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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1738 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for September 10, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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"I'm so glad when I get to meet cool gay guys instead of weird straight guys" -random woman in a bar of unremarkable attractiveness.

Yeah the enthusiasm from 'hags' is odd. I sometimes wonder if it's a desire for male attention, interaction without a sexual relationship undertone. Flirting for people who don't have their social training-wheels off yet. Is the equivalent where gay men are obsessed with young beautiful women celebrities in non-sexual way (previously Madonna, now Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga)?

Update to this from 2 weeks ago.

I'm continuing to see a therapist weekly and keeping the weekly meetings with our pastor. Two weeks ago I shared the timeline I'd assembled along with emails and chat logs between my wife and the Elons with my therapist. Last week she said she shared this with her clinical supervisor and the clinic director and that they're all very concerned, but also that my wife had only seen her therapist twice so far.

Last week I saw the nurse practitioner at our GP's office for an SSRI. While I was in the office she said she'd tried contacting my wife several times but that she didn't answer / respond.

4 - 5 days in the emotional blunting was noticeable and a welcome relief. I was able to discuss the current situation with another parent at the language school the kids attend on Saturday and was easily able to maintain emotional regulation.

I also attended, via Zoom, a local NAMI support group.

The children seem to be doing well in school, I met with the adjustment counselor at the elementary school to let her know about the situation, she said she had introduced herself to the kids but they seem to be adjusting well. Their new term of swim lessons and swim club began this week. The oldest seems to be engaging with his classes in middle school. His first swim meet is in 9 days and enjoys the regular practices.

With the recent violence reported in the news my wife's Twitter has been active with posts and reposts viewing the events though an anti-white lens. On Monday once the children were at school I asked her that when she's with the children to refrain from the white-wellbeing 'activism' and live-stream / podcast consumption. She denied that she had / was, I noted her posting of the live-stream she said she only posted it, until I noted her screen-name joined the live-stream at the 34 second mark, she then said she only watched for 5 minutes and that our daughter wasn't watching it. She then accused me of being controlling and that I should talk to my attorney and therapist. I emailed my attorney that day and spoke to my therapist about this today.

Jason Köhne and nowhiteguilt.org doesn't seem to get much attention in the wider press but I did see these two articles where he's mentioned.

https://gnet-research.org/2023/03/22/granola-nazis-digital-traditionalism-the-folkish-movement-the-normalisation-of-the-far-right/

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2025/2/2/how-white-nationalists-infiltrated-the-wellness-movement

I read 'I Am Not Sick I Don't Need Help', I think if we were speaking the LEAP method it describes would be helpful.

The summons is back from the court and gone to the constables, I expect she'll be served next week while the children are in school.

What's your favorite comfort food when you have a cold? I have a cold.

I don't know where you live, but if you can get it, jjampong! It's a spicy Korean seafood noodle soup.

You really can't wrong with any spicy Chinese or Korean soup.

I tried making that once and screwed it up so bad. Got fresh noodles and assumed the white powder on them was flour or something, not potato starch. Was great hot, but hoo boy did that thing cool down into a savory seafood gelatin any 50s housewife could be proud of.

Honestly, it's hard to go wrong with a can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup and some Sprite. It's not the best chicken soup or anything, but it is cozy and comforting.

Big bowl of pho, with enough sliced jalapenos to make my nose run.

Grilled cheese sandwich with hot tomato soup

dude yes!!! YES YES YES I literally bought some last night. love you for this.

I recently found out about a procedure called Thyroplasty Type III, a type of surgery that relaxes the vocal chords, giving the patient a deeper, raspier voice. I'm not gonna lie, it sounds pretty appealing.

Lifting weights and building muscle to gain confidence and respect seems to be a common way of self-improvement, so why not this?

On one hand, it seems to be a rational choice. Deeper voiced men seem to earn more money and seem to be more sexually desirable.

On the other hand, I'm worried I might be getting too deep into 'looksmaxxing' territory and getting a surgery that shows little actual benefit. Plastic surgery for men also carries a significant stigma, which makes me even more hesistant. It's a shame though, cause cosmetic surgery seems to be one of the few purchases where the pleasure of purchase isn't ruined by the hedonic treadmil.

Most studies seem to show the surgery as being effective for transgender men or cis men with high-pitched voice disorders. There don't seem to be many studies on normal-to-high voiced cis-men however. I've found anecdotal evidence of it working well for them as well, but also evidence of people claiming to have been ripped off.

Someone did an AMA a few months back with a before and after.

seem to earn more money and seem to be more sexually desirable.

Is this not confounded/proxy by higher T?

If any male I knew got any cosmetic surgery I would think much less of him. Doing such a thing is just unseemly and womanly.

I’m assuming you must be very young and single?

TheMotte freaks out at tattoos but is ok with this??

It looks like the motte mostly doesn't even know what to say to this guy.

Kinda, yeah? I mean, my first line of advice would still be "just live with it", but OTOH if it works, it works.

Tattoos don't work.

I do not currently have a tattoo, but have considered getting one. What I've considered is the outline of an animal that my wife jokingly refers to as my spirit animal and that has other significance to me. If I got that, it would be on my thigh, in a spot that's only publicly visible in short running shorts. I have no idea what it would even mean for such a tattoo to "not work". Would it fail to appeal to others? Not a goal, at all, I'm old, married, and it wouldn't generally be visible. Would I come to dislike it? Probably not.

In contrast, surgeries like this and other cosmetic choices all seem like a product of neurotic navel-gazing where one becomes deeply insecure about a trait that pretty much no one else notices.

What is the point of a tattoo that is not intended to appeal to others? Do you intend to sit and stare at your own thigh?

I actually do see my own body pretty frequently, yes.

I have no idea what it would even mean for such a tattoo to "not work".

Neither do I. What is the tattoo meant to do for you?

Have a sentimental, slightly ritual appearance that marks a certain time in my life. I would enjoy it (or think I would) for the same reason that I keep various mementos from my life that have no practical use.

My aunt had a friend with a very high-pitched voice, to the point that, when he answered their landline phone, people would often mistakenly think his wife had answered the phone. She mentioned he was planning to undergo this procedure, although I don't know how it panned out for him.

“He lost his battle with mental health.”

I guess that’s the contemporary Facebook suitable euphemism for “committed suicide”.

Some of you may remember the roommate that I kicked out last year. He took his own life on Saturday morning after a 10/10 argument and crashout with his daughter. Things had been rough lately but I’d seen him earlier the night before at the bar and he seemed more or less himself, just buried in his phone reconnecting with a woman from his past after her breakup such that we didn’t really talk much. The last thing I told him was that we should get together on Sunday.

What do you even say? This story was never going to have a happy ending, but those of us close to him figured that his health would take him first, or a plausibly-accidental overdose. It’s never good news when you get called to the hospital, an escort is waiting to take you back, and a police officer walks in with the doctor. “Was he depressed or did he seem like he would hurt himself?” “I’ve heard the suicide talk so many times either as his former roommate or working at the bar that I would just say that I’d see him tomorrow.” “Was he diagnosed with a mental health condition and did he take any medication?” “What wasn’t he diagnosed with?” “Did he own a firearm?” “Yes, and now that you mention it I don’t think I’ll soon forget what it looked like. I’m guessing this is why I saw a bunch of cops and crime scene tape a few blocks from where he’d been staying when I went to pick her up?” “Yes sir.”

“I wish he’d called/said something. I didn’t know things were so bad.” Perhaps I’m overly grim by disposition (most likely true) or people really are insanely naive and think that things will just magically get better (true of that person I was delivering the news to; nice guy, though) but, really? This shouldn’t exactly have been a surprise, save coming from those who figured he lacked the guts to actually do it. His problems weren’t solvable by a pep talk, nor were they in any sense temporary.

“It’s my fault!” No, it isn’t. The last person he’d been crashing with had been the latest to reach the end of her rope (pun not intended) and told him that he had to go, but that doesn’t make it her fault so much as it made her the loser of the game of musical chairs (This is how I described it to her.). The fact is that everyone close to him at some point or another had done and tolerated what they could in attempting to help him. Some had more patience and resources than others but it invariably ended the same way: frustration and defeat before reaching some form of “I can’t do this anymore.” None of us who were in that hospital room have any reason to blame ourselves. Even in some fairytale alternate scenario where the right person in the right place got him through this bad night there was always going to be another one, and another one, and…you get the idea.

I don’t know at precisely what point our friendship became an exercise in palliative care, and I don’t know if most people think in such terms (I guess not, judging by the surprised reactions from so many.), but that’s what it was. Maybe this is going to sound weird but I find myself having grieved in advance of the event to some extent. I’m sad, but not shocked. I’ll do my part for those of us left behind and at some point the grief will subside and we’ll remember the end less and the better times we had together more. Goodbye, my friend, and damn it I’m sorry I couldn’t fix you. God knows I gave it my best shot.

Selfishly, I’m afraid the contenders for the next call are running a rapid race, and those are my father and sister. Those are going to hurt.

Oh yeah, bonus material: "Is his dog okay?" "Yes, and in fact it's been staying with a different friend for some time now." I'm pretty sure that's called foreshadowing.

Very sorry for your loss.

My father committed suicide a couple of years ago and shortly thereafter I lost my older sibling to a drug overdose, and then a close family friend and as well as my cat. Not everybody copes the same way. There was much I miss 'about' them and the capabilities they had, but I didn't miss the kind of people they were and my memory wasn't punctuated with too many good experiences of them. Losing my cat of the 4 of them put me at a low point as I've always loved animals. When I think about it though, what I wish more than anything was that I could've had a different relationship with my father and sibling. Maybe things would've turned out different if we had that opportunity.

Thank you.

The hardest part of this is watching my sister go down the same road with different details (and some invariably shitty boyfriends, one of whom shot himself dead in front of her). She's been spiraling downhill pretty badly lately (mostly because she refuses to give up on the latest shitty boyfriend, and I know it sucks to realize that you need to move out and start over from scratch again, but she was also between jobs for a few months so throw in "broke and the cards are maxed out" into the mix). I offered her a place to stay if she could find somewhere else for her dog, and she retorted that the dog is the only thing she lives for now (Guess how many times I heard that from my now dead friend about his dog.). Same story with mom (who she refuses to live with anyway) and our father (He'd probably give in she pushed hard enough, to our stepmother's fury, but she stuck them with the last dog she had the last time she stayed with them.). Her current plan is allegedly to continue staying with the shitbag boyfriend who was about to kick her out and commute 5 hours a day multiple days a week to her new job. I told her she should plan on moving there as soon as she can swing it but she says she doesn't want to live in the same city as our mother (I get not wanting to live with her but that metro area is big enough for the two of them and I'm pretty sure she's just stalling for time because she refuses to give up on the boyfriend.).

It just sucks. It's the guilt trip that never ends. Our mother was a cartoon villain of a parent and I wasn't older enough to have any chance of defending her, just older enough that I was the first to figure out to run and hide when I heard that tone in her footsteps. It wasn't my fault that I was mom's favorite and she wasn't. No amount of analyzing it to death will completely silence the part of me that feels like the sibling equivalent of a war criminal. I can't rescue her now any more than I could when we were kids. There's plenty of nice stuff you can read about "breaking the cycle", but the fact is that a lot of people don't and the odds for my sister aren't looking good.

Our stepmother is a far better wife than our father deserves and is ordinarily understanding, but she'll never totally get it. Dad will never forgive himself. It doesn't matter how outmatched in court he was. It doesn't matter how hard he did fight or how much he did spend when he could've walked away. It doesn't matter that weekend's at dad's were that much better. All that matters is that he sees his daughter in pain, doesn't know how to make it stop, and feels like it's his fault. So yeah, he'll give whatever she asks as long as he has the money. Mercifully, he made enough in crypto after Trump got elected that he can swing it.

You're welcome.

I know how that can feel. It's difficult to move in that kind of world but you always need to do your best to retain good judgment while navigating through somber circumstances and having to make hard decisions. There's no other way to make progress. The boyfriend simply sounds like a deadbeat and is a dead end. Better to cut your losses early now than come to the same conclusion after you've pissed away too much time and end up right back with the same problem.

I had a very difficult life myself growing up. I had a lot of people around me when I was young. A lot of positive and negative influences on both sides, but the latter always weighs on the mind much more than the former which we quickly subsume and take for granted. When I was in school I had a very difficult time connecting with other kids. I was usually that kid that sat all the way in the back corner of the class and stayed quiet the whole day but always did his homework, stayed in an isolated corner on the playground during recess playing with sticks in the dirt, performed well and wasn't generally a nuisance to anyone. But there wasn't a lot of opportunity there either. The other kids couldn't keep up with me and the adults didn't want to have anything to do with me, so I was usually on an island to myself most of the time. I was just there to do my jail time and leave. Outside of that, I was very active in the neighborhood, but things weren't great there either.

I spent most of my time raising myself and learned to be skeptical of the thoughts others try to impart with you. A lot of the time others aren't independent actors looking out for your self-interest. They're motivated to have you think a certain way which benefits themselves. As I always told other neighborhood kids I'd mentor as I was getting older, "Always listen with your eyes, not with your ears." Don't ever do things that go against your own best judgment.

Whether it was school, the neighborhood or the home, one was almost never a reprieve from the other; and it was like a permanent nightmare that would never end. I still have thoughts about it every day and have for 20+ years that I've never been able to shake and probably never will. But experience is only what you take from it and I've learned a considerable amount from the things I've been though. Some lessons I think I would've never learned had I not gone through difficult things. There's little sense in moping or complaining about things as I see it. I was dealt a bad hand and played it as best as I could. You do your best. It's all that can be expected. And I'll continue to do the same. All you can do is have fun and smile as life takes you for a ride. And where that’s not always enough, I sometimes like to read some of my favorite religious scriptures:

“And recite to them the news of Noah, when he said to his people, "O my people, if my residence and my reminding of the signs of God has become burdensome upon you, then know that I have relied upon God. So resolve upon your plan and call upon your associates. Then let not your plan be obscure to you. Then carry it out upon me and do not let up on your attack.”

I hope things pick up for you and your family.

I have a friend who is a Ketamine addict that I feel pretty sorry for but also can't let myself get too close to because he can say pretty hurtful stuff he doesn't even remember from the depths of his ketamine stupors and I can't always tell when he's in what state.

He didn't start out this way. He was selling weed for a bit on the darkweb in the early days and picked up some Bitcoin but then forgot about selling. Several years later his Bitcoin blew up into hundreds of thousands of dollars. He met a girl, bought a house, settled down and they tried to have kids. He would be house husband and she'd work in healthcare.

She miscarried four times in a row. They gave up trying. He started drinking and doing drugs because and couldn't find a job. She eventually divorced him. He just lives alone now and picks up odd jobs but gets fired because he keeps relapsing. A few months ago he ended up in the ER because he was doing Ketamine and cocaine and he stopped breathing and his junkie friend called 911.

I don't really know what to tell this guy in his 40s with no career prospects and rapidly depleting Bitcoin and a Ketamine addiction. To make matters worse he went on this Facebook tirade where he said he is actually kind of happy Trump won and 95% of his friends in this blue town disowned him.

I check on him once in awhile and offer a bit of advice and try to act like a sane voice of reason but I'm expecting to hear that he OD'd any month now.

It wasn't exactly the same situation, but my friend had also blown through a few hundred thousand in the form of an inheritance from his parents. He'd been a musician, worked various jobs (mostly in auto parts), etc. but couldn't really hold down a job after he started going down with heart failure and other health problems. Irritatingly, it's my understanding that some combination of having had a low on-paper income and having waited too long to apply for disability after he quit working (while subsisting on the inheritance) meant that he didn't have enough work credits to qualify. I don't know the exact details (Maybe he got denied initially and then ran out of work credits by the time his health was sufficiently bad.) but it was maddening to me because he was clearly unable to physically cope with any sort of labor or consistently show up because he'd have days he just couldn't do anything. You could get mad that he didn't do anything to help himself in terms of managing his health problems or maybe argue that he could've tried harder to get a work from home job but he didn't have a work history conducive to that and wasn't self-motivated enough to make it as a gig driver (Anyone can drive a car in circles, but doing so without crashing it and keeping it in good condition to use it for work actually takes some skill, and in my experience from that business a lot of people can't make themselves work enough to pay the bills without the fear of being fired.).

He'd lived hard in the small-time rock and roll scene, wound up with old people problems before his time, and most of his social circle from the good times had either died or aged out and moved on from that life. It really was sad and I felt bad because his life objectively sucked in a way that would've been hard for the best of us to cope with. It was just beyond his means.

There isn't really anything you can tell your friend that he doesn't already know. He has to love and respect himself enough to do stop with the drugs and put up with most likely being broke working a shitty job and having a mundane life because he wants more for himself than to be a statistic. You can't make somebody care about and for themselves. He's probably looking at what feels like an overwhelming amount of effort/self-improvement for what doesn't feel like a lot of return on investment. I'm sorry about your friend, because it sucks to watch.

I'm sorry for your loss. I know what you mean about mourning someone in advance; my wife (and to a lesser extent I) did that with her brother who died last year. He was obviously circling the drain (he had really bad alcoholism), but that didn't necessarily make it easier when he finally did push his body too far. I hope that you are able to not blame yourself too much, and that you will be able to remember him as he was during the better times.

Thank you, and I'll get there.

I don't really blame myself at this point. I made my peace with that last year when I kicked him out. Could I have postponed the inevitable by letting him live with me until the bitter end? Probably, but by how long who knows and the cost to my sanity was going to exceed my ability to deal with it. I just couldn't do it, and I was far from the only one. We all did what we could and none of it was going to fix the unfixable. The only thing I had control over in that situation was how much I was willing to be collateral damage. I reached my end and that was that. We were still friends, exchanged dumb memes or whatever pretty much daily, and saw each other every week or so. I'm gonna miss him.

Sorry about the brother. Alcoholism blows and there isn't a damned thing those who care can do if the person holding the bottle can't find it in himself to quit or at least tone it down to a level that's compatible with the life you want to live. Take it from someone who's more acquainted with it than most.

Edit: I forgot to mention. We did get ahold of one of his cousins (He didn't have much family left and they lived a few hours away but I'm pretty sure that I met her once.) and she was very gracious. She mentioned having offered to let him move in with her. That brought me some peace to hear that he'd had somewhere to go.

Update on my summer legally-not-a-cult situation:

First, I did not spend $7500 to attend the retreat thing. I did observe the first night as a guest on Zoom (until I fell asleep, anyway), but that was largely just a mix of hype and the same stuff from the workshop I attended.

My friend did not reveal the secret sauce in the "breakthrough"s, but the rest ... sounds like Bay Area group-house stuff: long eye-gazing sessions with strangers, obligatory showering people in affection and praise... there was even a spontaneous cuddle-puddle in the room she was staying in on the last night (of phase 1; phase 2 is the end of this month).

It's painful listening to her wonder and joy at all the emotional expression and physical affection and positivity, meanwhile everything she says is something I've heard before in cautionary tales and I know saying so will probably backfire. Also she straight-up quoted Werner Erhard (with attribution) at one point. I at least take solice in her saying she's probably not doing it again after this. And while I'm no fan of death even for my enemies, the leader does seem to think-he's nearing the end of his life and is looking fora successor, but most of the enthusiasm is centered around him specifically.

Anyway, I'm planning on going to the homecoming after phase2, on the grounds that people feeling unloved is how they fall prey to this crap in the first place.

Oh, also, ad for a workshop I was invited to in July. I really thought something that ... that would be obvious to her, but here we are.

I'm mostly just frustrated because of all the conspicuously vulnerable people who showed up at the one I wrote about in June/July.

Do we have any coffee experts here? :)

What equipment do you recommend for home brewing? I don't mind waiting 5-10 minutes for the cup to become ready. Lots of pleasant aroma filling my home would be a bonus.

What are good reasons for taking coffee seriously?

How much subjectively experienced variety is there in terms of bean types?

If you want a really nice cup of coffee at home, on a budget and with minimal equipment, Turkish coffee is the simplest. All you need is a copper cezve and some fine ground coffee and away you go. Watch it boil carefully, get the foam off in each cup or you'll never find a husband. At the end of the cup, read your fortune in the grounds.

It's got the ritual, the smell, some uniqueness and show value if you have company, it's strong, it's available on demand without maintaining the equipment.

I'd say (as a complete normie) that you should take into account your morning routine and your willingness to operate the equipment as soon as you wake up.

As another complete normie (who doesn't even drink coffee), the only acceptable level of complexity in the morning is one of these all-in-one machines that grind your beans and foam your milk. There are a lot of shitty ones out there, though. Melitta, Nivona, DeLonghi are fine, as far as I know. There's a Chinese brand that is acceptable, DrCoffee, I think.

Another option (if you are someone who doesn't drink Italian-style coffee) is combining a good electric grinder with a good (ECBC-certified) drip coffee maker.

Anything else is for people who don't need coffee to wake up and can afford to wait for their perfect cup.

I'm on the high end instant coffee gig, and leaning into high caffeine black teabags. Happy where I am, no need to correct it.

Also a complete normie, and this is why I make cold brew. Better than instant or any kind of preserved hot-brew coffee, you can still use fresh-ground beans and everything, but you can do all the work in the afternoon or evening and then the result is quicker and easier to put together in the morning than fresh hot-brew coffee.

Zero "pleasant aroma filling my home" is a downside, though.

If I was more of a coffee person I might switch to one of those coffee makers with a "set it up the night before to turn on right before you get up in the morning" electronic timer, but I'd assume that gets noticeably more expensive - not because of the electronics, but because it's got to have some way (pods? a perfectly sealed grounds compartment? a built-in grinder?) to prevent the grounds from going stale as they sit there overnight.

What equipment do you recommend for home brewing?

If you are on a shoe-string budget I recommend investing in a decent grinder - I second the recs in the thread. If you don't mind hand grinders, they can offer a better set of burrs for the price. My friend recently got Fellow Ode 2 and it's pretty good. My setup for pour-over is Comandante C40 hand grinder, Hario V60, Hario filters, Fellow gooseneck kettle. I find V60 to be the least annoying method to brew in the morning.

What are good reasons for taking coffee seriously?

It's fun! If you like conducting experiments and tweaking dials to get some subjectively better results, getting into coffee would be good for you.

How much subjectively experienced variety is there in terms of bean types?

A lot, but you'd have to buy from your local roasters or specialty coffee shops. Most of the stuff you can get at a grocery store is roasted way too dark and this is why most people think coffee === bitter. At your local roaster the dark roast is very likely going to be lighter than medium-light you can buy at a grocery store.

So if we are thinking about specialty coffee beans, there's a lot of variety. Start experimenting and comparing. Get beans from different countries, get beans that are processed differently (washed/natural/honey), get different bean varieties. My current favourite beans are medium-roasted Brazil.

Is the Comandante C40 supposed to be pretty expensive despite being a manual grinder? Might just be an artifact of a small market where I live.

How important is the gooseneck type of spout on the kettle if you intend on going the pour over/Chemex route? I've just bought a new kettle and it doesn't have a gooseneck. :(

Trying out various beans from around the world and getting the best quality out of them is a big part of the appeal for me. I like to nerd out a bit with food and drink. Sounds like fun!

Is the Comandante C40 supposed to be pretty expensive despite being a manual grinder?

Yes, but it has great burrs, which is why I bought it. You can easily get away with cheaper options that are electric - recs in the thread are solid.

How important is the gooseneck type of spout on the kettle if you intend on going the pour over/Chemex route?

Not at all, it’s just more convenient to pour with a gooseneck. I got pretty good with a regular kettle before I got a gooseneck

That's good to know.

I've gone with a cheap-ish but hopefully pretty solid intro package for coffee at home: Krups Silent Vortex blade grinder (saves a lot of $), Chemex 3 cup pour-over brewer with their proprietary filters + I'll make do with my non-goosenecked but pretty good new kettle with thermostat.

And I've informed myself a little on how to brew and where to get beans.

I am not an expert. But I do like "good" coffee. After trying many things, my suggestion is don't over complicate. If you are going to want more than a cup, get a decent but not overly expensive cone filter drip coffee maker, paper filters, and a burr grinder. Otherwise, pourover is good for a single cup. Grind right before brewing and buy small bags of good quality beans so they are as fresh as possible from roasting. Keep it clean.

Beans vary wildly depending on source and roast. You will definitely want to find a local roaster and experiment with different options. My personal favorite right now is a medium-dark Guatemalan.

As with wine, there is no accounting for taste. I'm sure there are experts who would find what I like shallow and pedantic, and there is supposedly great coffee I don't much care for. But nobody can tell me I'm wrong! What's fun is trying different things and seeing what things you like or dislike have in common. Someday I may try roasting myself, supposedly it isn't too difficult.

The best thing you can do is to buy a burr grinder, and grind your coffee immediately before brewing. The second best thing you can do is weigh your beans and water so you're using the same ratios each time. The third best thing you can do is brew for a specific time. I usually manage about 1.5/3 for myself.

I used an Aeropress until I also decided to stop cooking in plastic. Now I use a french press from Le Cresuet which has no plastic parts.

What equipment do you recommend for home brewing?

Hario V60, gooseneck kettle, Baratza Encore/Capresso Infinity/OE Lido grinder. Krups blade grinder is acceptable for cheaper if you're on a budget. Brita filter or similar may be a good idea depending on the quality of your water. Freshly roasted beans--Happy Mug is a good start if there's nowhere near you.

What are good reasons for taking coffee seriously?

I had my first really good cup of coffee and have spent fifteen years or so trying to recreate it at will, which is not an uncommon experience in the specialty coffee world. If you haven't had a cup that made you want to put effort into your home brewing, I don't suppose I'll be able to argue you into it, and if you have, nobody needs to argue you into it.

How much subjectively experienced variety is there in terms of bean types?

IMO, quite a lot. If you want to see for yourself, find a specialty coffee place near you and try a bunch of different brews. Also relevant to your second question, obviously.

Btw how do you find out if you should be filtering your water? Is there an easy test to run?

Try making a few cups with bottled water and see if you like it better, or at least that's what I did.

In response to one of your other comments, Sweet Maria's used to say that the blade grinders were good enough for pourover, and I'd say that one will at least pay for itself while you decide if you want to spend any more money on the hobby.

This coffee venture feels frustrating so far, in the research and purchasing stages. I've spent a couple hours on research. It seems like almost everything is sub-optimal in some way, especially the budget models. And everything in terms of good equipment is expensive where I live. I can't even find a decent manual grinder for less than $60. The automatic ones worth buying cost 200+. We don't have any domestic Amazon warehouses or anything like that, and import fees are high. I've looked at second-hand listings; can't find the models I want. I may end up buying the Baratza Encore, but annoyingly it's priced at 30 bucks higher than it was a couple of months ago.

I think I do want a good burr grinder, because trying out various whole beans from around the world is a big part of the appeal of getting into coffee. As for the brewing instrument, I'll probably go for a Chemex with the glass handle. It doesn't look quite as cool as the classical one with the wooden handle, but it should prove more hassle-free. I might go for the "3 cup" version, which afaik doesn't really provide enough liquid for 3 cups, but I hope I can make coffee for two people in one operation.

But I may have hobbled myself a bit with this pour-over route. A few days ago I ordered a new electric kettle with a temperature/thermostat function, thinking that would come in handy for both tea and coffee. It doesn't have a gooseneck...! I don't think the spout is extremely unsuited, but it's not optimal. Sigh. It's the Bosch TWK7203.

Okay, I'm late to the party, so I'm going to jump in here with my reply instead of the top.

Getting into craft coffee is like getting into high end stereo equipment. Nothing is going to be optimal, but the higher-priced tiers of equipment will get you closer to your goal. Likewise, there's a wide variety in taste with various regions and beans for you to experience, especially at the lighter roasts where the individual flavor of the bean can shine. Practically speaking, unless you become a taster yourself you'll never run out of variety to try between the origin of the coffee, the process used to separate the bean from the fruit, the degree of roast in the coffee itself, etc. I tend to roast mostly African coffees and Central American coffees, but every region that can grow coffee has good things about it and good farms that produce coffee worth its premium price. Unless the roaster is an artiste, the flavors that the bean is supposed to evoke will be probably present more as suggestions than solid tastes at first, though the good ones are so damn good that you'll wonder if they added flavoring to the coffee. Regardless, the more you drink your craft coffee black, the more your palate will develop, and when you find yourself unironically talking about things like notes of stone fruit and hints of this or that spice or the type of citrus that the coffee evokes for you, you'll find that you've become a coffee connoisseur in your own right.

A Chemex is, by all accounts, a good pour-over, and your electric kettle, while not ideal, should be good enough to get you started.

However.

The freshness of the beans themselves is the most critical part of your craft coffee journey, ideally roasted within the last several days levels of fresh. I'm assuming you've already got a local craft coffee place that sells the beans that it roasts and this won't be an issue for you, but they're an absolute must if you want to travel this path. Given the assumption, you've got some good recommendations for burr grinders here already and they're the next most important piece of your potential coffee journey. With price being an issue, the good manual grinder might be the way to go for now but if you think you're going to seriously be into craft coffee, it might be a good idea to save up for a good grinder. FWIW. I've always liked Baratza grinders, and I personally use a Baratza Sette 270. That seems to be a bit of overkill to me for someone who just wants to be able to have a nice pour-over, but regardless you might be able to find refurbs on their website for cheaper. I did when I bought mine. Also, you'll want something with a one-way valve to store your fresh coffee in so that it can outgas while keeping outside air outside. A good canister or container shouldn't be too much money and will be worth the purchase.

One more thing to talk about. Inevitably, this rabbit hole includes taking the plunge and roasting green coffee beans for your own consumption. I've seen folks that have spent thousands on their roasters and espresso makers while other folks have gone with old-school methods like a popcorn popper or even just baking sheets in the oven. I started with a Fresh Roast two decades ago and have spent way too much money on better and better equipment as my earning power increased. Just something to keep in mind when planning for your next glorious level of stereo coffee equipment. Enjoy!

Strongly endorse all this, but re:

Inevitably, this rabbit hole includes taking the plunge and roasting green coffee beans for your own consumption

I'll add that this step entails the initial promise of freshly roasted beans on demand for the (low) cost of green coffee and amortized equipment costs, but also the dawning realization that you will have to spend a lot more time and money than you think to match the quality of product you can get from specialty roasters. Not to say it isn't 100% worth it, at least at the level of hobby roasting and freshly but not especially artfully roasted beans, but it's something to consider.

True! I thought that I was pretty explicit about the money part, especially with the upfront stereo equipment reference, but I had to think about your comment for a minute before I really unpacked the time part, mostly because my brain was stuck in the past and thinking about how unreliable specialty roasters could be and how a good one is worth their weight in gold when these days, any decent-sized town will probably have a coffee shop or two that sells good fresh roasted beans. Hell, I've bought them myself more than a few times to try and calibrate my own equipment against a fresh shot from the shop's machine, definitely good practice.

ETA: Not surprised to see that you're also referencing Sweet Maria's! They've taught me most of what I know about coffee and I've been buying my beans from them for decades.

I've ordered a Chemex 3-cup glass handle thingy, and the corresponding filters. I've gone for this solution because reportedly it produces the richest and smoothest taste, while the handle version is easier to clean and hold. I more or less know what to do in order to use it well. Pre-soak the filter with boiled water, pre-heating the glass at the same time, then pour out the water, add 15g (for one cup) of medium coarsely ground beans, make a little hole in the middle with my finger, pour boiled water slowly and evenly over the coffee, let it 'flower' for half a minute or so, then pour the other half.

I'll be holding off on a grinder for now. As soon as I have the Chemex I'll be heading to a coffee shop and sampling some beans by buying cups of their coffe, and also buying one or two recently ground coffees they sell in bags, so that I can try out brewing it myself without having a grinder. Hopefully they have something that's been ground the same day or so.

It's not about 'saving up', it's about how much I'm willing to be ripped off my what I deem to currently be pretty damn high prices, and how much money I'm willing to put into this hobby that I'm not sure I wanna fully commit to or not. I suspect that, much like with wine tasting, there's a lot of BS and subjectivity involved, and that the flowery descriptions are partly from constructs in the creative mind of the taster, and/or coming from people with unusually sensitive noses. As you say, they are always suggestions and similarities, not solid tastes. That's my experience with wine, though my nose is mediocre. And there's probably quite a bit of caffeine addiction motivating the interests of "coffee enthusiasts". Any addict will always come up with legit sounding reasons for devoting more time and money into their drug, while recruiting others to legitimize it.

Edit: I've not held off on the grinder for long, I've now ordered a cheap-ish Krups blade grinder which seems to get the job done with pretty good reviews. :D

Then you're on your way! I do want to say that I totally understand and respect your skepticism WRT coffee tasting, but I strongly suspect that even with a mediocre palate, if you get into it in any depth you're going to find that there's enough flavor there to draw you in more deeply. The growing caffeine addiction is just bonus points! More seriously, though, regional coffee characteristics are often pretty distinct at the lower levels of roasts and are the gateway for lots of us that have taken the plunge. You'll notice the brightness of African coffees and the earthiness of Southeast Asian coffees, for example, even if you don't get every hint of lemongrass or honeyed almonds promised by a particular bean.

The other thing that I came back to say was that I'd strongly recommend that you stick with buying whole beans and let your Krups grinder do the work. As @srf0638 has said above, the Krups will be fine for pour-overs (and +1,000 for Sweet Maria's, yay!), and getting your beans pre-ground will effectively kill the advantage that you'll get from using fresh beans to begin with. Ideally, you want to grind your beans right before you begin your pour-over.

I'm aware of the importance of whole beans and grinding them fresh. That's why I'm getting a grinder, duh.

I was talking about the time when I don't have a grinder yet. I hadn't yet decided on one to get when I wrote that. And the one I have now ordered will take a while to get here. I might sample some pre-ground coffee if my Chemex gets here first. :)

Do you want to recommend some unique luxurious beans, even if they might be hard to find? Something to look out for in the future. I looked through the beans featured in a great video game, heh. (Persona 5). They've got trivia on coffee. Colombian Nariño, Hawaiiwan Kona, and Panama Esmeralda Geisha caught my interest.

If you like a chocolatey mocha flavor, Yemeni coffee beans (at least, the ones Sweet Maria's sells) tend to just naturally taste like that. The name mocha even comes from Yemen's main port city, Mokha.

Also, our kettle doesn't have a goose-neck and it works fine with our Chemex.

Alright. :)

When you use your Chemex, do you take the filter out when disposing of the soak/pre-heat water? Or just pour the water out through the filter?

More comments

Funny, of the three that you've listed I've only ever tasted Kona, though I have a Colombian Gesha and another one that I don't remember off the top of my head (don't think it was Panamanian), both waiting for me to clean my roaster and run a couple more batches through it so that I'm sure that my beans are tasting right again. Anyway, I generally steer folks away from the more expensive and rare pedigree coffees and usually recommend starting with trying some Central and South American coffees and some African coffees, but Kona and Gesha are both pedigree coffees for a reason, so if you want to start with one of those, go nuts. A good Nariño should give you an idea of what Colombian coffees can bring to the table: a nice silky body, a complex taste with hints of raw sugar sweetness. See, this is the wine talk stuff here, but I don't think you'll go wrong if you find some that's freshly roasted.

But yeah, if I'm going to name other regional coffees to try, Ethiopian is always high on my list, so if you see an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, Sidama, or Guji for sale, they'd be good coffees to try. Sadly, I can't put Harar coffee on that list anymore but it's an old favorite of mine and my first, "yeah, this fresh roasted coffee thing is legit," coffee and was/is infamous for its tangible blueberry note. I've had lots of good Burundi coffees in the last several years, and have liked the coffees that I've gotten from Kenya and Tanzania as well.

Moving to Central/South America, Colombian is nice stuff as I said above, and Guatemalan coffee is another favorite of mine, Huehuetenango in particular has been a coffee region that I keep coming back to, and Antigua has been growing good coffee for hundreds of years. I could go on forever, but will say that more generally, as long as the beans and the roast are good, you're going to get a good coffee. I've also had tasty Costa Rican and Nicaraguan coffees that have worked for me, and I've had a couple of interesting Brazilian coffees as well. I think the only reason I haven't tried more Brazilian coffee is that there just haven't been many Brazilian coffees for sale when I'm buying, which is probably a me thing as much as anything else--there's a particular Christmas espresso blend that I absolutely adore and I invariably buy way too many other coffees to try when buying it so I don't tend to do any buying in the early parts of the year.

Okay, I've already geeked out for way too long on coffee. My suspicion is that you're going to find that there's something to this craft/specialty coffee business and that if you decide to keep at it you'll find plenty of different coffees that you like in your own right. Subjectivity aside, there's a definite superiority to this side of coffee that may well keep you coming back.

Huehuetenango

Sounds like a meme somehow :P

Making some notes of your remarks here. 'Preciated. I've found Yirgacheffe in a local store. Will probably buy a bag.

Are you familiar with any of the following:

Frinsa Edun (Indonesia)

Kiangoi AB, Kirinyaga (Kenya)

Magarissa Sede (Ethiopia)

Rugori (Rwanda)

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Huehuetenango

These tend to be crowd-pleasers in my experience, I recommend for someone who isn't sure about all this fruit stuff.

tangible blueberry note.

Yeah, and I've also had a Yirgacheffe with very distinct key lime notes. These are a little more exotic, but also a good way to start branching out if you currently think that coffee pretty much tastes like...coffee.

Any decent coffee shop will grind whole beans for you at time of purchase.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

I bought an AeroPress about five years ago and use it every day. (Being made of plastic, it's almost impossible to break, unlike the French press I bought the year before which I carelessly shattered a few months later.) When we moved into our apartment a few months ago, the owner had one of those Nespresso knockoffs that consumes pods. We tried it for awhile, but quickly went back to the AeroPress because we preferred the taste.

I don't think I want any plastic in contact with hot water. :-I An Aeropress made of other materials might be interesting though. Do you mind saying a bit more about how you notice the difference in taste, compared to, say, insta-coffee, which any enthusiast apparently refuses to drink?

I'm considering a Chemex ("pour-over" made of glass, with paper filters you have to buy from the same producer at not insignificant running cost) but it looks a bit too hipster-y for my liking. And having to tie that leather knot, hmm. Not sure...

There's an alternate model of Chemex that just has a glass handle, no leather knot involved. My husband, who's enough of a coffee snob that he buys green coffee beans to roast at home, is a great fan.

And speaking of roasting your own beans, it's not too troublesome or expensive to get started - the company we buy from, Sweet Maria's, has instructions for roasting beans in a cheap air popcorn popper - though be warned that home roasting creates a strong burning smell so it's best done outside.

Yeah I've ended up on the Chemex with a glass handle in my research, just not sure if I can go with the so-called 3 cup version (which is max 450 ml, I think) or if I need a bigger one. Most of the time I'll only be brewing for 1-2 persons.

An Aeropress made of other materials might be interesting though

They offer one made out of glass. It's 10x the price of the normal one.

I think using freshly ground beans just results in a much richer, smoother flavour compared to instant coffee. I'd say the flavour has more to do with the fact of using beans rather than the brewing implement used - if you gave me a blind taste test of an americano brewed using an AeroPress and another brewed with a French press (but using the same beans in the same quantity), I'm not sure I'd be able to tell the difference. The main advantages of an AeroPress lie in its ease of use, its robust, non-fragile design compared to the French press, and the fact that it's better-suited to making espressos than French presses (as my preferred coffee is a cappuccino). But if plastic in contact with hot water is a no-no for you, I don't know what other advice I can offer, other than that I've heard moka pots tend to burn the coffee.

Out of curiosity I looked up whether AeroPresses contain BPA or phthalates, and apparently not, which is a relief as we've just recently replaced almost all of our plastic lunchboxes with glass ones for this very reason.

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