Why Coffee Making Is So Complex? (A Comedy of Beans, Brews & Broken Brains)

 

It is not an exaggeration—though it absolutely sounds like one—to say that every tiny, microscopic, molecule-sized detail of coffee making somehow affects the final taste. I mean, even people who aren’t coffee nerds (bless their innocent souls) can still tell when “something feels off” in a cup. And from there begins the great rabbit hole of coffee madness.

For starters, containers. Yes, the humble cup.
Some people swear—blood oath level swear—by stainless steel tumblers, while others behave as if ceramic cups were handcrafted by the gods exclusively for coffee. Honestly, it sounds ridiculous… until you dare to give them the “wrong” cup and watch them spiral into an existential crisis.

I drink Aeropress coffee daily, but even when I occasionally brew something different, I still end up pouring it into the same Aeropress plastic cup. Why? Because I want to “rule out the psychological bias.” Yes, that is an actual sentence I say to myself. No, it doesn’t make me feel any less ridiculous.

And the madness continues.

Sugar—amount, type, timing.
Milk—cow, buffalo, brand, fat percentage, planetary alignment.
Temperature—hot, warm, scalding, tongue-melting.

No wonder coffee cup warmers exist—tiny electric thrones built to keep your brew at exactly the right temperature until the last drop. And on the opposite end, there are the “coffee nerds” who intentionally cool their freshly brewed black coffee just so their poor tastebuds don’t hallucinate new flavors out of sheer heat or miss out the finer ones!

Now, the beans. Oh lord, the beans.

The outer part of a coffee bean roasts faster and burns more easily than the inner part. It simply cannot be uniformly roasted, unless the laws of physics decide to take a holiday. So every roast is basically:
Outside: ‘I’m smoky and dramatic.’
Inside: ‘I’m shy and undercooked.’

And when you grind it, all these personalities mix like a dysfunctional family forced to share a room.

If you want the “purest flavour,” people say, you must remove the outer burnt bits.
Sure. Lovely. Absolutely impossible in real life.
So we come up with hacks.

Like discarding the first 40 ml of extraction because it’s “too harsh.”
But then you’re basically throwing away flavour… so you add a little back later.
It’s like baking a cake, cutting off the burnt edges, yelling “No!” and sticking them back on for balance.

And then there’s temperature choreography:
Start with slightly cooler water to “rescue” the outer layers.
Then follow with hotter water to “unlock the hidden poetry inside the bean.”

Too complex? Absolutely. Too tempting? Also absolutely.

And I suggest rubbing roasted beans against each other in a vibrating chamber to remove the outer layer. Or should we grind beans first and then roasting them for uniformity? Both ideas sound great… until you realize you’ve oxygenated the grounds into early retirement. Aroma gone. Flavour gone. Coffee dead long before it ever reached your mug.

And then comes the final punch:
The height of your pouring kettle.

Yes, apparently this matters too.

Pouring from high up? The water cools a bit before landing.
Pouring from low? More heat stays in the brew.
Should you start high and drop to low to compensate water cooling from start to end?
Or reverse it as extraction is easier initially and harder later?
Alternate to confuse the beans?

All to hit the magical 'three and a half minute' pour-over target that feels less like brewing coffee and more like defusing a bomb.

At this point, I genuinely feel like pulling my hair out.
Because as hilariously silly as each nuance appears… they do make a difference.
Which means every cup of coffee is just one tiny mistake away from heartbreak.

God save us from beans.