Nunas wrote:BTW, you can hit a zen mind when roasting beans too if you eschew the computer (after using it to learn, of course). I call it seat-of-the-pants roasting, where I rely on manually operating the machine according to sight, smell and sound, using only BT and ET thermometers. The foregoing takes a lot of practice.

henri wrote:There was a time when espresso was a treat. At home, I'd drink generally awful, stale preground filter coffee, out of a habit that goes back generations, and mainly to satisfy a physiological dependence. But in a nice café you could get something different: this concentrated small drink of pure chocolatey goodness. It was always good; sometimes excellent; a few times, otherworldly.

Now that I've been making espresso at home for two years, I struggle to connect with that earlier emotional state. I regularly get frustrated over how difficult it is to brew consistently excellent espresso. I'm detecting an almost cyclical pattern: I can be making consistently delicious shots for weeks on end and be happy, only to then fall into another sequence of weeks during which nothing I do seems to improve a string of consistently disappointing shots.

I suppose isolating variables is the standard piece of advice here. It is definitely easy to get lost in the multidimensional parameter space of espresso by tweaking one parameter one way, then thinking tweaking another parameter will solve the problem (and so on and so forth with third, fourth and fifth parameter) - when in fact tweaking the first parameter the other way would have been the correct course of action. But while I could standardize my routine to the point of always using the same coffee the same number of days after roasting, at the same brew ratio, ground using the same grinder and brewed in the same basket in the same machine, I feel this will ultimately only contribute to boredom. Will not anything excellent degrade in subjectively perceived quality with repeated exposure over an extended period of time? Is there such a thing as having too much of a good thing? Is there "absolute" goodness in coffee, or just perceptions that are judged relative to other perceptions? Will I need to drink more bad coffee in order to be reminded of what good coffee is?

But if regularization risks boredom, then going in the other direction - the direction of less regularity, more exploration - risks frustration. (I have plenty of stressors in my life; I don't want my hobby to become another.) To this can be added the psychological effects of Gear Acquisition Syndrome and upgraditis - the expectation that acquiring this or that piece of machinery will result in this or that improvement in the cup, often without any real scientific backing.

How do you navigate this? Are you able to make consistently good espresso and not get overly frustrated in the process? Are you still enjoying your hobby?