---
title: My Coffee Isekai
date: 2023-03-18
tags:
  - coffee
  - dangerousForWallet
hero:
  ai: Anything
  file: kafejo-vibes
  prompt: duo, (1girl, green hair, hoodie, long hair, green eyes, tired, holding coffee), (kitchen counter, coffee, coffee grinder, coffee machine, espresso machine), (1guy, brown hair, very short hair), happy
---

Coffee is one of the most important parts of my daily ritual.
Historically, I had never really drank coffee regularly; and I had
never really had _good_ coffee before. Sure, I've drank coffee from
time to time, but I usually had to get it double-double and drown
out the bitterness with other flavors. This did make something that
was pleasant to drink, but I didn't really get to understand or
appreciate the flavor of the coffee in particular.

<XeblogConv standalone name="Mara" mood="happy">
  For those of you that aren't Canadian, double-double coffee is double cream,
  double sugar. It's a very popular drink at Tim Hortons. It tastes great, but
  it's probably not the best for you.
</XeblogConv>

Then I moved to Montreal and started living with the person who would
become my husband.

One of the first things we got from Canadian Tire was a simple
infusion coffee maker. It works by putting water in the side, ground
coffee in a filter paper in the top, and then you hit the button and
wait for it to fill the pot with the precious caffeine juice. This
wasn't the best coffee in the world, but waking up to have something
warm to get you ready for the day is a really nice thing. We had gone
through a few coffee brands and variants, and had mostly settled on
McCafé medium roast.

<XeblogConv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">
  McCafé is surprisingly good. You'd think that McDonalds coffee would be kinda
  meh, but it's actually quite lovely. Really needs some milk to balance the
  taste though.
</XeblogConv>
<XeblogConv name="Scoots" mood="explain">
  I think we messed up by not taking the pot out of the machine when it was
  done. The coffee was basically getting burned by the hot plate, which probably
  didn't help.
</XeblogConv>
<XeblogConv name="Aoi" mood="wut">
  I thought coffee was a _liquid_, how can you _burn_ a liquid?
</XeblogConv>
<XeblogConv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">
  "Burnt" is the normal word in the coffee world for this. It refers to when the
  coffee gets over-extracted or the grounds in the water get combusted from
  heat. You can't "burn" a liquid, but you can combust the grounds in it.
</XeblogConv>
<XeblogConv name="Scoots" mood="thonk">
  Then what the heck is gasoline?
</XeblogConv>
<XeblogConv name="Aoi" mood="sus">
  Not water.
</XeblogConv>

We had been using this coffee machine for 2.5 years. We have made
untold liters of coffee in it, and gone through god knows how many
coffee filters. It was our daily vice and I had grown to appreciate
it, despite the bitterness.

Then I started playing Persona 5. In Persona 5, the main character
(Joker) lives above a coffee shop and there's a subplot between him
and Sojiro (the coffee shop owner/parole supervisor) where Sojiro
teaches Joker how to make _excellent coffee_. In the game they
animated Joker doing a standard pour-over coffee style, and this
really opened my eyes to the fact that there were other ways to make
this precious morning bean juice.

<XeblogConv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">
  Yes, I knew that there _had_ to be other methods, but it never really seemed
  relevant for me.
</XeblogConv>

Sometime after this, the YouTube algorithm threw James Hoffman into my
feed. I'm a huge film buff and the way that James Hoffman does videos
about coffee really stood out to me. There are so many subtle
camerawork tricks that really just make me appreciate the hell out of
his videography, and then he started to go into the taste that
different brew methods can bring.

I have the cultural context to know that wine tasting is bullshit and
mostly based on cultural biases, as well as what you are told about
the wine before you partake in it. Based on the words that were used
to describe coffee (acidic, citrus, nutty, etc.) I thought it was the
same thing. I thought it was just pretentious coffee snobs and
baristas making things up because it makes them sound more impressive
and like they understand a hidden truth that the rest of us aren't
privy to.

<details style="max-width:65ch;margin:1rem;">
  <summary>spoiler</summary>
  They aren't making this up, you can actually taste the difference lol.
</details>

I really was wondering if I could get a better-tasting bean liquid
though. I had been habitually drowning the coffee in a combination of
milk and maple syrup in order to get something lovely to drink. I
mostly wanted to see if I could get something that would taste good by
itself, and I had been told that the Aeropress was a way to get there.

At some level, I wanted to see if all of this was bullshit or not. I
also could see that this was a _deep, dark rabbit hole_ (the kind that
I am prone to falling down) and I kinda forgot about it for a bit.
Then I nerd-sniped my husband and we ordered an Aeropress on a lark.

<XeblogConv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">
  The fact that I had a new DevRel coworker that was a huge coffee fan and a
  former barista furthered the contagion. I blame you Shayne.
</XeblogConv>

## The Aeropress

One day in December, the Aeropress arrived. It arrived while I was at
AWS Re:Invent, and my husband was the one to try the device out for
the first time.

At some level, the Aeropress is a simple device that lets you make
_individual cups of coffee_, not an entire carafe at once. It's got 4
basic parts: the plunger that you use to press with, the plunger body
that you put water and coffee into, a stirring stick to mix water and
coffee, and a filter cap that you put a paper filter on top of. To use
it, you put a filter in the cap, screw the filter cap on the bottom of
the plunger base, put a scoop of ground coffee on top of the filter,
pour in water up to the desired number (2 or 3 makes espresso style, 4
makes normal filter style), mix it up, pop the plunger in the top, and
slowly press all the liquid into your cup. The coffee is ready to
drink at that point.

<XeblogConv standalone name="Scoots" mood="neutral">
  I remember that my first cup of Aeropress coffee was a lot less bitter. Almost
  as if it wasn't burnt anymore. It took me a few sips to really notice the
  flavour as the coffee cooled down enough for me to taste something other than
  just hot liquid.
</XeblogConv>

<XeblogPicture path="blog/2023/aeropress-usage"></XeblogPicture>

I loved the coffee we made at first. It was so much more flavorful and
rich. I didn't need to add any sweetener to enjoy it, just a bit of
milk.

It wasn't perfect though. One of the main problems we ran into was the
fact that when you put the water on top of the coffee, sometimes the
water would fall through the filter before it could be mixed. This
made rather weak coffee that wasn't really pleasant to drink. This was
made worse with a metal filter we picked up off of Amazon, it made all
the water fall through _almost instantly_, leaving you with the kind
of coffee you would expect from a homeopath clinic.

We ended up having to experiment with different ways of using paper
filters (including using multiple filters at once) until we found a
technique on a James Hoffman video called the "inverted brew" method.

## The inverted brew method

Normally when using an Aeropress, the coffee cup is the "base" of the
setup. In the inverted brew setup, the plunger becomes the base of the
setup. You turn the plunger upside down, move the plunger up to the
number 4 on the device, and then you fill the device with coffee and
water as normal.

The main difference with this setup is that it looks _terrifying_, and
if you're not careful you can easily spill hot water everywhere. It's
stable, but if you are prone to knocking things over it's probably not
the best overall life decision. Once you are ready to pour it into the
cup, you upend the device and press it out as normal.

<XeblogConv standalone name="Scoots" mood="explain">
  When I was using the inverted brew method, I couldn't rely on the fill numbers
  for the water levels anymore. If I pushed the piston to the same distance
  every time, I could keep things somewhat consistent.
</XeblogConv>

However, this eliminated _all_ the problems we had with the coffee
falling through the filter cap. It was so effective that we actually
started over-extracting the coffee by accident. I don't know if it was
the amount of time we used for making the coffee in general or the
action of upending the aeropress to serve the coffee, but it came out
weird a lot of the time.

<XeblogConv standalone name="Cadey" mood="coffee">
  I swear though, the Aeropress coffee at its worst comes out _way better_ than
  that coffee maker ever did at its best.
</XeblogConv>

## The Prismo

Around the end of December, we got our hands on a device called [the
Prismo](https://fellowproducts.com/products/prismo/). It's a
replacement filter and filter cap for the Aeropress that lets you get
way more consistent results out of the device. They claim it lets you
make Aeropress coffee "espresso style", but in general I've found that
it _stops_ the water from falling through the filter altogether. This
has allowed me to really get to _taste_ the coffee I make with the
Aeropress. I am happy to report that you can in fact taste the flavors
that the bags and coffee review websites say you can.

<XeblogConv standalone name="Cadey" mood="coffee">
  In my defense, a lot of coffee descriptions read like weed strain
  descriptions, IE:
  <blockquote>
    Blissful, long-lasting euphoria blankets the mind while physical relaxation
    rids the body of pain, sleeplessness, and stress.
  </blockquote>
  It's easy to read things like this:
  <blockquote>
    A flavourful and bright coffee with enough soul and body to justify another
    cup.
  </blockquote>
  And think that it's basically the same thing. It's not. They're actually
  accurate in this case. It's not just frontloading to comfort people looking
  for the information they want. I also don't tell my husband what the flavor
  profile notes of coffee are and he usually gets the same descriptions as the
  coffee bags have, so that's a single-blind confirmation on anecdotal evidence
  for you.
</XeblogConv>

I didn't have to add anything to the coffee in order to enjoy drinking
it. When I have Aeropress coffee with the Prismo, I drink it black.
It's lovely.

<XeblogConv standalone name="Scoots" mood="explain">
  When you use the Aeropress, you can't really get to the same levels of
  pressure needed to make espresso (about 12-15 bar). Instead, you have to let
  your coffee steep a little bit longer than usual to really extract out the
  flavour. It's not quite the same thing as actual espresso, but it's close
  enough.
</XeblogConv>

## Our recipe

If you want to make coffee like we do with an Aeropress and the Prismo
attachment, here's our recipe:

- Set your coffee grinder to about 3000 microns as the average
  particle size (on a Baratza Encore electric burr grinder, this is
  setting number 12). Be sure to grind the coffee beans _the same day
  that you consume the coffee_.
- Heat your water in an electric kettle to about 80 degrees Celsius.
- Put one Aeropress scoop (about 12-14 grams) of ground coffee into
  the device.
- Fill the Aeropress with water up to number 4 (normal cup of infusion
  brew strength).
- Stir it gently back and forth (not in a swirling motion), counting
  about 30 collisions between the stirring stick and the plunger wall.
- Remove the stirring stick and rinse it off, letting the coffee
  grounds settle to the bottom. This should take about 30 seconds,
  during which your coffee will steep.
- Press the coffee through slowly.
- Enjoy without adding anything else.

If the Prismo produces coffee that's a bit too silty for you (a hazard
of the metal filter design), layer a paper filter on top of the metal
filter so that the paper filter is in direct contact with the ground
coffee.

---

This article has been a long time coming and I hope it helps you with
your coffee journey! Stay tuned for part 2 as we just got an espresso
machine.

<XeblogPicture path="blog/2023/latte-preview" />
