It’s been a little while since any posts, but that’s fine, it’s in the name of progress behind the scenes. With a cool idea around the merch store that may or may not take place, a video review that I keep putting off, Skyward Sword keeping me busy and plenty of online games. There’s a lot going on, but it doesn’t always translate to anything tangible here.
I used to hate that. Always pushing to post something, often for the sake of it, but why? Based on a small readership, and the fact that there’s no deadlines or requirements, it truly doesn’t matter.
That being said, I’m always thinking about what to work on, what to develop, what to improve. The big thing to me is the workflow and review process for coffees. I’ve hit a reasonable cadence with hardware reviews, my game reviews are all-over, but I generally hit the points that are important to me. Coffee is different.
Being completely honest, I feel that the coffee reviews are too focused on things that don’t matter. I work incredibly hard on them and push to better my understanding of tastes, aromas, mouthfeel etc etc, and I always feel like a tit because it’s a lot of effort to piece it all together.
The taste of coffee is subjective, and reviewing it in such a way is a little redundant. So I’m mixing things up a bit!
Coffee changes
So yeah, I’m mixing it up. Instead of working really hard to go through how it tastes, to me, I want to cover that and more.
A lot of the coffees I review come from small roasters, family businesses or young start-ups that are doing their best to hone their craft. I want to more broadly cover things like the customer experience, the quality of the roast, packaging, freshness and a whole host of things that everyone should consider in their approach to buying a new bag of beans.
Coffee at home can be a ritual, it can be an experience, and someone harping on purely about tasting notes and aromatics isn’t that useful to someone buying some beans.
Looking at the best brew method, and how I got best results from a specific roast, along with price, delivery time and customer service are as important, if not more so, than such a subjective thing as a flavour. Taste, mouthfeel and fragrance etc will of course still feature, but in one section, not the whole review.
Value for money on quality are important and I want to deliver a more rounded review.
As always, I look at things through the lense of “don’t be a dick”. Because let’s be honest, there is no good reason to be rude or pick apart someone’s hard work. Honesty and constructive feedback, absolutely. But there is no good reason to essentially bully a small company online. Plus, who the hell am I to do that anyway?
I love coffee, I love brewing and trying as many coffees as possible and I want to share the whole experience.
Change is good, and I’ve scratched my head on how to do this for some time. It’s a much more sensible approach and one that will require no less work, but hopefully feel like a little less pressure.
Always changing
Hopefully anyone reading this will agree that we should always be self-assessing and striving to improve. Either for self benefit or for the benefit of others. This change, to me, is for both purposes and I really hope one day, to become a resource for people looking to get into small roasters and seeing where to get the best overall experience.
There’s a lot to do, and no doubt this will shift again in a year or so, but for now, it feels like the right direction and it makes me feel excited to put up more coffee reviews.
Of course, all existing reviews still stand, in terms of score, and I suppose subconsciously, a lot of these factors have always been accounted for.
If you like coffee, or you want to get into coffee more, I want to make it more accessible. It’s sometimes an elitist past time and I want to remove that. Even if it makes me look like a tit to those who may require those fragrance notes and mouthfeel with every shot of their espresso.
Ritual, science, experimentation and satisfaction. That’s what making coffee at home is to me. I hope it can be to others, too.
I’ll even get some brew guides up at some point. Although I’ve managed to put those off for a long time. I think it will help provide context to the reviews, and hopefully let others give it a go using some of my experiences.
That’s it! That’s the update/blog. Coffee reviews are changing and I have a lot of games to play, too.
I love doing this, and that’s all that matters, right?!
– Ben
One thought on “Blog – Coffee changes”