The grinder has thirty numbered clicks and for a while I treated every one of them as a decision. A cup came out sour, I went two clicks finer. The next one was bitter, I went one back. By the end of the week I could not remember which change had done what.
So I wrote it down. Same coffee, same water, same ratio, one setting per day, and a line in the notebook before I had read anything about the beans.
| Setting | Drawdown | What I got |
|---|---|---|
| 14 | 3:50 | Muddy, bitter at the back of the mouth |
| 17 | 3:10 | Sweet, a bit of stone fruit when it cooled |
| 20 | 2:35 | Bright and thin, gone almost before I swallowed |
Seventeen was where I had started a month earlier. Most of the swings I had been correcting were not the grind at all: a cooler kettle, a rushed bloom, a bag that had been open a week longer than the last one.
What I do now
I pick a setting when a new bag arrives and leave it for the whole bag unless the drawdown time moves by more than half a minute. The clock is a more honest witness than my tongue at seven in the morning.