Cold Ruined Coffee

12th Nov, 2025

Cup #12 was supposed to be an Inverted AeroPress brew. But I just brewed it the usual way.

Reason? I caught a cold and was too tired to look up on the internet about the Inverted AeroPress method.

I thought it'd be complicated, but it turns out to be quite simple (just watched a video before writing this blog).

As the name goes, I just have to invert the AeroPress. That's it!

So the next cup? Definitely an Inverted AeroPress brew!

Okay, back to cup #12. For this, I used light-roast beans with higher water temperature and more brew time than my usual.

Here's the exact recipe:

• Coffee : water - 19 g : 301 ml
• Grind size - 4
• Water temperature - 96 °C
• Agitation - 30 sec
• Brew time - 120 sec

I increased the water temperature and brew time to allow more coffee extraction, so I can get a sweeter coffee.

But guess what? I have no clue how my coffee tasted. All thanks to my cold. 🤧

All my careful calculations and effort in brewing cup #12 were gone in vain.

Moral of the story: Coffee when you have a cold is a bad idea.

I came across a coffee enthusiast on Instagram. He suggested buying two kinds of beans every time. One for daily coffee consumption. And the other for experimentation.

I really love this idea! It strikes the perfect balance!

I already have two kinds of beans now: Light and dark roast. And I decided to always keep two kinds of beans at home. Maybe next time, I'd buy medium roast and dark roast, but always two kinds of beans hereafter.

Also, I decided to log only the experimental cups. That way, I can let go of the pressure to log every single cup.

I'm trying to read "The World Atlas of Coffee" book for at least 30 mins a day. And here are a few things I picked up today:

• So far, 129 species of Coffea have been identified.
• Most coffee trees have one main harvest per year, though trees in some countries have a second harvest too.
• Ripeness of the coffee fruit is tied to the quantity of sugar it has. The more sugar in the fruit, the better.
• Most coffee cherries have two seeds, which face each other inside the berry.
• Variety is the type of coffee plant, like Bourbon, Typica, or Gesha. Varietal refers to coffee made from a specific variety grown at a particular farm or location. For example, Bourbon is a variety, but when a farm in Brazil grows Bourbon beans and produces coffee from them, that's called a Bourbon varietal.

Alright, that's all for today! Cup #13 will take time because I gotta recover from my cold. Meanwhile, I'll drop a few coffee notes.