Slow coffee, fast mornings
For two years I kept changing beans, grinders and recipes, hoping the next change would be the one. The cups got better and more complicated, and the mornings got longer.
Last spring I settled on one dripper, one medium roast and a scale. Eighteen grams, three hundred of water, a little under three minutes. Nothing else.
A repeatable cup beats a perfect cup you can only make on Sundays.
The surprise was not the taste. It was that a fixed ritual freed up attention. I now notice the weather while the kettle heats, which I never did when I was adjusting the grind.
What I would tell my past self
Buy a scale first, a grinder second and everything else never. Write the recipe on a card and stop reading forums at midnight.