ask you a question: what do you do to start your day? Do you open your window and feel the morning breeze? Or, do you take a little “commute” in your garden? In my case, I usually start my day with a cup of coffee. I make my own coffee, and because I’m pretty new to this coffee brewing business, usually it tastes really rrREALLY BAAAAAD. But, it can still provide a good experience to me. How come?
Well, to answer that, let’s start with the coffee itself. How do I make an awful cup of coffee? It is an easy goal for me, and probably an easy goal for everyone else too! Just try whatever you can imagine with some hot water and coffee grounds, you can easily end up with something pretty nnnnasty. But that’s not the end of the story, but just the beginning! Starting from this bad coffee, with a little bit of learning and efforts, eventually you’ll be able to make something pretty decent. It’ll be a very rewarding experience, and by chance you’ll also get a good cup of drink. THIS is the experience that I would like to talk about today.
There are many ways to make coffee. You can use a French press, a dripping machine, a moka pot, or an espresso machine. The method that I’m using and I’d like to recommend is the hand pour-over coffee. Like the name itself indicates, it’s made by pouring water over coffee grounds. There are a couple of reasons why I prefer this method:
First, it’s minimalistic and only requires simple equipment. All you need is a kettle and a filter cup with papers. A grinder, a thermometer, a timer, and a digital scale may help you get better control in the brewing process, but they are not necessary. Let the kettle and the filter cup do their job, and the rest is all in your capable hands.
Although simple in equipment, the hand pour-over method offers all dimensions that you can control for the brewing process. Think about what actually is happening when making coffee: hot water runs through coffee grounds, extracting flavour from those small particles. It’s all about how much flavour is taken out. If too little, the coffee will taste plain, while if not balanced, the coffee will taste weird, and while if too much, the coffee will taste bitter. Brewing time, temperature, ratio of the water and coffee, etcs, hand pour-over method makes all these dimensions available for you to experiment.
Last but not the least, hand pour-over method is very engaging without any waiting time. Unlike other methods, every second you spend on the brewing process matters. And you can have a full experience of the entire life cycle of a cup of coffee: catching the smell of dry coffee beans, feeling the aromatic steam rising from the filter cup, and tasting the final outcome in your mug. If it’s bad, you have nobody else to blame. But if it’s good, all credit goes to you! See, it’s all about YOU!
Given so many benefits, I strongly recommend you to try making hand pour-over coffee, or something that can provide a similar experience. It doesn’t take much, no more than just a small medication ceremony that can be easily integrated in your daily routine. It opens an entire world of flavour to explore. Coffee beans from all over the world are waiting for you. Think about the misty rainforest in Costa Rica, the windy highlands of Ethiopia, the steamy heat in southern India, and the sparkling rivers in Vietnam. It helps you focus and thus makes the moment very present to you. Everyday you try something different, everyday you get your brewing skills better. Eventually you’ll get a good cup of drink, and when it happens, you can share with other people, serve your friend and family with some good time together.
So why are we still waiting? Let’s get started, make your first cup, drink it up, and yyyyyyYUK!