Leadership: The Coffee Grinds

Photo by Wade Austin Ellis on Unsplash

My favorite part of the day is the morning. This is not another plea to convince you of the values in starting your day early. This is about more than that. Part of my commitment to daily improvement begins with my early mornings, between 5a-7a (depending on the day). During this time, I make coffee. My process begins with usually making pour over coffee with my Chemex or V60 method.

Pour over coffee requires enough time and patience. I have a reusable coffee filter, made by the excellent company CoffeeSock. After I designate how much coffee I want, if it isn’t ground up, I’ll do that first. If it is, I warm up about 500 grams of water in a pot. Sometimes if I am rushing I use a small electric pot with about the same amount of water.

While this is happening, I am taking deep meditative breaths. In between those I am checking my emotional state and physical state. If there are any concerns, I just observe. Here I am avoiding solving, but looking for understanding.

Once the water is warm, I put my pour over method on the scale and begin the timer. First I bloom the coffee with about 70 grams of water. That “bloom” is what oxygenates the grinds before I add the rest of the water. Depending on how much coffee I make, I will add another 250–350 grams of water in small spouts of 40 grams or so in 10 second intervals. During this process the steam…