I have officially gone down the coffee wormhole. I’ve always appreciated a fine cup of coffee- particularly a cappuccino or latte. A few years back I even stepped up my home game to a very basic latte with a Keurig machine that offered single shot options and a milk frother built in. Even an inexpensive ground espresso at least gave me a nice experience to enjoy my morning routine. 

I was doing fine. 

So I thought.

Last week I made the shift to a decent (though still entry level apparently) conical burr grinder, organic whole beans, and left my Keurig for the AeroPress (for espresso) and a beautiful Le Creuset French press for a regular coffee, which is my husband’s daily preference. The milk frother now lives separately. 

Over this process I discovered I knew nothing about making a decent cup of coffee, espresso or otherwise. I thought a simple change to fresher beans would be simple, but when I went to find a good bean grinder I began the descent into the world of conical vs. flat, and more crazy to me, people contended that if you aren’t hand grinding you will never have an excellent result. I was shocked at how much time I put into reviews on how the grinder work, their pros and cons, and why if you are really trying to dial in espresso, it’s going to be hard to find a machine that does that well and gives you a decent French press. Apparently there is not a simple answer to: which burr grinder in my price range is the best buy.

Finally I invested the time to learn what questions to answer for myself to choose the best grinder for my home needs, and assembled all the parts: grinder, beans, appropriate storage for beans, presses, frother, electric kettle, kitchen scale, notebook, and the lab was ready for amazing morning coffee! You have to start somewhere so I took a middle of the window grind number for both my espresso and for Matt’s French press and even weighed the beans to the little chart the grinder provided as a helpful guide. The outcome of the first batch: without question better coffee than we’d ever made at home, and yet my espresso was bitter, and Matt’s French press was sour. 

Now what?

Thankfully there was on that same chart a little note (for us brand new amateurs who have no idea what we’re doing): if your coffee is bitter, try a coarser grind. If it’s sour, try a finer grind. Anyone reading this knows there’s also all the other factors: brewing time, water temperature, freshness of the beans and type of water, however someone new to the layered intricacies of coffee making needs to shift one lever at a time, and the grind size was the right place to start for me. 

This change of morning routine started out seeming simple to me: get a grinder and some beans and upgrade our coffee experience. Now I’m making notes on grind size, water to coffee ratio (a week ago I would have laughed if you said I would pour my water using the kitchen scale), and looking up YouTube videos on how to upgrade my game with the aeropress or French press. How hard can this be? Yet I learned a handful of things right off the top that I never realized mattered in my years of use of these very tools.

I’ll save you the play by play and say by my third espresso of the day, I was tasting a dark, smooth, rich nice flavor and though it took a couple days to dial in the French press because I only did one a day, Matt was incredibly impressed with the flavor of his coffee, so much so that the man who never drank coffee without a flavor or at least sugar enjoys it straight with a little milk now. The coffee itself is just that good.

This sidetrack into the crazy world of burr grinders, inverting and aeropress, rinsing the paper filter, and skimming a French press crust before plunging isn’t hard, but it took time, education, effort and experimentation. I’m sure more tweaking will over time, up the quality more, but for today, I’m thrilled. As I sip my morning latte and look back, I ask myself why I drank such junk coffee for so so so many years at home when this is so much better and it just took making a decision and then walking it out. 

Then I wondered, why DID I make the change?

I look around me in the world and see things that I’ve learned that could (in my opinion) really improve an area of someone’s life. I wonder why they stay in the comfort zone so long when the truth is, better is available, and not really all that difficult, and so worth it. My coffee routine is more precise now, I use a kitchen scale and sometimes my watch timer. I pay a bit more attention and can’t multitask as much while it’s coffee making time, I’m more present in the details. The grinder had an initial investment, probably the organic beans will cost me a little more too. Other than that, it’s not that hard for what benefit an amazing cup of coffee comes out.

What took me so long and why did I eventually make the shift?

It reminded me how in order to make any change in our lives, there usually has to be some kind of pain that is enough to force an action. We humans are funny that way. If it aint broke, we don’t fix it, and if it is broke, we usually consider replacing it with something new (ok this isn’t about a coffee maker now) before taking on the discomfort to make the changes that could bring a shift. I find myself no different than the rest of humanity here. 

Much of my work involves people of all ages having to step into discomfort to find change. As a violin teacher I am always wondering what might encourage kids to practice. Practicing means intentionally going to a hard thing you cannot currently do, and putting in time doing it badly with thought toward how to fix it, until finally it begins to get easier and comfortable… and then we ask them to leave that thing behind and take on a new uncomfortable thing! Why would anyone want to learn the violin is the real question I ask many days. 

As a horsemanship coach, many of us have talked about the fact that people usually have to be in a place where they feel in danger before they seek to make changes in their horse program. There are generally few of us oddlings who say: this is good, but I bet it could be better! Let me seek discomfort so I can grow into a better horse person. 

Since this question is central to most things I do, I think about it fairly regularly. How can one help people decide for themselves to take on discomfort in order to grow? That is why this questions fascinated me: What was the factor that made me decide to leave my coffee comfort zone and invest time and treasure to up my coffee game? 

When I looked back it was not so simple. It wasn’t a one thing, but a convergence of a few things that eventually grew loud enough to make me decide to invest in the discomfort of a new plan.  The major factors for me were the concern over toxins and molds in standard coffee (why bother eating organic and clean if I’m going to poison myself every day with my coffee?) alongside a growing dissatisfaction with my coffee experience and occasionally going to a great coffee shop and tasting what a quality espresso was truly like. If I look back, I have been bombarded over time with messages that cheap pre-ground coffee is poisoning me, I think I always believed this was true to an extent, but since I didn’t get directly sick from my coffee, the connection wasn’t strong enough to get me to take on something invasive to change. I mean, everyone is buying junk ground coffee or beans from their local stores that can’t be fresh and who knows how they’re grown or processed really… When things are normalized by a large population it can convince us that it must be ok. The growing rumbling of the messaging that I actually did believe paired with a growing dissatisfaction with my morning coffee experience was pushed over the edge by enjoying a truly fine coffee and thinking: I bet I could do better, I should make a change.

So if there is a lesson for me here, I think it would be to keep saying the true thing over and over because I tend to hate nagging or ringing the bell that seems to go unheard. Messages do build up in a system. I tend to tell my students things a few times and then stop saying it. Either you’re going to do this or you won’t. I’m tired of telling you every week to practice if you want to improve. Yet, I am my own proof that the same message over a long time can eventually gain enough weight that it starts to push the needle.

The other side of that is the experience of the better is key. It’s not so hard with a cup of coffee. I can go experience one in a good coffee shop with minimal investment. It’s harder with someone who will have to try, at least a small investment in practicing. Maybe I could encourage kids to try for a week and see what happens? The outcome is often that wow! This is so much better! I think with horses it’s even harder. I try to think back and remember what it was that made me hungry for more in my own horse world. While it is true that I now have a wild mustang who is really challenging and I simply refuse to give up on trying to help her feel better, and help us, have a better connection, my hunger for something more with my horses came before that horse arrived. 

I am in the process of revisiting early writing in my horse journey, and I can see the question was already there, predating my content publishing. If I had to commit, I think it was the discomfort with my first horse that planted that seed. I adored her, but I struggled to help her feel more relaxed and to trust me. She was already a teen when I found her, and had many patterns already stitched deep into the fabric of her mind and heart. If I think about this, I believe it was the struggle I had in trying to help her that showed me my own lack of understanding and the desire to be able to gain that knowledge and a toolset that could mean I would be able to do better for horses down the road. 

Regardless if you love coffee or not, I hope this musing might encourage you to look around and ask where you might be ripe for a transformation… and take a step to better… in something that matters to you!